AI performance insights is a Google Merchant Center report that shows how your products perform in Google’s AI shopping answers, and Australian Merchant Center accounts can use it. Google’s help page, checked on 30 September 2026, lists it for English-language queries in Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand and the United States. It sits under Analytics, then Products, then the AI performance tab, and it shows your share of voice against competitors in AI Mode and AI Overviews, how often shoppers search particular terms and specifications, and where you appear across the shopping journey.
Google’s advice for improving those numbers is product data work: relevant search terms in your titles and descriptions, and missing attributes filled in. On a Maropost Neto store that is the same feed and product data behind your Shopping listings. For two related Merchant Center and structured data changes, see our guide to checkout links and product schema fields on Neto stores. This guide covers where to find the report, how to read it without being misled, and the order we’d work through the fixes.
Where to find AI performance insights in Merchant Center
Sign in to Merchant Center, choose Analytics in the left-hand menu, select Products, then open the AI performance tab at the top of the page. Google’s About AI performance insights help page gives that path and, as at 30 September 2026, lists the report for English-language queries in Australia and four other countries.
Google announced the report at Google Marketing Live 2026, and its shopping update of 20 May 2026 said it would roll out to those five countries over the following months. Some pages written around then, including one of Google’s own help pages dated 27 May 2026, still describe it as coming soon. The About page is the one that describes current availability.
The report shows one product category at a time, and Google notes there isn’t a report covering every category. Filters at the top set the time period, the country (only those where your account is eligible) and the traffic type.
What the report measures
The report measures your share of voice against a competitor set, how popular different searches are, and how many of your products show up for them. Google lists four metrics.
- Your share of voice. Your AI impressions divided by the total impressions across you and the competitors defined for you in Merchant Center, for related queries. Put simply, of the AI impressions shared between you and that competitor set, how many were yours.
- Your competitors’ average share. The share of voice captured by that competitor set, so you can see whether you sit above or below it.
- Frequency. How popular particular search types, search terms, search intents or attributes have been. Google describes it as a measure of demand, to help you decide what to prioritise.
- Products showing. How many of your products are appearing for the top terms, popular attributes and search intents.
A shopping stage scorecard sorts conversational queries into three stages: discovery, evaluation and ready to buy. For each stage you see your share of voice and the search types shoppers use, such as searching by category, researching product specs or looking for reviews. Google’s own example of an opportunity is a search type with high frequency at the discovery stage where your share of voice is low.
Three more scorecards point at fixes. Top terms lists the phrases shoppers in a category use in conversational queries, such as arch support for footwear. Popular attributes lists specifications shoppers look for, such as size, colour or material, that may be missing from your product data. Top search intents shows the context behind the queries.
How to read the numbers without being misled
Read the report as organic AI visibility only, because it counts organic AI traffic such as free listings and leaves paid Ads traffic out. It also covers English-language queries only. Four other details on Google’s page change what a number means.
- A 100% share of voice can mean no competitors. Google says an account with no competitors defined in Merchant Center shows 100%. Check products showing and frequency before treating it as a win.
- You can’t choose your competitors. The set comes from the competitors Merchant Center has available for your account. When that set changes, your share and the competitors’ average can both rise at once.
- A 0 and a dash mean different things. A 0 share of voice means you lack sufficient impressions. A dash means there is no impressions data at all.
- The data lags. Google updates it daily with a few days’ delay, so give a change time to register before you judge it.
What Google recommends you fix
Google’s recommendations centre on your product data. Its help page advises following the same product requirements as free listings, keeping your Merchant Center account up to date, and acting on the report: add the relevant search terms to your product titles and descriptions and populate any missing attributes, starting with the most popular top terms and missing attributes.
On a Neto store, where those titles, descriptions and attributes come from matters. If your Google feed is built by an export template in the Neto control panel, a field the template leaves out is missing for every product it exports, and adding it to the template reaches every product that has that field filled in.
Open the AI performance tab, choose your best-selling category, and work its high-frequency top terms and missing attributes into those products’ titles, descriptions and specification fields where they accurately describe the product, before you touch any other category.
Where conversational attributes fit
Conversational attributes are optional extra fields for your Merchant Center product data, and Google listed them among its Google Marketing Live 2026 announcements alongside AI performance insights. Google’s conversational attributes help page says they help AI systems understand the details of your products across AI-driven surfaces such as AI Mode in Search, and it lists six: question and answer, document link, related product, item group title, variant option and popularity rank.
Each attribute’s own specification page says it can be used in all countries, so Australian accounts can submit them. You can add them through a supplemental data source, which Google recommends, through your primary data source, or through the Merchant API, and Google says including them won’t impact the approval status of your existing products. If a detail already sits in your description, product highlight or product detail attributes, Google says you don’t need to repeat it.
Google announced them in the same 20 May 2026 update that brought new Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) features, in a post about helping merchants succeed in what it calls the agentic commerce era.
How to work through it on a Maropost Neto store
Work one category at a time, starting with your best sellers, in this order.
Clear disapprovals and check free listings
The report counts organic AI traffic such as free listings, and Google’s first recommendation is to meet the free listings product requirements. Clear disapprovals and warnings in Merchant Center, and confirm your sellable products are approved with correct identifiers, such as Global Trade Item Number (GTIN), manufacturer part number (MPN) and brand, plus correct price and availability.
Read one category’s top terms and popular attributes
Pick your best-selling category in the report and note the high-frequency top terms where your share of voice or products showing is low, and the popular attributes where products showing is low. Google’s page says share of voice isn’t shown on the popular attributes scorecard. Those gaps come first.
Add the relevant terms to titles and descriptions
Work a term into a product’s title or description only where it describes that product accurately. A term shoppers search for that doesn’t apply to the product has no place in its title.
Fill in the missing attributes
Complete the specifications the popular attributes scorecard flags, such as size, colour or material. If your feed comes from a Neto export template, confirm the template maps the fields you are filling, or the new data never reaches Merchant Center.
Add conversational attributes through a supplemental data source
A supplemental data source adds attributes to products already in your primary feed, matched on product ID, so your Neto feed template doesn’t have to change. Google’s data sources help page says the IDs must match exactly, and the Supplemental sources tab only appears once the Advanced data source management add-on is switched on under Settings, then Add-ons.
Check your analytics record the visits
The report’s four metrics cover AI impressions, demand and products showing, not visits or sales. Make sure your analytics are set up to record traffic and conversions, so you can see what any extra visibility is worth once the fixes land.
Re-check the report
Re-open the category once the data has had a few days to refresh, and compare share of voice and products showing with where you started.
What we’d check first
We’d start by comparing the category’s top terms and popular attributes with your product titles, descriptions, specification fields and the feed template that sends them to Merchant Center. The comparison tells us whether each gap is missing data, data the template never exports, or wording that doesn’t match how shoppers search. We fix the highest-frequency gaps in your best-selling category first, at the template or feed level where one change covers many products, then re-check Merchant Center for new disapprovals and re-read the report once the data has refreshed.
We’re Brisbane-based, supporting retailers Australia-wide, and we handle ecommerce search engine optimisation (SEO) on Neto stores end to end: the audit, deciding what to fix first, the feed and product data work, and checking it landed. If you already have an SEO agency, we’ll work to their recommendations, but you don’t need one to work with us. We’d expect cleaner titles, descriptions and attributes to help your share of voice in this report and your ordinary Shopping listings, because Google’s recommended fixes are to the product data your listings already use. The report is where you measure the change, and we won’t promise how far the numbers move.
Get your free store check to start with a diagnosis. Send us your store URL and we’ll check a sample of your product pages, then tell you about a specific issue from your own store, if we find one.
AI performance insights at a glance
| What Google provides | Why it matters | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| AI performance insights, listed for English-language queries in Australian Merchant Center accounts (Google’s help page, 30 September 2026) | You can see your share of voice in AI Mode and AI Overviews against a competitor set | Open Analytics, then Products, then the AI performance tab |
| One product category per view, organic AI traffic only | There is no all-category view, and paid Ads traffic is left out | Start with your best-selling category |
| Top terms and popular attributes scorecards | They show the terms and specifications shoppers use that your data may be missing | Add relevant terms to titles and descriptions, and fill in missing attributes |
| Conversational attributes, usable in all countries per Google’s specification pages | Extra product detail for AI-driven surfaces, with no effect on approval status | Add them through a supplemental data source, best sellers first |
