Search was once full of links, but now you can almost forget it…
Google spent these days renovating the room while you were out buying holiday inventory.
Shopping got agentic, officially. Merchant Center’s AI performance insights are now generally available in the US, Canada, Australia, India, and New Zealand.
That means share-of-voice data on how your brand surfaces in AI Mode and AI Overviews. Guessing season is over.
The ads have moved in too. Sponsored listings now sit beside organic products inside AI Mode on mobile, after appearing on desktop first.
And there’s a shortcut past the blue links. Google is placing an AI Mode button inside the search bar above results, one tap from a conversational answer instead of a SERP.
Forum energy, now in the answer. A “What people are saying” section pulls community discussion into AI Mode, on mobile and desktop.
So your Reddit and forum presence is becoming an AI Mode visibility lever on top of a classic search one.
One more number worth feeding into your product data: lululemon’s conversational attributes showed up in 50% of relevant AI Mode recommendations during testing.
There’s a visible pattern across all Google’s movements: it’s turning the answer itself into the destination, the ad unit, and the review section. All at once.
But Google is not the only one going heavy on AI. Let’s see what Meta has been up to.
