Are your Product Pages AI Ready? Two ways to setup your products for the growth of AI user-search

AI is changing the way users search and subsequently their shopping habits. Google is already planning to monetise these placements – with ads soon coming to AI overviews and circle to search. How can your eCommerce business ensure your product page content and listings are AI ready to serve in these placements as user search behaviour shifts?

How are users searching with AI?

Ads Integrated into AI Overviews

Google has recently launched ads integrated into AI Overviews, now rolling out to everyone in the U.S., with more countries coming soon. Early testing indicates that users find the ads appearing above and below the AI-generated overview helpful. Soon, Google will begin testing Search and Shopping ads in AI Overviews for U.S. users. Your ads from existing AI-powered Search and Performance Max campaigns will have the opportunity to appear within the AI Overview in a clearly labeled "Sponsored" section, ensuring relevance to both the query and the information in the AI Overview.

Engage with Visually-Inspired Consumers

Engage directly with visually-inspired consumers through Shopping ads in Google Lens and Circle to Search results. In the coming months, Shopping ads will start appearing at the top of visual search results when consumers use Google Lens or Circle to Search. This new ad experience in visual search results will enable you to showcase your products when they're relevant to the photos and screenshots that people search with, creating a more helpful and engaging shopping experience.

Two ways your eCommerce business can ensure your product pages are ready to be discovered by AI searches:

1. Product images - Understand how AI interprets your product images. You can upload images into a number of AI platforms to see how the image is interpreted. Is the image communicating your product clearly? Or does AI interpret it as something different? A common mistake brands make is to include too much lifestyle imagery in their product photos and not feature the product prominently enough – with circle to search, imagery will be as important as text content on page.

2. Product Descriptions – AI and large-language models use a conversational style, based on this it’s important Answer Engine Optimisation is implemented on your product pages. Make sure your product pages contain conversational style product content – maybe an FAQ section for specific products.