What changed in October

On 28 October, Google expanded ads in AI Mode, its conversational search experience, to ten new markets. It confirmed Brazil, Mexico and the UK would follow in Q4 2026.

At the same time it launched multiturn ads in the US. These can appear when a user goes back and forth with AI Mode and the conversation turns commercial. A buyer researching industrial filtration might start with a broad question, narrow it down over three or four follow-ups, and see sponsored results at the point they are closest to a decision. Long, research-led B2B buying journeys are exactly where these ads will meet buyers.

Ads are labelled "Sponsored" and run through the same auction and bidding as standard Search ads. There's no separate budget, and no switch to opt in or out.

The $500 billion signal: Google is monetising AI search

A day after its Q3 2026 results, Alphabet shares fell sharply, wiping roughly half a trillion dollars off its value. Search revenue was still growing, but more slowly than investors expected, and a senior Alphabet executive pointed partly to AI Mode answering queries with fewer ad slots.

The takeaway for marketing leaders is simple: Google has every incentive to fill AI answers with ads, quickly. Expect more ad formats, more placements and more competition for the same commercial queries.

Product discovery is moving onto Google's pages

A Findrix study of more than 55,000 US AI Mode answers found 57% of product links led to Google Shopping, and 46.5% of product answers linked only to Google's own pages. The study counts links shown rather than clicks or sales, but the direction is clear.

Customers can now discover, compare and shortlist products without visiting your website. Website traffic alone will understate your real visibility in AI search, and your product data is doing the selling before anyone lands on a page.

Separate research from Productrise found AI Mode and the regular Search shopping carousel rarely show the same products: only about 1.28% overlapped. Strong Shopping performance today doesn't guarantee a place in AI answers.

What this means for SEO

AI Mode queries are around three times longer than traditional searches, according to Google. People describe their situation, their constraints and their use case. Content that answers those detailed questions clearly is what AI answers draw on.

For enterprise teams, that means:

  • Answer the long question. Build category, buying-guide and comparison content around real customer problems, not just head terms.
  • Make your catalogue machine-readable. Complete product attributes, structured data and consistent naming help Google match your products to conversational queries.
  • Measure visibility, not just sessions. Track how often your brand and products appear in AI answers alongside organic traffic.

What this means for paid search

Because AI Mode ads run through existing campaigns, the advertisers who win will be the ones whose foundations are already right.

  • Fix conversion tracking first. Enhanced conversions and offline conversion imports matter most for B2B, where the sale often closes off-site.
  • Treat the product feed as a priority channel. Titles, descriptions and attributes should reflect how buyers actually describe products.
  • Test broader matching against targets. Google says AI Max and broad match extend coverage into conversational queries, while exact and phrase match still serve directly commercial searches. Test with clear CPA or ROAS guardrails.
  • Check where ads land. Long, specific questions need landing pages that answer them, not a generic category page.

Complex catalogues have the most to lose

The bigger and more complex your catalogue, the more ways your product data can fall short. Configurable products, thousands of SKUs, trade-only pricing and attributes that differ between storefronts can all leave gaps when Google tries to match a detailed question to the right product.

Feeds are often set up once and left alone for years. If yours hasn't been reviewed since it was built, audit it now: the data you send to Google will shape how your products appear in AI answers.

Your 30-day action list

  1. Audit conversion tracking across Google Ads, GA4 and any offline or CRM-led conversions.
  2. Review your product feed for missing attributes, weak titles and disapproved items.
  3. Map your top commercial queries to the longer questions buyers ask, and check your content answers them.
  4. Agree a broad match or AI Max test with clear commercial targets before UK launch.
  5. Set a baseline for AI search visibility now, so you can measure the change.

Talk to us

At Ayko, our SEO and performance marketing teams work together on exactly this shift. If you want to know where your brand stands in AI search before ads launch in the UK, ask us for our agentic commerce readiness checklist, or book a call with our team.