Google has started testing a new report named AI performance insights in Google Merchant Center. The purpose of this report is to give an overview of how the brand is being discovered across Google’s generative AI ecosystem.
Why Google Built This Tool
With the growing popularity of conversational surfaces for online shopping, the questions of shoppers are becoming more and more detailed than a regular keyword query. People ask questions that combine information gathering, comparisons, and purchase intent at the same time. To help merchants understand this shift in consumer behavior, Google has created AI performance insights.
Who Can Access the Report Right Now
The report is in its pilot phase and can be accessed only in a few Merchant Center accounts from the United States right now. Google plans to roll out this feature in other countries such as Australia, Canada, India, and New Zealand in the upcoming months.
For those merchants who already have access to this report, it can be found in Merchant Center under the Analytics tab. Next, merchants need to click on Products, then the AI performance tab, to open the dashboard.
What Metrics the Report Includes
This report is concentrated on just a few core metrics that are supposed to provide benchmarks for comparison between competitors. First, it includes share of voice, which shows the visibility of a certain brand or product compared to its competitors. It is calculated by dividing the brand’s number of AI impressions by the sum of the impressions of the brand and its competitors for a relevant query.
The complementary metric, competitors’ average share, shows the share of voice held by the merchant’s competitor group. This lets merchants evaluate whether their share of voice is above or below that market standard. It is based on the competitors already defined for the merchant in Merchant Center.
There is also query frequency, which indicates the popularity of certain query types, product terms, shopping journey phases, or product attributes. This metric is meant to indicate overall consumer demand. A related filter is query type, which shows whether a customer is searching by category, researching product specifications, or looking for reviews.
It should be noted that the scope of this report is limited. The insights include only those conversational queries that contain shopping intent and relate to brand-related questions. No other data is shown in the report.
Filtering the Data
Merchants can limit the view of the dashboard with the help of a filtering bar at the top of the report. There is a filter for product category, though there is no single report covering all categories at once. Merchants can choose a time period, as well as filter by the country or countries they are interested in. Also, the traffic can be filtered.
However, the scope of this filter is quite limited. Only organic traffic is covered in the report, and there is no data on paid ads traffic. Therefore, merchants who want to have the information about both paid and organic AI traffic are unlikely to find it here.
Breaking Down the Shopping Journey
Probably the most detailed part of the report is the scorecard that classifies queries into three stages of the shopping journey. The discovery stage covers queries made at the early stage, when shoppers are just exploring product options. Then, Evaluation stage covers middle stage of the journey where shoppers compare product options and look for the specification. Finally, the Purchase stage covers queries at the late stages of the journey close to the transaction.
For each of these stages, the report provides an overall share of voice indicator so merchants can analyze performance trends compared to competitors. However, beyond this general picture, there are also more detailed indicators that should show where the merchants do well and where there is a chance to optimize the performance.
To understand this better, Google offers the following example. If a merchant sees that a query type such as searching by product features is popular in the discovery stage, but their share of voice is low, this combination signals an optimization opportunity.
It should also be noted that Google describes one limitation. Individual queries are analyzed separately, and one query might occasionally fit more than one shopping journey category if a shopper poses a complex question that combines a price request with a product comparison.
Turning Insights Into Action
In addition to the core metrics provided by the report, there are also scorecards designed to help turn the information into actions merchants can take. The first scorecard, Frequently Used AI Shopping Terms, shows the exact words shoppers are using when describing functional benefits or product features in conversational searches, such as maximum cushioning or arch support. In the card, the number of products from the merchant that correspond to a given term, the popularity of the term, and the corresponding share of voice are shown for each term. By clicking through, merchants can view all product terms and work the relevant concepts into their product titles and descriptions.
The second scorecard, Popular Product Attributes, deals with structured technical specifications, such as size, color, or material that shoppers are looking for but may be currently absent from the merchant’s product data. By clicking through, merchants can see all product attributes and see what popular attributes they should add. As Google notes, this version of the report allows seeing the structured attributes only, while any unstructured details provided in free text descriptions are not included here.
Data Limitations to Keep in Mind
Google warns about a few specific situations in which this report could appear incomplete or misleading at first sight. If the merchant doesn’t have enough impressions, the share of voice metric will show as zero, not as a partial figure. Similarly, if the Merchant Center account of a merchant doesn’t include any competitors defined in Merchant Center, the share of voice metric will appear as 100 percent, which, as Google notes, means that no competitor data is available for AI performance insights rather than being a sign of high market visibility.
Merchants can’t manually adjust their competitor set in this report, because the competitors used for the analysis are selected from whichever competitors are already defined in the analytics tools of Merchant Center.
What This Means for Merchants
This pilot represents an insight into how Google is going to assist brands in adapting to the changing search landscape and becoming compatible with conversational AI technology. While in its current state, the report is limited to organic AI traffic and just a few US-based Merchant Center accounts, the direction is clearly shown. With AI Mode and AI Overviews becoming the main drivers behind shopping discoveries, getting the visibility of the merchant’s performance in this niche is almost inevitable.
As the pilot is going to be rolled out to other countries throughout the year, merchants from other regions should expect access to this report and this set of metrics, filters, and scorecards as well. That will provide them with a chance to prepare their product titles, descriptions, and structured attributes for the shift in traffic ahead of time.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q 1: What is AI performance insights?
It is a new report inside Google Merchant Center that shows how a brand is discovered across Google’s generative AI ecosystem, including AI Mode and AI Overviews.
Q 2: Who currently has access to this report?
The report is in a pilot phase limited to a select number of Merchant Center accounts in the United States.
Q 3: Which countries will get access next?
Google has said the feature will expand to Australia, Canada, India, and New Zealand in the coming months.
Q 4: Where can merchants find the report in Merchant Center?
Merchants can find it under the Analytics tab, then Products, then the AI performance tab at the top of the page.
Q 5: What is share of voice in this report?
It measures how much visibility a brand captures compared to its competitors, based on AI impressions relative to the total impressions for related queries.
Q 6: Does the report include paid ads traffic?
No. The current version is limited strictly to organic AI traffic, such as free listings, and does not include paid ads data.
Q 7: What are the three shopping journey phases in the report?
The phases are discovery, evaluation, and purchase, covering early, middle, and late stage shopping intents.
Q 8: What happens if a merchant has no competitors defined in Merchant Center?
The share of voice metric will show as 100 percent, which signals there is no competitor data available rather than dominant visibility.
Q 9: Can merchants choose their own competitors for this report?
No. Competitors are based on whatever competitor set is already defined elsewhere in Merchant Center’s analytics tools.
Q 10: What kind of product data can merchants improve using this report?
Merchants can use the frequently used AI shopping terms and popular product attributes scorecards to update product titles, descriptions, and structured attributes like size, color, and material.
