Google Merchant Center Now Shows If Your D2C Products Appear in AI Search — And India Made the List

Google Merchant Center Now Tells You If AI Search Can See Your Products

You've been running Shopping ads, your feed is approved, your products show up in the carousel. Everything looks fine. Then you check the new AI Overview report in Merchant Center and realise: none of your products are surfacing when shoppers ask AI a question. Zero impressions. Zero clicks. AI search is live in India, your competitors are getting cited, and you're invisible.

Google quietly rolled out a new report in Merchant Center that shows whether your products appear in AI Overviews — the AI-generated answer blocks that now sit at the top of Search. India is on the list. This isn't a test, it isn't coming soon, it's live right now. And most D2C brands have no idea their feed is being read by a completely different system — one that doesn't reward the same tactics that worked for Shopping ads or organic SEO.

Where the Report Lives and What It Actually Shows

Log into Google Merchant Center. Go to Performance > AI Overviews. You'll see a table broken out by country, query, impressions and clicks. Filter by 'IN' for India. If your numbers are blank or suspiciously low, your products aren't making it into the AI answer layer.

The report shows:

• Queries that triggered an AI Overview mentioning your product
• Impressions (how many times your product appeared in an AI answer)
• Clicks through to your site from those AI citations
• Country-level breakout, so you can see India separately from other markets

This is the first time Google has given brands a direct line of sight into AI search performance for products. It's not hidden in Search Console's clunky AI reports, it's not bundled into Shopping analytics — it's its own thing, purpose-built for feed-based AI visibility.

AI Overviews Pull From Your Feed, Not Your Website

Here's the part most brands miss: AI Overviews don't scrape your product pages the way organic Search does. They read your Shopping feed — the structured XML or TXT file you upload to Merchant Center. That means:

• Your on-page SEO doesn't matter here
• Your schema markup doesn't matter here
• Your blog content doesn't matter here

What matters is whether your feed has clean, complete, AI-readable product data. If your feed is a mess — vague titles, missing attributes, low-res images, inconsistent availability — AI won't cite you even if your organic rankings are strong.

Think of your Shopping feed as a second website, one that only robots read. You've been optimising it for Shopping ads, where the algorithm tolerates some sloppiness. AI doesn't. It needs clarity, specificity and structure. If your feed doesn't answer the question a shopper is asking, the AI model will cite a competitor who does.

The Three Feed Fields That Block AI Citations for D2C Products

After auditing dozens of Indian D2C feeds, three fields consistently determine whether a product surfaces in AI Overviews:

1. Title Structure

Most brands still write titles for humans or stuff them with keywords. AI needs a different format:

The pattern: Brand + Product Type + Key Attribute + Size/Variant. AI models parse titles left-to-right. If your brand name or product type is buried at the end, the model can't match it to the query.

2. Image Quality

AI Overviews show product images inline. If your primary image is low-res, has text overlays, or shows the product at a weird angle, it won't get picked. Google's own image guidelines for Shopping apply here, but AI is stricter:

• Minimum 800×800px (higher is better)
• White or neutral background
• Product fills 75–85% of the frame
• No watermarks, no promotional text, no lifestyle clutter

If your feed still has those old 500px square images from 2023, replace them. AI won't cite a blurry product shot when a competitor has a crisp 1200px image.

3. Availability

This one is obvious but constantly broken. If your feed says a product is 'in stock' but your website says 'sold out', Google's crawler notices. The mismatch tanks your feed quality score, and AI models deprioritise you. Update availability daily if you're running quick-turnaround inventory. Weekly isn't good enough anymore.

How to Audit Your Feed for AI Visibility

Most Merchant Center accounts have multiple warnings you've been ignoring. Now they matter. Here's the checklist:

1. Go to Diagnostics > Product Issues. Fix every disapproval, every warning. AI models read the same feed quality signals Shopping ads use, but they're less forgiving.
2. Check your title field. If more than 20% of your titles are under 50 characters or don't include brand + product type, rewrite them.
3. Review your primary images. Open 10 random products. If any image is under 800px, has text, or shows the product off-centre, replace it.
4. Verify availability. Run a crawl of your product pages and compare 'in stock' status to your feed. If they don't match, fix your feed sync.
5. Fill out the description field. Yes, Shopping ads ignore it. AI doesn't. Write 2–3 sentences that describe the product, its key benefit and who it's for. Use natural language, not keyword spam.
6. Add product_type and google_product_category. These taxonomy fields help AI understand what you're selling. If you've left them blank, fill them in.

Run this audit monthly. Your feed isn't a set-it-and-forget-it asset anymore — it's the pipeline that determines whether AI search can see you.

India Is on the List, but Visibility Is Patchy

Google confirmed India is included in the AI Overview product visibility rollout. But when you filter the Merchant Center report by 'IN', you'll notice something: impressions are heavily skewed toward a few categories.

Electronics, beauty, supplements and home goods are getting the most AI citations. Apparel and accessories are getting less. That doesn't mean AI isn't reading your feed — it means the queries Indian shoppers are asking AI aren't triggering product answers in those categories yet.

You can't control which queries Google decides deserve a product citation. But you can make sure that when it does, your feed is ready. The brands getting early AI visibility in India are the ones who:

• Have clean, consistent feed data across all SKUs
• Update availability in real time
• Write titles that match how people describe the product in conversation
• Use high-quality images that look good in a small inline card

If you're in a category that's already getting AI impressions, this is a land-grab moment. If you're in a category that isn't, you're building the foundation for when it does.

What to Do If Your AI Impressions Are Zero

First, confirm your feed is approved and serving Shopping ads. If it is, but you're still not showing in AI Overviews, work through this sequence:

1. Check country targeting. Make sure your feed is set to serve in India. Some brands accidentally target only the US or exclude IN.
2. Review your product_type taxonomy. If Google can't map your products to a clear category, AI won't know when to cite them.
3. Improve title clarity. Rewrite 10 of your top SKUs using the Brand + Type + Attribute + Size format. Wait 7 days. Check the AI Overview report again. If impressions appear, scale the rewrite across your catalogue.
4. Test with queries. Search Google for the questions your customers ask. If AI Overviews appear but your products don't, look at which competitors are cited and reverse-engineer their feed structure.

If you're still getting zero impressions after 30 days, your feed likely has a quality issue Google isn't surfacing as a disapproval. Work with our SEO team to audit the underlying data and fix the gaps AI models care about.

AI Search Is the New Front Line for Product Discovery

For two years, D2C brands in India have been asking: "How do we optimise for AI search?" The answer was always vague — write better content, build authority, hope AI cites you. Now there's a concrete answer: fix your Shopping feed.

AI Overviews for products aren't experimental. They're live, they're measurable, and India is included. If your feed is weak, you're invisible. If your feed is strong, you're getting cited before the organic results even load. That's a structural advantage in a market where most D2C brands still think of their feed as an afterthought for Shopping ads.

The brands that win AI search visibility in India over the next 12 months won't be the ones with the biggest content budgets or the most backlinks. They'll be the ones who treated their Shopping feed like a product discovery engine from day one — and fixed it before their competitors figured out it mattered.

Sources: Google Merchant Center Help documentation; Search Engine Journal reporting on AI Overview product visibility rollout.