Google rolls out Merchant Center AI performance insights in 5 markets

Google has made its Merchant Center AI performance insights report generally available to retailers in Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand and the US, giving merchants a new way to track how their brands and products appear in AI-generated shopping responses.

The company announced the rollout on 16 September in a holiday shopping update from Ashish Gupta, vice president and general manager of merchant shopping. Google had previously previewed the feature on 29 May and said it would arrive in those five markets "in the coming months." Four months later, the report is now live across all five.

Focus on AI visibility

The report is designed to show how a brand and its products are being discovered in AI Mode and AI Overviews. Its main metric is share of voice, which compares how often a retailer’s brand appears in AI shopping answers with how often competing brands appear.

That gives merchants a benchmark in AI-driven results, where there is no traditional ranked list to review. The report also shows whether a retailer’s products are being surfaced or whether competitors are appearing instead.

Google linked the launch to the holiday season, when retailers have added incentive to understand whether AI answers are recommending their products.

What the report measures

Google says the report covers organic AI traffic, including free listings, and does not include Shopping ads. It is limited to English-language queries. Share of voice is measured against the competitor set already defined in Merchant Center, not against every brand that may appear in AI answers.

The company also says merchants can use the report to improve discoverability. According to the original article, "in practice that points back to the product feed, which is what AI Mode draws on when it describes and recommends products."

Feed updates tied to AI discovery

Alongside the rollout, Google outlined feed practices for the holiday period. It recommends adding conversational attributes so product listings include richer context for AI Mode when it responds to shopper questions.

Google also pointed to the video link attribute, which lets videos appear in free listings and be used in Google Ads campaign creation, and to loyalty data connections in Merchant Center, which can display member pricing and perks such as free shipping to signed-in members across Google. The source article cited Minted as an example, saying its loyalty members see member pricing when they search for holiday cards.

While most of these tools were already available in Merchant Center, Google is now framing them as ways to improve visibility in AI answers.

Part of a broader reporting push

The Merchant Center update follows Google’s wider expansion of AI reporting tools. In June, Search Console gained AI performance reports for website owners, covering how pages appear in AI Overviews and AI Mode.

Taken together, the two tools mean retailers can now monitor AI visibility for both pages and product listings within Google’s own reporting systems rather than relying on third-party trackers.

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