How customers will find you in 2026

Two announcements in the past two weeks say a lot about where customers will find businesses this year.

On 11 January, Google launched the Universal Commerce Protocol, built with Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Target and Walmart, so that AI agents can browse and buy from stores in a standard way. Google said the protocol will soon power checkout inside AI Mode and the Gemini app, and announced a pilot that shows special offers to shoppers inside AI Mode. Five days later, OpenAI said it will start testing ads in ChatGPT for free and lower-priced users in the US in the coming weeks.

Put those next to what happened last year (AI summaries at the top of Google, shopping research and checkout in ChatGPT, AI Mode reaching more languages including Hindi) and you can see where this is going. People now find businesses in at least four places: classic Google results, Google's AI answers, ChatGPT and Gemini. The rules are different in each.

What has actually changed

The biggest change is that fewer searches end with a click. Pew Research found last summer that when Google showed an AI summary, users clicked a result about 8% of the time, against 15% when there was no summary. Only around 1% clicked a link inside the summary itself.

At the same time, AI assistants still send very little traffic to most sites. Studies through 2025 put AI referrals at well under one percent of visits for a typical website. Put together, Google sends fewer clicks per search than it used to, and the AI tools have not made up the difference in visits.

What they have done is move the decision earlier. A customer who asks ChatGPT for "a good physiotherapy clinic in Kochi that does home visits" may arrive at your site having already decided, or never arrive at all, because the answer named someone else.

What is still US-only

It is easy to read the headlines and feel behind. Most of the new commerce features are not live in the Gulf or India yet:

• Checkout inside ChatGPT, and Google's coming checkout in AI Mode and Gemini, are for US shoppers and US merchants.
• Google's Business Agent, which lets shoppers chat with a brand inside Search, is launching with US retailers.
• ChatGPT's ad test is starting with US users on the free and Go plans. Paid plans such as Plus, Pro and Business are meant to stay ad-free.

The early exceptions in our region are pilots. In October, India's NPCI and Razorpay started testing UPI payments inside ChatGPT with BigBasket among the first merchants, and in November Mastercard completed the first transaction outside the US on its agent payments service in the UAE, with Majid Al Futtaim.

What is global already is the AI answer itself. AI summaries in Google, and ChatGPT and Gemini answering questions about local businesses, work in the UAE and India today.

What helps you show up everywhere

The good news is that the same few things help in every one of these places. None of them is a trick.

1. Say what you do in plain, specific sentences. Your services, the areas you cover, who you serve, your price range, your hours. AI answers are assembled from text they can find and quote.
2. Keep your Google Business Profile complete and current. It feeds Maps, local results and the AI answers built on top of them.
3. Earn reviews, and reply to them. AI tools often draw on review text when they recommend a local business.
4. Be mentioned elsewhere. Directories, local news, industry associations, partner pages. Assistants weigh what others say about you, not only what you say about yourself.
5. If you sell products, keep a clean product feed in Google Merchant Center, with accurate prices and stock. Google's AI shopping features are built on the same product data.
6. Make sure your site's text loads without JavaScript, so the crawlers behind these tools can read it at all.

Measure what you can

You cannot see everything an AI says about you, but you can see some of it. In your analytics, look for visits referred by chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai and gemini.google.com and watch the trend. Once a month, ask the main assistants the questions your customers would ask, in English and in Arabic or Hindi if that is how your customers search, and note whether you appear and whether the details are right.

When they get something wrong, the fix is almost always on your own pages or your Business Profile: the missing fact, the out-of-date price, the service you offer but never wrote down.

About the ads

AI ads will reach this region eventually, and when they do they may be worth testing, especially for high-intent questions. For now, be wary of anyone selling guaranteed placement in AI answers. Nobody outside the AI companies controls what the models recommend. The businesses that get named are the ones with clear information, good reviews and a reputation that shows up in more places than their own website.