Google’s AI Mode and the regular Shopping carousel both draw from Google’s Shopping Graph (its centralized product database), yet shoppers frequently see different products, different sellers, and higher prices in AI Mode. Data from Productrise shows the two surfaces overlap on just 1.28% of products per day, meaning a top carousel position offers almost no guarantee of visibility in AI Mode.
How far apart are AI Mode and the Shopping carousel?
The overlap is nearly nonexistent. Productrise, a product tracking service for Google Shopping, monitored more than 2 million product listings across over 100,000 regular search results and AI Mode responses between August 9 and August 31, 2026, in the US and UK. The company ran the same product-specific queries in both surfaces on the same day, then matched results using Google’s product ID.
On any given day, only 1.28% of products that appeared in the Popular products carousel also showed up in AI Mode for the same query. Part of that gap is structural. When both surfaces returned results for the same query, the carousel showed an average of 27.8 products; AI Mode showed 3.9. A narrower selection means most carousel products never make the cut in AI Mode.
Among the small slice of products that appeared on both sides, the first seller listed was a different merchant 49.6% of the time. One important caveat: the queries in this dataset focus on products Productrise already monitors on its platform, and the write-up does not describe them as a random sample of all Google Shopping searches.
Why does AI Mode show higher prices?
When prices differed between the two surfaces (which happened on 38.1% of matched products), AI Mode displayed the higher price 68.4% of the time. Across all matched products, including those with identical prices on both sides, AI Mode prices averaged 21.6% higher than carousel prices, according to Productrise data covering the period August 9 to August 31, 2026.
Among cases where AI Mode was more expensive, the median difference was 22.2% and the average was 88.5%. Productrise notes that outliers, such as a used item in the carousel matched against a new item in AI Mode, pulled that average up. When AI Mode was cheaper, the median difference was a more modest 7.8%.
Hugo Huijer, founder of Productrise, interprets the pattern this way: “the cheapest price is less of a factor in AI Mode.” The data does not test that claim directly, but the numbers are consistent with it.
What does Google say?
Google responded to reporting by Futurism on September 2, 2026: “While we haven’t verified the accuracy of the claims in this report, all shopping results on Google Search, including AI Mode and the search results page, are powered by the same data source: our Shopping Graph.” Google added that shoppers can click into any product listing to compare prices across retailers. It did not address the specific seller or price discrepancy figures.
Both surfaces do allow comparison shopping. Clicking a product in either AI Mode or the carousel opens a panel showing multiple sellers and their prices. The Productrise data only captures what was displayed first on screen, not clicks or purchases, so it cannot confirm whether shoppers actually bought at the initially displayed price.
How can merchants track their AI Mode visibility?
Google’s Merchant Center includes an AI performance insights report, currently available for English-language queries in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and India. The report shows a brand’s share of voice (how often your products appear in AI Mode and AI Overviews compared to defined competitors, expressed as a percentage of AI impressions).
According to Google’s Merchant Center help page, the report breaks performance down by three shopping stages:
- Discovery: early-stage queries where shoppers explore general options.
- Evaluation: mid-stage queries comparing options or seeking specifications.
- Ready to buy: late-stage queries close to a transaction.
The report surfaces top search terms, missing product attributes (such as size, color, or material), and top search intents for each stage. However, as Search Engine Journal noted, the report does not specify which seller or what price AI Mode lists for a product, so it cannot replicate the granularity of Productrise’s analysis.
What this means for AI-search visibility
The core finding is simpler than it looks: winning in the Shopping carousel does not mean winning in AI Mode. They run separate selection logic, even though both pull from the same underlying data.
Picture a concrete situation. You sell running shoes and rank first in the Popular products carousel for “men’s trail running shoes.” A shopper clicks AI Mode for that same query. Based on this data, there is roughly a 50-50 chance they see a different seller listed first, likely at a higher price than what the carousel showed. If that competing seller has more complete, structured product data, detailed specs, accurate attributes, a well-maintained feed, AI Mode may favor them regardless of who had the lower price.
That has a specific implication worth noting: brands that cannot compete purely on price may have a real opening in AI Mode. Huijer’s observation that “the cheapest price is less of a factor” is consistent with how retrieval-augmented generation (a technique where AI systems pull in structured external data to build answers) tends to weight detailed, well-organized information over raw price signals. This is Hingewise’s interpretation, not a claim the sources confirm directly.
A second point the data surfaces but does not highlight: the 3.9-product average in AI Mode means selection is extremely concentrated. In a carousel of 27.8 products, ranking fifth or tenth still delivers impressions. In AI Mode, you are either among the first four positions or effectively invisible for that query. Each individual slot carries more weight, which makes the selection criteria matter more, not less.
Hingewise’s assessment: the useful question for merchants has shifted from “do I rank in Shopping?” to “what does AI Mode show for my category, and am I there?” Feed quality, complete attributes, and accurate product data are likely the levers that matter most for AI Mode placement, in the same way that keyword-rich, authoritative content is the lever for organic AI citations. Both reward structured, detailed information over minimal-effort listings.
5 things to check before assuming your carousel ranking carries over to AI Mode
- Search your top products in both regular Google and AI Mode on the same day and note which seller appears first in each surface.
- Compare the displayed price on each side. If AI Mode shows a competitor at a higher price, check whether that competitor’s product listing is more detailed than yours.
- Log into Merchant Center and open the AI performance insights report. Review your share of voice for your key product categories.
- Check the Top terms and Popular attributes scorecards for high-frequency gaps, specifically attributes or search terms where consumer demand is high but your share of voice is low.
- Update product titles, descriptions, and missing attributes based on what the AI insights report flags. Google’s own guidance recommends starting with the most popular top terms and missing attributes first.
The next development worth watching: whether Google adds seller and price transparency to the AI performance insights report, and whether the overlap rate between the two surfaces changes as AI Mode expands beyond the US and UK markets covered in this data.
Sources: Search Engine Journal (September 2026); Google Merchant Center Help: AI Performance Insights.
Lam Nguyen · Hingewise
This article was drafted with AI assistance from the sources cited above and checked against them before publishing. The "What this means for AI-search visibility" section is Hingewise's editorial analysis, built on the frameworks and positions we use in our GEO work. How we work: Editorial policy.