Google Just Cut Merchants Out of the Funnel — With Agentic Commerce and Accelerated Checkout

Google has significantly streamlined the online shopping journey with a new feature, known as 'Checkout on Merchant'. This capability allows shoppers to jump directly from a Google ad to your checkout page, entirely bypassing the product detail page. This lines up with Google's ongoing efforts to reduce checkout friction and empower quicker conversions across surfaces. 

What’s new? The path to purchase just got a fast lane

You can enable it by adding a checkout or cart page URL template in Google Merchant Center—or using the checkout_link_template attribute in your product feed.

Google’s internal data shows advertisers who use checkout URLs in Demand Gen campaigns see about an 11% increase in conversion value at a similar cost per acquisition.

More than a user interface refinement, this represents a critical evolution in the commerce funnel. The product feed, traditionally a source of product information, is now a direct conduit for enabling transactions, effectively becoming the point of sale within the ad environment. While the industry has seen its share of “closed-loop” initiatives that haven't fully delivered on their promise – such as the earlier “Buy on Google” or Meta's recently axed checkout iterations – this feels different. Google is streamlining the handoff, not inserting itself in the middle. This approach maintains merchant control while aiming to reduce friction for the shopper, a combination that presents a genuinely compelling opportunity.

How it’s different from Buy on Google

This isn’t Google’s first attempt at native checkout. But unlike “Buy on Google,” you stay in control.

Instead of completing the purchase inside Google’s ecosystem, users now go straight from your ad to your own checkout page. That means you own the transaction, the customer relationship, and the fulfillment process. Google doesn’t touch the sale.

With “Buy on Google,” everything happened inside Google—including payments and support. This new model is different. It’s about reducing friction, not taking over the order. Google is streamlining the handoff, not inserting itself in the middle.

It’s a faster path to checkout—but still your checkout.

Where it’s available and who it affects

“Checkout on Merchant” is now a key feature for accelerating purchases across multiple Google surfaces. This capability first debuted in Performance Max campaigns and within organic shopping results. Most recently, its reach expanded to include Demand Gen campaigns, specifically for ads served on YouTube In-stream inventory.

Currently, this accelerated checkout experience is limited to U.S. merchants utilizing product feeds in their campaigns. However, given Google's strong push towards platform-contained shopping and reducing friction in the buyer's journey, it's highly probable this capability will expand to more markets and ad formats in the near future.

If your store supports direct checkout URLs and you're advertising in the U.S., the infrastructure to leverage this feature is already live. The critical question for merchants now is whether your product feed is optimized and ready to take full advantage of this expedited path to purchase.

Agentic commerce isn’t just a buzzword

The term “agentic commerce” is gaining traction, but it's more than just jargon—it’s a shift in how consumers discover and purchase products online. 

Agentic AI refers to systems that can act on a user’s behalf—navigating options, making recommendations, and guiding the purchase path.  For ecommerce, this means the traditional sales funnel is being reconfigured, with automated agents playing an increasingly central role in discovery and conversion.

Is your site becoming optional?

Platforms aren’t just surfacing products anymore—they’re making decisions about what to show, when, and to whom. With Checkout on Merchant, the product feed—not your homepage—does most of the heavy lifting.

AI agents now decide what gets seen, clicked, and purchased. That shifts the spotlight from your UX or brand storytelling to the structure and content of your feed. The platform is the storefront. Your feed is the shelf.

The broader trend toward closed-loop retail

TikTok Shop. Meta checkout. Amazon’s Buy Now. The direction is clear: platforms are collapsing the funnel inside their own ecosystems.

Google was slower to close the loop, but it has a distinct advantage—its product feeds were already built for automation. Tools like Performance Max, Demand Gen, and Merchant Center Next now plug directly into a feed-first commerce engine.

What “agentic” actually means in practice

Agentic AI refers to systems that can act on a user’s behalf—navigating options, making recommendations, and guiding the purchase path. In ecommerce, that means bots and asset groups, not humans, are browsing your catalog and pushing products toward conversion.

That makes your product data—not your design—the biggest factor in whether you make the sale.

What does this mean for feed-first advertisers?

For advertisers who have already embraced a “feed-first” approach, Google's move towards agentic commerce and accelerated checkout validates your strategy while simultaneously raising the stakes. 

This means your product feed is no longer just a data source; it's the direct engine powering performance across every stage of the funnel. 

Here's how this new reality impacts your existing advertising efforts:

1. Your feed now powers discovery from awareness to purchase

When the user never sees your site, the feed has to do more. Titles, GTINs, variant logic—these aren't just for indexing anymore. They drive the entire journey from discovery to checkout.

If your feed is clean, structured, and enriched, it performs. If it’s sloppy or thin, you’re leaving money on the table.

2. Variant structure becomes high-stakes

In a collapsed funnel, the variant that shows in the ad might be the only one that matters. That makes variant logic critical.

You need to surface in-stock, best-selling, or highest-margin SKUs by default. Here’s how to set up variant logic in Google Shopping if your feed doesn’t already account for this.

3. Richness matters more than match type

Smart bidding already factors in feed content for relevance. Now, it’s also factoring in sell-through.

Detailed descriptions, strong images, complete taxonomy—all of it shapes how your products are ranked, recommended, and converted. This title optimization guide is a great starting point.

How to prepare your catalog and site for agentic commerce

Given that agentic commerce is shifting the focal point from your website to your product feed, preparing your catalog and site for this new reality is no longer optional—it’s critical. To capitalize on accelerated checkout experiences and ensure your products perform in an AI-driven environment, focus on these key areas:

1. Support direct-to-checkout links

To use Google’s accelerated checkout, your site needs to support a direct link to a cart or checkout page. Platforms like Shopify and WooCommerce make this easy—but any ecommerce setup that can generate a stable checkout URL will work.

What matters is that a user can click an ad and land straight on a ready-to-complete purchase page.

You can add these checkout URLs at the account level in Merchant Center or directly in your product feed using the checkout_link_template attribute. Google uses these links to trigger the accelerated experience.

2. Audit your product data and taxonomy

If the ad is the new PDP, then your product data is doing all the work. Descriptions should be clear. Images should load fast. Prices should match what’s in your cart. And categories need to be mapped correctly. Related: How to categorize products using category mappings and category rules.

These aren’t just nice-to-haves—they affect visibility, trust, and conversion inside the ad unit itself.

A lot of this cleanup can happen in supplemental feeds or with enrichment rules. You don’t have to rebuild your primary feed to fix what’s broken.

3. Use supplemental feeds and custom labels

Supplemental feeds are your sandbox. You can add calculated fields, like margin tiers or promotional flags, or override missing or weak attributes.

Combined with feed rules, this lets you shape how products appear across channels. For a closer look at how this works, here’s a walkthrough on building custom feed rules in GoDataFeed.

Final take

Google is no longer just pointing people to your store—it’s helping them buy your products while skipping the visit entirely.

With Checkout on Merchant, the funnel isn’t a series of steps. It’s a single screen. And the product feed? That’s not backend data anymore. It’s your storefront.

Every title, variant, and image now decides whether someone buys. Merchants who treat the feed like a living piece of infrastructure—not a static file—will be the ones who adapt fastest.

Want to turn your feed into a selling engine? See how GoDataFeed helps merchants build optimized, platform-ready product feeds.