Shopping on Google Is Getting AI Recommendations

Have you been eyeing a new TV or laptop? You could check out your favorite tech blogs’ buyers’ guides for better help making the best choice. Or, as Google would have it, you could end up on Google’s redesigned Shopping tab. On Tuesday, the Search giant said it will now be grabbing wholly from third-party review and advice sites for recommending you on your next air fryer. The company will also leverage your data for more “personalized” shopping recommendations.

The changes to Google Shopping should be rolling out today. In a blog post, Google’s VP of consumer shopping, Sean Scott, showed off how Google Shopping will now look slightly cleaner, though now with a new focus on AI summaries. If you search for a fleece jacket, your results are generated based on product recommendations from product recommendation sites.

Suppose you want something more specific, like a winter jacket made for skiing in the Pacific Northwest. In that case, you should see a summary detailing what you should look for in a jacket, followed by lists of recommended products. You’ll also see a list of sites Google took the product recommendations from and a set of YouTube videos that may be tied to your query. These sites can include product reviews on Best Buy or small product blogs.

Finally, Google’s adding a price comparison and price tracking capabilities with a new “deals” link at the top of the page. That’s good, but if you’re worried you’d stop seeing the “Sponsored” ads at the top of Google results, rest assured the ad carousel will still be prominent above the AI summary. The links in the boxes take users to the third-party product blogs and buyers’ guides, but the main images in each Search response will take you directly to the product page. That will be a thorn in the side of many online publishers who rely on affiliate links as a major source of revenue.

Google wants you to return to the Shopping tab constantly. This comes in the form of a “personalized” shopping feed that considers your activity across your Google account. If you don’t want to see a personalized feed, you’ll have to turn it off under the “Shopping preferences” at the bottom of the page.

Google’s introduction of AI into Shopping was inevitable. The search giant has been stuffing AI recommendations into Search via AI Overviews. Just as in the shopping tab, the AI will offer a rough outline of an answer for your search query and then supply you with links to where it grabbed its information. Online publishers have had mixed reactions to this, usually depending on whether or not Google paid them for that information.

The Mountain View tech giant has already implemented several AI-centric additions to Google’s Shopping tab. Last year, Google added a few more AI features to shopping, including the ability to see how certain brands’ clothes would fit on multiple body types. Google already lets you use Lens on mobile or Chrome browsers to look up prices.

Despite a new wave of federal antitrust efforts, Google is pushing ahead with its AI ambitions. The U.S. Department of Justice has suggested that the government force Google to split off its Android and Chrome divisions. Some U.S. congresspeople recently cited AI summaries as another sign of Google’s monopolistic behavior. Lawmakers have noted that Google can leverage its place as the dominant search engine to pull publishers’ work from their sites and regurgitate it with AI’s help, stemming the traffic flow to those sites.