Our SEO expert, Jasmine Matar, shares the latest news and updates across SEO:
Google’s Agentic Checkout Turns Holiday Search Into Seamless Purchase Journeys
Google is introducing Agentic Checkout and expanded AI‑shopping features that shorten the path from discovery to purchase across Search, Shopping, and Android. Shoppers can ask natural‑language queries (e.g., “find waterproof winter boots under £150 for wide feet”), get AI‑generated comparisons, and add items to a persistent cart that follows them across Google surfaces. Agentic Checkout pre‑fills details, supports saved payments, and reduces form friction, aiming to lift mobile conversions during peak holiday traffic. Retailers benefit from richer product understanding via structured data, merchant quality signals, reviews, and real‑time availability, which power more precise AI answers and new entry points like “Buy with Google” flows.
Why we care: For ecommerce and performance teams, this compresses the funnel, AI answers, curated comparisons, and one‑tap checkout happen inside Google. Optimising product feeds, schema, availability, pricing, and review coverage becomes critical to be cited in AI responses and selected by Agentic flows. Expect shifts in attribution as more conversions complete within Google surfaces; ensure server‑side tagging and retail‑ready content to capture AI‑driven demand.
ChatGPT and Perplexity add AI‑driven shopping that challenges traditional search
ChatGPT now offers conversational shopping that recommends products inside the chat experience, leaning on trusted sources and organic relevance rather than paid placement. Perplexity introduced an AI‑powered shopping experience that synthesises reviews, specs, and pricing into concise answers with direct links to retailers. Together, these moves shift product discovery from classic SERPs toward assistant‑led, answer‑first flows where users compare options and click through fewer pages.
Why we care: Visibility and conversion are increasingly mediated by AI assistants, not just search engines. Brands should ensure high‑quality product data, robust reviews, clear specs, pricing, and availability to be cited in AI answers, and instrument attribution as traffic originates from assistant experiences.
Microsoft Brings AI Search to Copilot With an Emphasis on Citations
Microsoft is upgrading Copilot with AI search that generates conversational answers while prominently surfacing citations to source pages. Results interleave summaries with inline references and link cards, aiming to keep answers transparent and verifiable. The experience is designed to help users move from AI summaries to publisher sites with fewer steps, improving trust and click‑through while maintaining context across follow‑up queries.
Why we care: Clear, consistent citation can boost publisher visibility inside AI answers. To earn inclusion and clicks, ensure authoritative, well‑structured content with concise summaries, scannable headings, and robust metadata so Copilot can attribute confidently and present compelling link cards.
Google Releases Gemini 3: a Multimodal Leap
Google introduced Gemini 3 with upgrades in multimodal reasoning (text, image, audio, video), latency, and efficiency across sizes, enabling use from mobile/on‑device to cloud deployments. Early positioning highlights improvements for AI search answers, code generation, image understanding, and longer context handling, supporting Google’s AI Mode and developer tools. The step‑up in multimodal comprehension means richer AI results that can cite, compare, and interpret visuals more accurately, raising the bar for structured, well-labelled content and assets.
Why we care: As Gemini 3 powers more of Google’s AI experiences, visibility will favour content that’s entity‑clear, multimodal‑ready (images/diagrams with alt and captions), and technically structured (schema, clean HTML). Expect AI answers to get faster, more visual, and more context‑aware, increasing the importance of image quality, metadata, and topical depth.
OpenAI introduces ChatGPT Shopping Research
OpenAI launched Shopping Research in ChatGPT, a conversational experience that recommends products based on user needs and preferences. Responses synthesise information from reputable sources and include citations, allowing users to verify claims and click through to retailers. The flow supports side‑by‑side comparisons, pros/cons, and key specs, helping shoppers refine choices quickly without leaving the chat. Early availability focuses on select categories, with plans to expand coverage and deepen retailer integrations over time.
Why we care: Assistant‑led discovery is accelerating. To be cited and recommended, brands need clean, complete product data (titles, specs, GTINs), strong review signals, clear imagery, and entity‑consistent content. Expect a growing share of product research, and downstream conversions, to originate from AI assistants, making “assistant SEO” a priority alongside classic search.
