Google is adding a new reporting suite inside Merchant Center that shows how products surface across its AI shopping experiences. The feature, called AI performance insights, tracks product discovery on AI Mode, AI Overviews in Search, and the Gemini app.
According to Google Merchant Center Help on AI performance insights, the goal is to give retailers a view of how their product listings are distributed and surfaced when AI systems are involved in the shopping journey. The report will roll out to retailers in the U.S., Canada, Australia, India, and New Zealand in the coming months. Google did not provide a firm release date.
What Each Report Covers
Merchant Center's AI performance insights include four features. Share of voice benchmarks a brand's visibility on AI shopping journeys against similar brands. Shopping funnel performance breaks results into discovery, evaluation, and purchase stages. Product term insights identifies the product terms users search in AI shopping conversations and the retailer's share of voice on each. Product attribute insights tracks popular product specifications such as color, style, and material, and includes an attribute completeness score that flags listings missing structured attributes.
Where it Sits Inside Merchant Center
AI performance insights will be available inside Merchant Center, the dashboard retailers already use for Shopping ads and Performance Max reporting. Google previewed the report at its Marketing Live event on May 20; the Merchant Center Help page is the formal product documentation.
What Changes for Advertisers and Brands Using Merchant Center
For advertisers, this update changes how product visibility is measured across Google’s shopping ecosystem. Where Merchant Center previously focused on structured placements like listings and ads, AI performance insights could introduce reporting tied to systems that generate or influence product discovery through AI.
This is particularly relevant for brands that rely heavily on product feeds, as visibility may now come from both traditional placements and AI-powered surfaces. The reporting aims to enable retailers to identify where their products are appearing when AI is part of the shopping experience, rather than only when users interact with standard search results.
Recap
What are AI performance insights in Merchant Center?
AI performance insights is a new reporting suite inside Google Merchant Center that shows retailers how their products are discovered across AI Mode, AI Overviews in Search, and the Gemini app. The report contains four modules: share of voice, shopping funnel performance, product term insights, and product attribute insights.
Which AI shopping surfaces does the report track?
The report tracks product discovery on three surfaces: AI Mode in Google Search, AI Overviews in Search, and the Gemini app. Within those surfaces, retailers can see share of voice against similar brands, performance across the discovery, evaluation, and purchase stages, popular product terms, and popular product attributes such as color, style, and material.
Where and when will AI performance insights roll out?
Google has said AI performance insights will roll out to the U.S., Canada, Australia, India, and New Zealand in the coming months. A firm release date has not been provided.
