- Google's Merchant Center now shows how a brand and its products are discovered in AI Mode and AI Overviews, with a share of voice compared to other brands.
- Google's Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) already lets hundreds of thousands of brands sell with checkout directly on Google.
- New this fall: merchants can send that cart to their own site instead, and test their checkout flows. Rolling out gradually in the U.S.
- PYMNTS Intelligence counts 39 million U.S. adults who have moved to AI-driven product discovery, and 24% of consumers who would let an AI agent shop and buy for them.
- Black Friday is November 27. The time to check your position is now, not on the day.
What Google announced
On September 16, 2026, Google released a set of tools for merchants ahead of the holidays. Two of them change how a jewelry brand should think about this season.
- AI performance insights in Merchant Center. A view of how your brand and products are discovered in AI Mode and AI Overviews, compared with other brands as a share of voice. It is available in the U.S., Canada, Australia, India and New Zealand.
- Checkout inside Google's AI answers. Through the Universal Commerce Protocol, hundreds of thousands of brands and retailers already offer direct checkout across Google. Merchants can now choose to transfer the shopper's cart to their own site, and test their checkout flows. These are rolling out gradually in the U.S., with Australia and Canada expected early in 2027. Analytics are listed as coming soon.
This builds on the agentic checkout Google launched for shoppers in November 2025, which let people hand a purchase to Google's AI on participating stores, with Google asking permission before it buys.
For the first time, Google is showing merchants a share of voice inside its AI answers. Most jewelry brands have never looked at that number.
Why it matters for jewelry this year
Jewelry is one of the most gifted categories of the year, and gift shopping is exactly where people ask for help. "A gold necklace for my wife under $500." "A first gift for my girlfriend that is not too much." These are questions, not keywords, and they are the kind AI Mode is built to answer with a short list of products.
PYMNTS Intelligence estimates that 39 million U.S. adults, 15% of the adult population, have already shifted from traditional channels to AI-driven product discovery, and that 24% of consumers would let an AI agent shop and buy for them. Even if most holiday purchases still end on a website, more of the choosing now happens before the shopper gets there.
Five things to do before Black Friday
- Open the new AI performance insights in Merchant Center and write down your number. Whatever it is today is your baseline. Without it, you will not know in January whether anything you did worked.
- Fill your product data for gift questions. Price, availability and shipping times are what a gift shopper filters on in December. Make sure each one is correct and current in Merchant Center, including the last order date for holiday delivery.
- Decide how you want AI checkout to work for you. Selling inside Google is less friction for the shopper. Transferring the cart to your site keeps the customer relationship and your add-ons, like gift wrap and engraving. Choose on purpose rather than by default.
- Test the flow yourself. Google now lets merchants test checkout. Do it with a real product, a gift message and a holiday delivery date, and see what the shopper sees.
- Ask the gift questions your customers ask. Type them into AI Mode and ChatGPT and note which brands come up. Those are the names you are competing with this season, and they may not be the ones you expect.
A note of caution
Google has not published how its AI chooses products for these answers, and the checkout tools are still rolling out. Agent-completed purchases are likely to stay a small share of holiday sales this year. The point is not to rebuild your store in five weeks. It is to know where you stand while there is still time to fix the simple things.
Every holiday season has a new place where gifts get chosen. This year a growing part of that choosing happens inside an AI answer, and Google has just given merchants a way to see whether they are in it.
Does AI name your jewelry?
Tell us your brand or your store. We will show you what ChatGPT and Claude say when a shopper asks where to buy what you sell, and who they name instead of you.
Talk to usSources:
PYMNTS, "Google Debuts Agentic Tools to Prep Retailers for Holidays" (September 16, 2026)
eMarketer, "Google brings checkout to AI Mode as it races rivals in agentic commerce"