If TikTok Shop is on your roadmap, speak to the team and we’ll help you understand which products are worth reviewing first. Shoptimised can help retailers and agencies use product-level rules to spot those opportunities earlier
The challenge with this account was clear: too much revenue was coming from too few products.
Before working with Shoptimised, One Stop for Safety was heavily reliant on a very small number of products to drive performance through Google Shopping. Just 1% of products generated 100% of revenue, while 84% had no clicks at all. We also found that 55% of budget was being spent on products that did not convert.
That left the account over-reliant on a tiny portion of the catalogue, with too much spend going towards products that were not delivering a return.
After joining us in July 2024, One Stop for Safety launched on Incremental Sales, designed to drive revenue from products that were not getting clicks or not converting, without cannibalising what was already working.
The results were significant:
The most important shift was not just higher revenue. It was that far more products started contributing to sales.
That matters because when an account depends too heavily on a tiny number of products, growth becomes harder to sustain. Getting more of the catalogue contributing gives retailers a stronger base to grow from and reduces the pressure on the same products to keep carrying performance.
As Adam, Performance Manager at Shoptimised, puts it:
“What stood out here was how quickly more of the catalogue started pulling its weight. Once the account was not relying so heavily on the same small group of products, growth became much easier to scale.”
For retailers running Google Shopping, this is often where the next stage of growth sits. If too much revenue is coming from too few products, there is usually more value sitting in the wider catalogue than the headline numbers suggest.
If AI is going to read, explain, compare, and even help buy products, then product data needs to be clean, accurate, and easy for Google to understand.
That was one of the clearest takeaways from Google Marketing Live 2026. There were plenty of announcements, but for retailers, the bigger story is not just more AI. It is what those new experiences rely on. Google is introducing more UCP-powered features, rolling out native checkout for eligible UCP merchants, expanding AI support inside Merchant Center, and putting more emphasis on product descriptions and conversational attributes for discovery.
Google is building towards a more agentic shopping experience.
Its own announcement talks about a future anchored by Universal Cart, Agent Payments Protocol and the Universal Commerce Protocol, with new UCP-powered features now coming to Google. Universal Cart is designed to work across retailers and across services like Search and Gemini, while native checkout is being added for eligible UCP merchants. At the same time, Google is introducing new tools inside Merchant Center to help merchants understand how they are performing on AI surfaces.
For retailers, that matters because these systems are only as useful as the product information they are working with. The better Google can understand a product, the better chance it has of surfacing it in the right moment and in the right format.
Google says strong product descriptions are critical for brands to get discovered in the AI era. It is also introducing conversational attributes so retailers can update product descriptions to better reflect how people search today. Ask Advisor is being built into Merchant Center as a new collaborator, with the ability to share tailored insights, complete tasks, and connect across Google Ads and Google Analytics.
This is not just about getting products into Shopping anymore.
It is about making sure Google can understand what a product is, who it is for, and when it should appear, whether that is in Shopping results, AI-assisted search journeys, or newer commerce experiences built around UCP and native checkout. Google is also launching AI-powered Shopping ads, where Gemini can pull up relevant products and instantly write a custom explainer about why a product may be the right choice, plus Business Agent for Leads, which uses website content to answer questions inside an ad.
For retailers, this does not need to be overcomplicated.
It means accurate titles, complete attributes, strong descriptions, clean categorisation, up-to-date pricing and availability, and feed structures that make products easy for Google to interpret across more AI-led discovery experiences. That has always mattered, but it matters more when AI is being asked to recommend, compare, explain, and support purchases using merchant data.
As Google moves towards more AI-led discovery and commerce, product data becomes even more important. If Google’s systems are going to read, interpret, compare, and act on that data more often, retailers need feeds that are clean, accurate, and easy to understand.
That is exactly where Shoptimised comes in.
If retailers want to get UCP ready for AI, feed optimisation needs to move up the priority list, and Shoptimised is built to help with that. We help retailers improve titles, descriptions, attributes, categorisation, and feed structure so Google can understand products properly, show them more effectively, and use that data across the next generation of AI-led shopping experiences.
Review titles and descriptions. Check missing attributes. Look at categorisation. Make sure pricing and availability are accurate. Think about whether your product data is genuinely readable and useful, not just technically valid.
Because if this year’s Google Marketing Live showed anything, it is that AI shopping is moving quickly, and the retailers who are best prepared will be the ones whose product data is ready for it.
If that feels like a big job, it is exactly the kind of challenge Shoptimised is built to help with.
Google is putting more weight on clean, accurate, readable product data. Get a free feed audit and we’ll highlight missing attributes, weak titles, and optimisation gaps that could hold you back.
We had 24 hours in Dublin, with a full day at Google’s Dublin office packed into the middle of it.
The goal was simple: spend time with the Google team, have the conversations you don’t get to have over email, and make sure we’re aligned on our 2026 goals together.
It was a full day packed into a tiny window, and it reminded us why relationships matter just as much as strategy.
This was the day, start to finish.
Early start, airport coffee, then a short flight over. We landed and headed straight for a taxi.
By midday, we were at Google’s Dublin office meeting the team.
We like to think Shoptimised HQ is pretty well set up, but Google is on another level. The place is built for people who spend their whole day there, and it shows, with space to focus, space to switch off, and plenty of fun built in.
Then it was time for lunch and a chance to settle in before the afternoon kicked off.
Lunch in the canteen was next, and it immediately put every sad desk lunch we’ve ever called ‘fine’ into perspective.
Ulises popped over to join us, too. He was our Senior Partner Manager in the early Shoptimised days, so it was genuinely great to see him again and have a proper catch up before the afternoon meetings.
We made the mistake of thinking we stood a chance at ping pong. Shubham fixed that quickly.
Two takeaways:
After that, Shubham took us around the office and showed us all the fun stuff, which made our “we’ve got a games room” confidence wobble again. We’re still waiting for them to accept our foosball rematch at Shoptimised HQ.
This was the core of the day.
We spent the afternoon with the Google team talking through where we’re heading in 2026 and what ‘good’ needs to look like for agencies and retailers.
The best meetings are the ones where you get into specifics. Not ‘growth’. Not ‘innovation’. Just practical alignment on things like:
It was a good reminder that most challenges are the same everywhere. The answers are usually not clever campaign tricks. They’re fundamentals you can repeat: cleaner data, cleaner structure, and decisions you can stick to.
Meetings done, heads full, time for the traditional reset.
That first pint of Guinness in Dublin always feels earned, even when you’ve only been there a few hours.
Steak dinner was exactly what we needed after a day of caffeine and conversation.
It’s where the debrief happens without anyone opening a laptop. Just good food, and a proper chance to talk through what we’d covered before the night started.
After dinner, we went out for drinks and let the day wind down.
Next thing we knew, it was late, and the early flight home was starting to feel very real.
We were in Dublin for 24 hours, with a full day at Google’s Dublin office packed into the middle of it. It sounds quick, because it was, but it did exactly what we needed it to do.
It gave us time in the room with the Google team to align on our 2026 goals together, talk through what’s working, what needs tightening, and what we want to push next.
There’s something useful about stepping away from the day-to-day and having those conversations face-to-face. You leave with clearer priorities, fewer assumptions, and a much shorter list of “we’ll come back to that”.
It was a good reminder that the best progress still comes from getting in a room and talking things through. Which explains why at Shoptimised, someone is always pulling you into a meeting room.
#WeMoveTogether
AI shopping is moving from ‘help me research’ to ‘help me buy’. Instead of a customer clicking through search results, an AI assistant can understand intent, compare options, confirm delivery dates, and complete checkout inside the conversation.
This is not just a new ad format. It is a change in how your products get discovered. When the buyer becomes an agent, your product data becomes the storefront. If your product feed is not optimised, you will be ruled out before you compete.
Google is bringing ‘Buy’ buttons and checkout into Gemini and AI Search, alongside a new standard called the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP). Google is also introducing new Merchant Center data attributes for conversational discovery, and testing ads in AI Mode with a Direct Offers pilot.
Shopify is backing UCP as an open standard it co-developed with Google, and is encouraging merchants to plug into these AI shopping channels through Agentic Storefronts, managed centrally in Shopify Admin.
PayPal is framing this as a ‘protocol moment’, with consent, trusted identity, reliable payments, and fraud protection as non-negotiables when an AI agent is the one clicking ‘Buy’. For merchants, that means a focus on data structure, integration readiness, monitoring, and ongoing compliance as standards evolve. PayPal has now confirmed it supports UCP and says it will soon be a payment option within Google’s UCP-powered checkout.
Multiple players are competing to define the common language for AI shopping, and that is what is fuelling the ‘protocol wars’. Salesforce has also announced support for UCP, signalling adoption is spreading beyond Google and Shopify into wider commerce platforms.
What to watch: Some commentators suggest AI chat platforms may adopt marketplace-style economics, including charging fees when transactions happen inside the chat. The exact models are still emerging, but the direction is clear: more shopping activity will happen inside AI-led experiences.
Shoppers describe what they want: 'waterproof, recycled materials, under £100, delivered by Friday.' The AI turns that into requirements and finds products that match. This shifts the focus from SEO keywords to structured attributes.
UCP is designed to standardise how AI agents communicate with retailers and service providers, so they can do more than recommend products. The goal is reliable discovery, checkout, and post-purchase support without custom integrations for every new AI channel.
The buyer might not visit your site at all. The AI can guide the purchase through a supported checkout, using approved payment methods and merchant rules. That reduces friction and makes clean data and reliable fulfilment even more important.
The classic customer journey is getting shorter. In many cases, a shopper may see only one recommended option. That raises the stakes on being included, trusted, and chosen based on the data the AI evaluates.
When an AI chooses based on verified facts, your Merchant Center data quality directly shapes whether you are selected, not just whether you get a click.
If your price, stock, delivery promise, or product specs are wrong, the AI cannot confidently recommend you. This is not only a conversion issue, it can become a reputation issue inside agent-led ecosystems.
If purchases happen inside an AI experience, performance signals will not always look like traditional click-through conversions. Be prepared for attribution to evolve, and start tracking performance at product and feed level, not only at campaign level.
In the context of the 'Protocol Wars' and the shift to agent-led shopping, feed optimisation platforms help translate retailer data into a format AI systems can reliably use.
As Google builds the 'answer' through structured protocols like UCP, retailers need feed processes to enrich attributes, validate compliance, and refresh price and stock. Feed optimisation platforms such as Shoptimised are designed to automate those updates across channels, keeping products eligible, accurate, and competitive as AI-led checkout expands.
Focus on the attributes an AI needs to confidently choose a product:
Why it matters: AI shopping interprets intent through attributes and constraints more than SEO keywords.
Increase refresh cadence where possible and set monitoring for:
Why it matters: AI agents need real-time price and stock to buy. Stale data breaks trust and can knock you out of recommendations within the AI ecosystem.
Assume your products will be evaluated in more places than the classic Shopping results page, including conversational journeys where shoppers ask follow-up questions. Make sure your feed can answer those questions with structured facts.
Run controlled experiments on:
Why it matters: when shoppers see fewer options, small improvements in relevance matter. Shoptimised helps you test title and attribute changes across your feed, and scale the winners based on performance.
As AI shopping blends ads, recommendations, and checkout, scrutiny will increase. Make sure you can clearly explain:
Why it matters: protocols like UCP are already specifying stronger consent and verification mechanics, so merchants should expect governance and compliance requirements to become more formal over time.
Google and partners are pushing UCP, while others will push alternatives. You do not need to predict the winner today. You do need to keep your catalogue structured and portable so you can adapt quickly.
AI shopping is turning discovery and checkout into an agent-led conversation. Google is setting the standards for that shift with UCP and in-chat checkout across Search and Gemini.
For Google Shopping Ads users, the winning move is simple: optimise your feed. The brands with the cleanest, most accurate, most current product data will be the ones AI systems trust and recommend. That is where feed optimisation platforms, like Shoptimised, help by keeping your catalogue structured, compliant, and up to date at scale.
AI shopping is moving quickly from 'nice to have' to a real traffic source retailers need to take seriously. New Adobe figures reported in May show UK shoppers arriving from AI sources converted more often than those coming from traditional search, with the UK AI shopping conversion rate up 182% year on year and 543% since January last year.
At the same time, the platforms are building more of the shopping journey directly into the AI experience. Google has been pushing Shopping features in AI Mode, including richer product discovery, virtual try-on using your own photos, and more automated purchase flows.
Amazon is also taking its 'Alexa for Shopping' capability beyond Amazon. It is licensing the underlying tech to other retailers through AWS, with Kate Spade cited as an early customer.
The common thread is simple: as shopping becomes more AI led, clean product data matters even more. If your titles, attributes, pricing and availability are messy, the AI layer has less to work with, and you lose visibility where customers are starting to browse and decide.
If you’re not sure your feed is ready for AI-led shopping, run a free audit or get in touch and we’ll point you at the quickest fixes.
