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Guide: Get Your Products Ready to Sell Inside Google’s AI Mode and Gemini with UCP
AI agents are starting to do more than recommend products. They find them, compare them and buy them for the shopper. A shopper can ask for “a waterproof running jacket under $150 that arrives before Saturday,” and the agent handles everything from there. This is agentic commerce.
The Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) is Google’s open standard for this. With it, a shopper can buy your product inside AI Mode in Search or the Gemini app without visiting your website. You stay the merchant of record. Google shows the checkout screen and takes payment through Google Pay.
Without a shared standard, operators would need a separate integration for every AI surface. UCP lets you publish your capabilities once, and any UCP-compliant agent can then work with your catalog and checkout.
For most operators, getting ready is a product data and operations job, not a coding job. Roughly 70% of the work is making Merchant Center clean, complete and eligible. Commerce platforms such as Shopify increasingly handle the technical side.
The question to start with:
“If an AI agent tried to buy our product today, would it have everything it needs to do that confidently?”
The Mental Model
Merchant Center is the shop window. It tells Google’s agents what you sell, what it costs, whether it’s in stock and what your policies are.
UCP is the shared language. It lets an agent talk to your store’s backend to check prices, build a cart and place an order.
Google Pay is the till. Shoppers pay with the cards and addresses saved in Google Wallet.
Your checkout system is the back office. You still fulfil orders, handle returns and own the customer relationship.
Why Start Now
Agentic checkout is still small. EMARKETER forecasts that AI platforms will drive about 1.5% of US retail ecommerce sales in 2026, roughly $20.6 billion. That is close to four times the 2025 figure. The reason to act now is that preparing is cheap and the advantage builds over time:
The work pays off anyway. Clean feeds, clear return policies and complete attributes already improve Shopping, free listings, Performance Max and AI Mode visibility.
Agents skip products they can’t verify. In agentic commerce, missing data doesn’t lower your ranking. It makes you invisible.
Access is invite-only. Google selects merchants, and the ones with clean accounts and finished technical work are first in line.
It’s moving into ads. UCP-powered checkout is coming to Direct Offers and Shopping ads on YouTube.
Who Can Go Live Today
UCP checkout is live in the US for selected merchants. Canada and Australia are next, then the UK. Nothing has been announced for the EU. Meeting the requirements doesn’t guarantee access, and the protocol has added new capabilities roughly every two months. Re-check Google’s documentation before each step.
What You’ll Need
Accounts and Access
A Google Merchant Center account, signed in with a shared business login rather than one employee’s personal Gmail
A Google Pay & Wallet Console account (required)
A payment service provider (PSP) that supports the Google Pay API
Either a commerce platform with UCP support or developer time for a custom build
Product and Policy Information
Complete product data for every item or variant, covered in Step 1
Your return policy terms and a link to the full policy page
Customer service URL, email and phone number
Warning text that a compliance owner has signed off, for any product that legally needs it
Time Expectations
Merchant Center setup: 1–5 days, depending on catalog size and data quality
UCP preparation in Merchant Center: 1–3 days
Technical integration: a few days on a supported platform, several weeks for a custom build
Google selection: depends on the queue
Step 1: Get Merchant Center Into Good Standing
UCP is built on Merchant Center, so nothing else works until this is done. Your ecommerce or feed manager usually owns this step.
Create and Verify the Account
Sign in to Google Merchant Center and add your business name, country and website.
Verify and claim your website. The Shopify and WooCommerce apps can do this automatically.
Choose How You Send Products
Method | Best for | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|
Platform app (Shopify, WooCommerce, Wix) | Most DTC brands | App mapping can leave attributes blank |
Google Sheets | Small catalogs | Manual updates mean prices go stale easily |
File upload (CSV, TSV, XML) | Larger catalogs, agencies | Fetch schedule must keep up with stock changes |
Merchant API | Large or fast-changing inventories | Needs developer support |
Go to Data sources, click + and choose a method. Select your country and language, then tick Free listings and Shopping ads.
Fill In the Required Attributes
Each item or variant needs: id, title (including brand, size and colour), description (plain text, no HTML), link, image_link, availability, price (with ISO currency code), brand, and gtin or mpn. If a product is custom or handmade and has no GTIN, set identifier_exists to false.
Fetch, Diagnose, Fix
Click Fetch now and open the Diagnostics tab. Fix every disapproval, such as broken links, price mismatches with your site, missing identifiers or image problems. Repeat until your key products are approved for free listings.
Practitioner tip: Go beyond the required fields. Agents answer questions like “does it come in large?” or “does it fit my model?”, so add size, colour, material and compatibility now.
Step 2: Set Your Merchant-of-Record Basics
Google shows these details on its checkout and order confirmation screens, so they must be in place before you opt in any products.
Return Policy
Set the return cost (free, flat fee or customer pays), the return window and a link to your full policy. If some products have different terms, use the return_policy_label attribute or the per-product returns attribute. Agencies and multi-brand operators on advanced accounts need to configure returns on every sub-account, not only the parent.
Customer Support Details
Add a customer service URL, email and phone number. One is the minimum, but all three is best. These populate the “Contact Merchant” link shoppers see after they order.
Step 3: Choose Your First-Wave Products
Not everything can be sold through UCP. Mark these categories as not eligible:
Category | Excluded examples |
|---|---|
Recurring or financed billing | Subscriptions, subscribe-and-save, instalment plans |
Customised goods | Engraving, monograms, made-to-order |
Non-new or final sale | Refurbished, used, no-returns items |
Deferred fulfilment | Pre-orders, future release dates |
Bundled services | Warranties, installation, setup contracts |
Special shipping | Freight, oversized, premium delivery fees |
Gifting | Split invoices, hidden recipient pricing |
In-store activation | Products activated at a physical store |
Policy and safety | Alcohol, tobacco, ID-verified items, weapons, adult, healthcare and pharmaceuticals, counterfeits |
Digital goods and services | Classes, travel, rentals, in-game items, software-dependent goods |
The best candidates are new, physical, in-stock products with standard shipping and a normal return policy. Start with 10–50 clean, best-selling, simple products. Opting in your whole catalog at once leads to disapprovals and poor customer experiences.
Grey areas: Supplements, cosmetics and baby products may sit close to the healthcare and safety lines. If you’re unsure, leave them out of the first wave.
Step 4: Opt In with a Supplemental Feed
Add the UCP attributes through a supplemental data source, never your primary feed. A formatting mistake in a supplemental feed won’t break your main listings.
Attribute | Required? | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Yes, for every product you want to sell |
|
| Only where legally needed | Shows warnings at checkout ( |
| Only if IDs differ | Maps your feed |
id,native_commerce(checkout_eligibility),consumer_notice
11111,TRUE,prop_65:This product can expose you to chemicals...
22222,TRUE,
33333,FALSE,Formatting Rules That Trip People Up
Escape colons in links inside notices:
http\://Only
<b>,<br>,<i>and<a href>are allowed in noticesUse tab-separated files for long warning text, because commas break CSV
If a product needs more than one notice, repeat
consumer_noticeonce per noticeIf you send data by API, use
customAttributesin the Merchant API. The Content API is deprecated.
Important: You are legally responsible for consumer notices, including California Proposition 65. Don’t let AI write the warning text. Use only text your compliance owner has approved.
Your catalog is now ready for agents. The next steps are choosing between a platform-led and a self-built integration, setting up Google Pay, applying through Google’s interest form, onboarding in the UCP integration hub, and running a test-order QA before you switch on the Buy button.
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The Quick Read:
Retailgentic’s Q3 report finds 51% of US shoppers now use AI to shop, with 11.4% of path-to-purchase volume AI-driven. The question is no longer adoption but whether merchant and issuer systems can handle agent traffic.
Meta’s Business Assistant can now generate creative, update targeting and change budgets via chat, while a Shopify deal brings direct checkout to Messenger. The ad and the purchase are merging into one conversation.
OpenAI tests image ads in ChatGPT image generation and expands measurement with Kochava and 10 other partners.
Sierra and Meta launch the Personal Agent Protocol, backed by Walmart, Shopify and Stripe, so businesses can recognise and set permissions for agents acting for customers. Payments aren’t covered yet.
The Tools List:
⚡ Streak - AI-powered CRM co-pilot with data entry, precise insights, and tailored suggestions to help your team make informed decisions.
🤖 Gobble bot - Digest your website, PDF, YouTube Video, Notion pages and more into one text file to upload to your GPT chatbot
📊 Recap - Turns learning materials into insightful visuals like mind maps and timelines for better understanding.
📹 Video interviews by Outset - Conduct user surveys with video and AI.
About The Writer:
Jo Lambadjieva is an entrepreneur and AI expert in the e-commerce industry. She is the founder and CEO of Amazing Wave, an agency specializing in AI-driven solutions for e-commerce businesses. With over 13 years of experience in digital marketing, agency work, and e-commerce, Joanna has established herself as a thought leader in integrating AI technologies for business growth.
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