“It’s a huge product release literally in the busiest shopping period of the year, but it integrates all of the latest capabilities of our large language model (LLM) Gemini into the everyday consumer experience just in time,” says Sophie Neary, managing director of retail at Google. “Gemini is able to bring a more nuanced understanding of purchase intent that makes it more powerful than ever before.”
The platforms say they’ve improved their AI models so that consumers receive more personalized recommendations based on their search history, and can even get tailored sizing advice based on their interactions with other brands and the AI models’ ability to parse thousands of product reviews. In the last few months, brands’ marketing teams have been scrambling to get ahead of these AI models through the burgeoning practice of AI optimization (AIO).
For brands and retailers, emerging best practices include longer product descriptions with use cases, more product photos and more diverse website content, such as product FAQs. The biggest shopping event of the year will be the first opportunity for brands to gauge ROI on these efforts. In theory, shopping within AI search should improve conversion, as there are fewer opportunities for consumers to abort their mission along the way.
A screenshot of Google’s AI mode shopping features
Early reactions
As AI platforms roll out commerce-focused updates in quick succession, early data suggests their simplified buying journey is driving up adoption. Direct referrals from AI engines such as ChatGPT and Perplexity to leading e-commerce brands were up 752% in October 2025 compared with the same time last year, according to an analysis of 2,000 e-commerce brands by SEO platform BrightEdge. Yet they still make up less than 1% of organic e-commerce traffic, according to the same analysis, while ordinary Google search still drives 87.6% of all organic search traffic to e-commerce brand websites.
Marketing experts point out that in the run-up to the holiday season, even ordinary search is getting the AI treatment: Google has been quietly accelerating its rollout of shopping-focused AI features within its regular search. AI overviews for Google searches relating to apparel have increased 104% since November last year, according to BrightEdge’s research, and BrightEdge CEO Jim Yu tells Vogue Business that it’s rolled out a number of new features that are particularly helpful for the apparel category.
“In the US, where I live, they’ve begun to blend new kinds of formats when I search with a shopping intent,” Yu says. “Now, when I search for a holiday dress within regular Google Search, they’re making it more of an integrated shopping experience and prompting me to engage with their AI as I’m shopping from the get-go, taking me almost into a ChatGPT-like experience within normal Google Search.”
#Holiday #Shopping #Seasons #Santa
