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Over the past 12 months Google has taken bold steps in revolutionising the online shopping world with the introduction of AI-powered features including a virtual try-on and the roll-out of AI Mode in both the US and the UK, a conversational search platform designed to change the game in terms of how users interact with products online. For businesses and SEO agencies, understanding the implications of these changes is crucial, 90% of ecommerce PLP and PDP pages are not set up for agentic commerce. Early adopters will maximise digital visibility in an increasingly competitive space. Your brand cannot afford to be “late” or “left behind”.
In this blog post, updated for April 2026, we’ll break down the new features that Google has introduced and explore what this means for SEO of e-commerce businesses – as well as what they can do to ensure their business performance both thrives and survives.
What New AI Shopping and Search Features has Google Released in 2025 and 2026?
Google have introduced a number of shopping-related search features that are changing the game for e-commerce businesses who prioritise their organic visibility.
Virtual Try-On Apparel (March 2025 onwards)
Google’s Virtual Try-On (VTO) allows users to upload their own images to see how clothing items will look on them. Using generative AI, this feature will allow consumers to see how products will look on various body sizes, gender creating a personable experience that no longer takes a one person fits all approach. This new feature marks a significant move away from static images and the typical traditional size charts that are commonly used by current e-commerce businesses into a shift towards a more immersive, personalised shopping experience.
Google since expanded this functionality with new features, allowing users to “try-on” apparel against photos from your own camera roll (July), allowing users to view shoes and expanding to other countries including Australia, Canada and Japan (both in October).
Since launch, Virtual Try-On has continued to expand and is now considered a baseline expectation for apparel retailers competing in Google Shopping.
Personalised Shopping Assistants with AI Mode (May 2025)
AI Mode is a new conversational experience feature that uses Gemini (Google’s AI model) and the shopping graph to offer real-time personalised recommendations. It’s great for customers who know roughly what they are looking for. The AI Mode can tailor results based on customers preferences, budget and intent.
While it was only released in May, AI mode has only grown in power and functionality. Within August Google deployed a major update to AI mode that allowed it to perform agentic task features either at it’s own direction or when requested by users, including complex product and brand comparisons.
In September, Google deployed a significant visual upgrade to AI Mode, allowing responses to display images alongside text for the first time. For shoppers, this means being able to describe what they’re looking for in natural language “baggy jeans that hit above the ankle in a light wash,” for example and receive a visual, browsable grid of matching products drawn from the 50+ billion listings in Google’s Shopping Graph, with the ability to conversationally refine those results in the same session.
Underpinning this is a technique Google calls “visual search fan-out,” where AI Mode performs a comprehensive analysis of any uploaded image, recognising subtle details and secondary objects, running multiple background queries, and returning highly relevant visual results.
This capability is built on Google Lens and Image Search, powered by Gemini’s multimodal understanding. For e-commerce brands, the SEO implication is direct: product imagery quality, alt text accuracy, and Shopping Graph data completeness now directly influence whether your products surface in these AI-generated visual results.
We’ve also seen access to it roll out internationally, with the introduction in the UK in July and into Europe in October. As of 2026, Google has also introduced sponsored placements within AI Mode, meaning the line between organic and paid visibility is actively blurring – a key consideration for any e-commerce brand’s search strategy.
Agentic Shopping and Checkout Purchases (May 2025)
The new agentic feature allows Google to act on your behalf to monitor prices and availability. It can complete purchases for you when the price matches your conditions. Essentially this will help users complete purchases when they are ready to purchase. This functionality has since been fully integrated with AI mode, including the implementation of panel-like shopping features.
Agentic commerce is no longer an emerging concept, major retailers including Walmart, Amazon (via its ‘Rufus’ assistant) and Ralph Lauren have live agentic shopping integrations, signalling that this is now an industry-wide shift rather than a Google-specific development.
What AI Shopping Features Have Competing Platforms Rolled Out?
While Google are leaders in organic search, competing “traditional” and conversational search platforms have rolled out their own new shopping features too – including both like-for-like and unique functionality.
ChatGPT for Shopping
OpenAI are capitalising on ChatGPT’s popularity as a search interface with features that make shopping on the platform simple and easy to do. Shopping panels alike to Google’s own organic shopping have been integrated into the platform since April 25 – allowing users to discovered detailed product information and move towards purchase at a click. These are built using product metadata and structured data (schema) and surface information such as images, prices and reviews.
At the end of September, OpenAI went a step further by announcing the coming roll-out of instant checkout within chats, allowing users to buy products within ChatGPT. The checkout has native functionality with Etsy and (soon) Shopify as well as any retailer that accepts Stripe. Notably, Shopify merchants now have native ChatGPT commerce integration – making structured data and product feed quality critical for retailers on other platforms who risk losing visibility in this channel. This development further reinforces the trend of encouraging end-to-end, in-platform user journeys where shoppers do everything from discovery, comparison and purchase through conversational search.
Microsoft Bing and Copilot
Microsoft has also been active in enabling in-platform shopping journeys in their search tools (both Edge and Copilot) with an emphasis on aiding users within traditional search.
March last year saw product price tracking added to product-related searches in Copilot including notifications when deals or price changes appear. In April during the same year rich panel-based shopping experiences were added to Copilot with the same summarised card approach other tools took. Durin the same month this also saw the first instance of an in-platform checkout as Microsoft enabled checkout for selected items across a number of large American retailers.
The US tech giant has also made moves to create unique functionality too, specifically the creation of a personalised shopping agent than retailers can add into their websites and apps. This agent effectively “lives” within a retailer’s platform and provides a personalised shopping experience for users while tying into the brand’s existing catalogue and tone. While it was first touted in wave 1 in April 2025, the first public demonstration was made available in September 25.
How These Features are Changing E-Commerce SEO
These AI-driven changes go far beyond user experience. They also signal a major shift in how search engines display and prioritise content, which directly impacts SEO.
Shift Towards Visual and Interactive Content
With features like virtual try-on, static images and basic product descriptions are no longer enough. Retailers will need to integrate rich media (e.g., 3D images, videos, and interactive try-ons) to remain competitive. Google will likely prioritise these enriched experiences in search results, especially in Google Shopping listings.
SEO Tip: Optimise your product pages with structured data (schema markup) for visual content. Ensure alt text is detailed and descriptive and include engaging media that demonstrates the products utility.
Greater Emphasis on Personalisation and Intent
AI Mode reflects a shift from keyword-based search (this is still important to focus on) to intent-driven interactions. Google’s ability to interpret natural language queries and user context means that retailers will need to align their content strategy with user intent rather than just exact match keywords.
SEO Tip: Focus on the semantic aspect of SEO by building content hubs around product categories and user problems. Use FAQs, how-to guides and conversational content to align with AI-driven search behaviour.
Enhanced Role of Product Data and Feed Optimisation
The Shopping Graph draws from product data; this means that well-optimised product feeds are more critical than ever. Incomplete or poorly structured feeds will miss out on visibility in AI-assisted shopping experiences.
SEO Tip: Audit your Google Merchant Centre product feed regularly. This should include high-quality images, competitive pricing, accurate inventory and rich attributes (e.g. brand, colour, size, etc.).
User Experience and Site Speed Are More Important Than Ever
As AI assists with product selection and checkout, any friction on your website in terms of buyer’s journey can result in lost opportunities. Google has been emphasising Core Web Vitals and overall UX in its ranking algorithm for a while, and now it’s more important than ever.
SEO Tip: Run regular site audits to monitor performance, ensuring to consider UX. Improve mobile responsiveness, reduce load times, and simplify navigation to keep bounce rates low and engagement high.
Brand SEO is a Crucial Factor
Authority around a topic, specifically recognition from other reputable voices in the same are – in other words, having a known and liked brand – has always been important in search. But AI-powered search is taking this up to the next level. AI platforms use brand and citations as a core factor within product discovery and surfacing, often choosing products based on brand alone.
SEO Tip: Your third-party citations are more important than ever. Focus on conducting brand awareness campaigns and earning mentions from reputable names and outlets within your industry or sector.
How E-Commerce brands Should Respond in 2026
To remain competitive in this AI-enhanced shopping ecosystem, brands must evolve in terms of technical SEO and their content strategies. Some examples of how this could be done are below.
Embrace AI-Powered Content
Create dynamic, AI-friendly content that addresses common questions, provides product comparisons and helps users make informed decisions. Utilise structured data to ensure that the content is easy to read and digests when being crawled. By demonstrating your expertise, agents better understand your niche and your authority within it.
Leverage Video and AR Content
Produce short videos and AR experiences for top-performing products and publish across multiple platforms including Tik-Tok and Instagram to ensure visibility across all search surfaces. Greater visibility and prevalence around a topic helps agents understand your popularity and, when your content is well-received by users, improves your brand’s credibility and increasing your visibility within relevant searches.
Focus on First-Party Data and Personalisation
Collect first-party data to understand customers preferences and use this data to offer personalised recommendations and build customer-brand loyalty through retargeting and email campaigns. By providing personalised experiences, you can rival the offering of AI tools, dissuading users from looking elsewhere and moating-off competition from rival brands from your existing customers.
Partner with AI-optimisation experts
The AI search landscape differs in many ways to traditional SEO, and it is constantly evolving. Relying on known SEO techniques is not a viable pathway to improving your visibility within AI. Working with experts such as POLARIS can help you understand the AI-search trends affecting your business and improve your visibility within them.
Staying Relevant in a Changing Search Landscape
Google’s AI shopping features are not just a fancy new tool together with developments from Amazon, ChatGPT and emerging agentic commerce platforms, they clearly show where e-commerce is heading in 2026 and beyond. This shows e-commerce businesses and SEO agencies need to adapt, become innovative and optimise for a smarter and a more interactive experience that will soon become the norm of search engines.
To discover more about how AI is changing the search and shopping experience, discover our guides on how AI will impact paid search and how we create and conduct AI optimisation strategies, or get in touch about our AI-search optimisation services to speak to an expert on our AI visibility diagnostic audit – a complimentary 30-minute briefing and audit to identify where you’re losing AI share of voice and what to do about it.
