Google expands agentic commerce tools ahead of the holiday shopping rush

Google is rolling out a slate of agentic commerce updates aimed at helping retailers reach shoppers who are increasingly using AI to research, compare, and buy products.

What’s new. Google is expanding AI performance measurement, bringing its Business Agent to YouTube ads and adding capabilities to its Universal Commerce Protocol integration.

Getting visibility into AI discovery. Google’s AI performance insights in Merchant Center are now generally available to businesses in Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, and the U.S. The feature shows retailers how their share of voice compares with other brands across Google experiences, including AI Mode and AI Overviews.

Coming to YouTube. Google is inviting eligible U.S. retailers to participate in a beta that embeds its Business Agent directly into YouTube ads, allowing viewers to ask detailed product questions and receive tailored answers without leaving YouTube.

The idea. A shopper who discovers a product in a video ad could move directly from inspiration to research, asking questions about features, fit or other details within the same experience. Google previously introduced Business Agent in Search as a way for brands to provide conversational shopping assistance.

Meanwhile. Google is expanding the capabilities available through its Universal Commerce Protocol integration hub in Merchant Center. UCP is designed to provide a standardized way for AI agents and commerce platforms to support shopping transactions.

UCP-powered checkout. Merchants using the hub for UCP-powered checkout can now enable features including cart transfers to their own websites and enhanced checkout-flow testing. Google says analytics and additional capabilities are coming soon.

Where it stands. The new UCP capabilities are gradually rolling out in the U.S., with Australia and Canada expected to follow early next year.

Tapestry, the owner of Coach and Kate Spade, used UCP-powered checkout to make its products available for purchase across Google Search — including AI Mode — and the Gemini app ahead of the holiday shopping season.

Don’t overlook the product feed. For all the attention on AI agents, Google says one of the fundamentals of e-commerce remains critical: accurate, detailed product data.

By the numbers. Google says merchants that adopt its core Merchant Center feed best practices see an average 5% increase in conversions the following month. During testing with Lululemon, Google says conversational attributes supplied by the retailer were incorporated 50% of the time in relevant product recommendations in AI Mode.

And there’s loyalty. Retailers can connect loyalty-program data to Merchant Center so Google can surface member-specific pricing and benefits. Members of Minted’s Minted More program, for example, can see their member pricing when searching for holiday cards.

Why we care. These updates give brands new ways to measure their visibility in AI results, answer product questions inside YouTube ads, and reduce friction between discovery and checkout. They also make product-feed quality increasingly important, as richer data can influence how products are surfaced and recommended in AI-powered shopping experiences.

The big picture. Google’s commerce strategy is expanding beyond getting products indexed and advertised. It increasingly wants retailers to make their products understandable, discoverable, and ultimately purchasable by AI agents.

What to watch. The holiday shopping season will provide a test of whether conversational commerce can move shoppers from product discovery to checkout — and whether retailers see enough incremental sales to justify investing in richer product data and agentic-commerce integrations.

Dig deeper. Boost your holiday sales with these agentic commerce updates