Google adds information agents and Universal Cart to Search and Gemini

Google is turning Search into a place where answers, comparisons and checkout can happen in the same flow, and that changes the agency brief fast. In its latest Search update, Google said AI Mode had passed one billion monthly users, that queries in AI Mode have more than doubled every quarter since launch, and that total Search queries hit an all-time high in the prior quarter. At the same time, Google rolled out a more intelligent Search box across every country and language where AI Mode is available, while pushing new agentic features deeper into Labs for Google AI Ultra subscribers in the United States.

For SEO agencies, the big shift is not just more AI in results. It is Google moving from discovery to action. The new information agents are built to monitor the web on a user’s behalf, and Google said the booking experience in AI Mode uses Project Mariner, partner integrations, Knowledge Graph and Google Maps. Those agents are already tied to OpenTable, Resy, Tock, Ticketmaster, StubHub, SeatGeek and Booksy, which means clients in travel, dining, tickets and local services can no longer treat visibility as the finish line. If Google is doing the filtering before the click, the traffic that survives will be narrower and much closer to purchase intent.

Universal Cart takes that logic into commerce. Google said the cart works across merchants and across services, including Search, Gemini, YouTube and Gmail, and will launch in the United States this summer before expanding to YouTube and Gmail later. It sits on Google Wallet, surfaces price-history insights, price-drop alerts, back-in-stock notifications, loyalty perks and merchant offers, and will start select checkout features with Nike, Sephora, Target, Ulta Beauty, Walmart, Wayfair and Shopify merchants such as Fenty and Steve Madden. Google also said the Shopping Graph now includes more than 60 billion product listings, which makes feed quality, inventory accuracy and product identity matching far more important than another round of headline keywords.

That means reporting models have to change too. Rank tracking alone will miss the point if the real competition is whether a merchant is eligible to show, compare and transact inside Google’s own surfaces. Agencies will need to report on feed health, product coverage, price competitiveness, stock freshness, loyalty participation, checkout readiness and assisted conversion paths across Search and Gemini, not just sessions from blue links. Google’s broader Universal Commerce Protocol updates in 2026, along with new support for multi-item carts, real-time pricing, inventory and identity linking, make that technical readiness part of the SEO job.

Google has been laying the groundwork for months. In late 2025, its Search tools could already build itineraries and turn plans into bookings, and in August 2025 agentic Search started with restaurant reservations before expanding to local service appointments and event tickets. On April 28, 2026, Google donated Agent Payments Protocol to the FIDO Alliance, released AP2 v0.2 and added autonomous Human Not Present payments plus Verifiable Intent with Mastercard. The message for agencies is blunt: organic strategy now has to cover product data, merchant feeds and agent-readable content, because Google is becoming both the discovery layer and the transaction layer.