AI is pushing deeper into the sale itself today, from a labeled chat inside ChatGPT to a Google test that skips its own shopping panel, while Google keeps reminding advertisers that its newest measurement tools are still moving targets.
AI Chat Becomes a Storefront: OpenAI and Google Push Commerce Into New Surfaces
OpenAI and Google both extended AI-driven shopping and checkout tools today, treating conversational and product surfaces as sales channels rather than pure discovery layers.
- OpenAI Tests Sponsored Agents, Letting Shoppers Chat With Advertisers OpenAI’s new format opens a labeled, separate chat with an advertiser after a user clicks an ad, arriving alongside generally available conversion tools and new Shopify and HubSpot integrations that lower the barrier for merchants already running paid campaigns elsewhere.
- Merchant Center’s AI report goes live in five countries Google made its AI performance insights report generally available in Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand and the United States and began a gradual rollout of simplified checkout integrations under its Universal Commerce Protocol, with Australia and Canada not expected until early next year.
The Shopping Grid Gets Rewired: Google and Bing Test New Paths to the Cart
Spotted interface changes on both Google and Bing point to shopping results pages in flux, with each engine adjusting how far a shopper gets before leaving the results page.
- Google Tests Sending Product Results Straight To Retailer Sites A pilot spotted by Brodie Clark skips Google’s multi-retailer side panel entirely, sending some free product listing clicks directly to a merchant’s own product page instead of the comparison overlay Google has used to keep shoppers on its own results.
- Bing Tests Left Sidebar Shopping Filters, Echoing Google’s Layout Microsoft is testing a denser left-rail filter column for shopping queries that mirrors Google’s layout, a more detailed version of a design Bing first carried back in January 2023.
Measuring What Moves: Position Data and Spend Benchmarks Get Fuzzier
Two separate reports today highlighted how much guesswork remains in comparing performance figures inside Google’s own tools.
- Mueller: Search Console’s AI position data will keep shifting John Mueller told a site owner on LinkedIn that Search Console’s position and impression counting for AI Mode and AI Overviews has edge cases and will keep evolving as those surfaces change, leaving the underlying counting method undocumented for now.
- Google Ads Now Shows How Your Spend Stacks Up Against Rivals A new Spend Benchmarks card in the Ads Overview tab compares an advertiser’s weekly spend and clicks against a Google-selected peer group, though PPC consultant Thomas Eccel cautioned that margin and conversion differences make the benchmark a pacing signal rather than a performance target.
Today’s Quick Hits
- Google Ads Publishes New Help Doc On Multi-Source Conversions Beta New documentation walks advertisers through attaching CRM or order-database records to an existing conversion action via Data Manager to recover conversions missed to browser restrictions.
- Google Cuts Search Profile Follower Bar to 10,000, Adds Multi-Brand Login Google lowered the Search Profiles eligibility threshold to 10,000 followers, its third cut this year, and added single-login management for publishers running multiple sub-brand profiles.