Research Notebook
How technology is changing commerce, and what operators need to understand before the shift becomes obvious.
Google Merchant Center UCP Analytics: How AI Checkout Reporting Works
Google's UCP Analytics dashboard in Merchant Center reports Buy clicks, purchases, purchase rate, order value, cancellations and cart transfers for UCP checkout in AI Mode and Gemini. Its funnel starts at the Buy button. It measures the transaction half of agentic commerce and almost nothing about the products the AI considered before that click.
Google Now Explains Your Brand to People Who Already Know It
In late September, AI Overviews spread across branded Google searches, from 5 of 98 bare brand names on July 1 to 63 of 100 on September 30 in Ahrefs' panel. Branded search did not overtake non-branded; it caught up. The open question is whether the answer sits above the brand's own result, and what it says when it does.
AI Can Find the Small Retailer. It Still Recommends the Big One.
Vaer AI analyzed roughly 460,000 AI shopping answers for Lightspeed. Large and small retailers hold about the same share of citations, and large chains win the lead recommendation about two and a half times as often. Retrieval and selection are different achievements.
AI Visibility Is Becoming a Permission Stack
Cloudflare now separates search, training and agent crawling, so a site can refuse AI training while staying indexed. AI visibility is becoming a question of what a business permits, not just what machines can read.
Your Reviews Are No Longer Just Conversion Content
Bazaarvoice and Bluefish found most AI-cited product pages carry many reviews. The data cannot show reviews cause citation. The more durable shift is whether AI systems can retrieve customer evidence at all.
Google Search Console Now Tracks AI Visibility, but Not AI Traffic
Search Console now shows a dedicated view of impressions inside AI Overviews and AI Mode. My property recorded roughly 1.37K in 28 days, with one page taking about 28% of them. The more useful finding is what the report structurally cannot tell an operator.
I Got Cited in Two Google AI Surfaces in One Week. Here's What the Cited Posts Had in Common.
In one week, two posts from this site were cited in Google's AI Overview and AI Mode. Two data points cannot reveal Google's algorithm, but the cited posts shared five observable traits that map to core GEO principles. Here is the honest teardown.
Prime Day 2026 Is the First One Running on Alexa for Shopping. Most Sellers Aren't Ready.
Prime Day 2026 runs June 23-26, the first Prime Day with Alexa for Shopping behind every search box. The AI answers before shoppers see results, and auto-buy makes it a reorder event too. Here is what to check before June 23.
The 6-Dimension GEO Audit Framework: How to Score Your Amazon Listing for AI Visibility
A concrete scoring system for auditing your Amazon listings against how Rufus, Alexa for Shopping, Sparky, and ChatGPT actually read product data. Six dimensions, scored 0-3 each, with weak vs strong examples and priority fixes.
Rufus Is Dead. Long Live Alexa for Shopping. Here's What Changes for Marketplace Sellers.
Amazon retired the Rufus brand on May 13 and merged it into Alexa for Shopping, a unified agentic shopping experience across mobile, desktop, and Echo devices. Here's the practitioner take on what changes for marketplace sellers and what to audit this week.
ChatGPT Just Opened Self-Serve Ads. Here's Why GEO Still Wins for Marketplace Sellers.
OpenAI's ChatGPT Ads are now self-serve with CPC bidding and pixel measurement. Most marketplace sellers will hear the agency pitch this week. Here's the practitioner's take on why GEO still wins and what to do instead.
GEO vs SEO: What Marketplace Sellers Need to Stop Doing in 2026
GEO and SEO are not in conflict, but five SEO tactics most marketplace sellers still run are actively hurting their AI visibility. Here's what to stop doing.