# Google AI Integration and the Surge in AI-Driven Retail Traffic

**Podcast:** TechCrunch Daily Crunch
**Published:** 2026-04-17

## Transcript

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On Thursday, Google announced that it's rolling out a new way to explore the web with AI Mode.
It's conversational search experience, if you don't know.
Now, when you're using AI Mode on Chrome desktop, clicking a link will open the web page side-by-side with, you guessed it, AI Mode.
Now, the goal is to make it easier to explore relevant websites, compare details, and ask follow-up questions while preserving the context of your search, the tech giant says.
For example, let's say you want to purchase a new coffee maker.
Alright, well, you can describe what you're looking for in AI Mode and get a range of options.
Once you click on one, you can open the retailer's website alongside AI Mode and ask specific questions like, hey, how easy is this thing to clean?
AI Mode will then use context from the page and from across the web to answer your questions.
Our early testers loved that they didn't have to constantly switch tabs to get help with a comprehensive article or a long video, Google explained in a blog post continuing, and they found that having both search and the web side-by-side helped them stay focused on their tasks while exploring useful web pages.
Google also announced a new way to search across the Chrome tabs you're already looking at.
The new updates to AI Mode are now available in the good old US of A.
Google plans to expand them to additional regions in the future.
As of March, AI traffic to US retailers' websites rose by, get this, 269% over the previous 12 months, continuing the momentum during the holiday shopping season when AI traffic was up by 693%.
This is all according to new data released on Thursday by Adobe.
And in the first three months of 2026, AI traffic had risen 393% compared to a year earlier as more consumers used AI assistance for online shopping.
Now, the change in traffic sources isn't the only impact.
You see, AI visitors, are converting better, engaging at higher rates, spending more time on sites, and driving higher revenue per visit.
The data shows, often reversing trends from only a year ago when regular customers were worth more to retailers.
Now, Adobe's insights are based on its analysis of online transactions via its Adobe Analytics division, which covers over 1 trillion visits to US retail sites.
The analysis also relied on a survey of over 5,000 US respondents about their use of AI, when shopping, as well as the company's new AI content visibility checker tool, which is designed to test retail websites for accessibility by LLMs.
In Adobe's survey, 39% people said they used AI for online shopping, and 85% said it improved their experience.
Now, these findings are likely due to how AI helps people narrow down products to find what they need and tap into discounts.
In addition, 66% of those surveyed said they now believe AI tools, provide accurate results when shopping.
Unlike publishers, where AI is causing referral traffic to decline, retailers are incentivized to make their sites AI-friendly.
Adobe's data found that AI traffic converted 42% better than living, breathing customers in March 2026, setting a new record.
Notably, it's a reversal of a trend that told a way different story only a year ago.
In March 2025, you see, AI traffic converted 38% worse.
Than regular people.
On Thursday, Google said it blocked a record 8.3 billion ads globally in 2025, up from 5.1 billion the year before.
But don't get it twisted, because the company suspended far fewer advertiser accounts than that surge might suggest, raising questions about how it polices its platform.
You see, the search giant attributed the disparity to its growing use of AI, particularly its Gemini models, Google's family of AI systems, which Google says allow it to detect and block policy-violating ads earlier and with greater precision.
Its AI-driven systems caught more than 99% of such ads last year before they were shown to users, the company said.
Both findings come from Google's 2025 Ads Safety Report and together reflect a broader change in enforcement.
You see, while more problematic ads are being stopped, fewer advertiser accounts are being suspended.
That suggests a growing emphasis on blocking individual ads.
Google said the rise in blocked ads also reflects the growing use of generative AI by scammers to produce deceptive content at scale, with its Gemini models helping detect patterns across large campaigns and block them earlier.
The shift also mirrors a wider push by Google to integrate its Gemini models more deeply into its core products and infrastructure, including advertising, where the company is increasingly using AI to automate campaign creation, detect policy violations, and respond to emerging threats in real-time.
Among the blocked ads and suspended accounts, 602 million ads and 4 million advertiser accounts were linked to scams, the company said.
Google removed over 1.7 billion ads and suspended 3.3 million advertiser accounts in the U.S.
in 2025, with ad network abuse, misrepresentation, and sexual content among the most common violations.
And folks, that's your Daily Crunch.
Today's stories were reported by Aisha Malik, Sarah Perez, Jagmeet, Singh, and more awesome TechCrunch journalists.
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