2026-09-17 Daily Brief

Google has unveiled features to help retailers discover and convert in AI search and shopping experiences. Merchant Center's AI performance insights are generally available in Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, and the United States, and you can compare the discovery status of brands and products in AI Mode and AI Overviews. Business Agent beta for YouTube ads and the updated Universal Commerce Protocol were also mentioned. Product feeds were also proposed to connect interactive properties and loyalty data.

Google explained that AI search-related placement and exposure measurement methods may change over time. John Mueller said AI Mode, AI Overviews, Google Search is constantly changing and there are exceptions to measurement. The goal is to provide information that helps site owners understand how their site is appearing rather than just absolute location numbers. If there are any significant changes, we will update the relevant documentation.

Google provides Merchant Center's AI performance insights to businesses in Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, and the United States. UCP-based payments will be rolled out sequentially with streamlined integrations that include merchant site cart transfers, native payments within Google, identity linking, and more. Google explains that product feeds and listings can be enhanced with video links, interactive properties, and loyalty data connections.

Google is testing a cart transfer feature that allows shoppers to move items from Google to a merchant's site to complete a purchase. This feature and expanded payment flow will be rolled out in stages in the U.S., with Google planning to expand to Australia and Canada early next year. Business Agent for YouTube Advertising beta is also open in the US. The AI ​​Performance Insights report expands to five countries.

You can now create documents and presentations in Claude Chat. The results you create can be exported, edited, and shared with other users. With this announcement, Anthropic is also simplifying and unifying Claude's chat approach.

Perplexity uses hundreds of influencer partners for creator marketing. The company announced that it has filled the position by recruiting executives to handle this work. Job postings included campaigns with over 100 participants, multi-million dollar budgets, and links to conversion results. It also includes a review of content created with Perplexity Computer.

Google Image Search appears to suggest AI recommended folders when saving images to your collection. Recommended folders are marked ‘Suggested by AI’ with a Gemini icon. Users can create their own collections or select collections suggested by AI. Damien Andell shared relevant footage with X.

Gemini was designed from the ground up to be a multimodal model, Jeff Dean explained. It is an attempt to integrate similar research directions from several research organizations such as Google Brain and Legacy DeepMind. The goal was a model for understanding text, language, code, images, video, and audio. He said that in the process of improving coding performance, reasoning skills were also greatly improved.

OpenAI is testing ‘sponsored agents’ that connect users who click on ads with corporate-sponsored agents. That conversation is separated from ChatGPT's independent replies and the conversation you originally started. Testing is currently open for select advertisers in the United States. OpenAI also released updates to ChatGPT Ads, including conversion optimization, platform-specific targeting, Shopify/HubSpot integration, and AI-based ad creation functions.

The analysis is that a new page for AI search must have information that actually adds to the existing content. In the case presented, the new page was confirmed as ‘Crawled - Not Currently Indexed’ in Google Search Console and contained little additional information compared to the company’s existing content or already cited sources. Analyzing competitor and AI responses to find content gaps can be useful. However, because it is difficult to create differentiated information benefits by only using publicly available information, it is explained that the information to be added and its source must first be determined.

Reuters said it is operating a combination of expanding its subscription base and protecting its advertising business through a dynamic paywall. This system determines whether to expose a paywall by estimating advertising revenue potential and subscription conversion potential based on user behavior and content conversion performance. Reuters does not provide an ad-free experience to its subscribers either. He explained that content consumption and first-party data from highly engaged subscribers are also helpful to the advertising business.

Google is testing ways to move product search results directly to merchant sites. According to Brodie Clark, clicking on a free listing result in the product grid takes you to that product page instead of an overlay showing multiple sellers. Previously, the product details side panel was displayed. Google also ran a similar test on Google Shopping in June last year.

Google Search Central Live Deep Dive Europe 2026 will be held in Barcelona, Spain. The event will run from September 30 to October 2, 2026. The original article introduces community speakers for this three-day event.