Google Adds Loyalty Offerings To Ads and Product Listings

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Google is giving online retailers new tools to highlight special offers and benefits to their most loyal customers. The new “loyalty offerings” available in Google Ads and Merchant Center add specialized tags to product listings that showcase special member pricing and shipping benefits.

According to Google, 61% of American adults say loyalty programs that are tailored to their preferences are the most attractive aspect of personalized shopping experiences. With these new annotations, retailers can feature their loyalty benefits to their most valuable customers, drive long-term relationships, and emphasize all of the benefits of doing business with them. 

Quick Details

  • Loyalty offerings add personalized annotations that display member-only discounts and benefits on both free and paid product listings. 
  • Retailers can optimize their ad budget with loyalty goals that prioritize ad bids with the most lifetime value.
  • In testing, Sephora US saw a 20% increase in CTRs when using loyalty annotations in personalized ads.
  • In the announcement, Google says the new loyalty offerings “help retailers retain lasting relationships and showcase their programs and Google […] driving deeper engagement with their most valuable shoppers.”
  • Loyalty offerings are available now to retailers based in the US, UK, Germany, France, and Australia. 
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Google Says AI-Generated Images Won’t Hurt Your Site’s Rankings

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Google’s Gary Illyes recently explained that Google’s search engine treats AI-generated images essentially the same as any other images and does not penalize sites for using AI images.

In a Q&A with interviewer Kenichi Suzuki and shared by Search Engine Journal, Illyes explained that AI-generated images have no direct impact on SEO or online rankings. 

Instead, he suggested that any effect to rankings from AI-generated issues may be brought on by technical issues. He suggested that brands may even see increased traffic if they use AI to create unique images. 

How Does Google Handle AI-Generated Content?

Google has largely been trying to take a nuanced approach to how it handles content made with AI. While the company has encouraged those who use AI-generated text content to ensure it is reviewed by humans, they have also taken steps to derank low-quality AI content.

At the same time, Google has not directly addressed how it handles AI-generated images.

About 10 minutes into the recent interview, Illyes was asked if Google would punish a site if some of their images were made with AI:

“Say if there’s a content that the content itself is legit, the sentences are legit, but also there are a lot of images which are relevant to the content itself, but all of them – let’s say all of them are generated by AI. Will the content or the overall site, is it going to be penalized or not?”

In response, Illyes emphasized that AI-generated images don’t affect SEO in any direct way.

“No, no. So AI generated image doesn’t impact the SEO. Not direct.

So obviously when you put images on your site, you will have to sacrifice some resources to those images… But otherwise you are not going to, I don’t think that you’re going to see any negative impact from that.

If anything, you might get some traffic out of image search or video search or whatever, but otherwise it should just be fine.”

In other words, the only major SEO consideration a site should have when using AI-generated content is ensuring the images are small enough and properly optimized to load quickly. 

While brands should consider other potential issues you might encounter using AI-generated images, such as how your audience will respond, Illyes’s comments make it clear that Google won’t be punishing you simply for using AI to create your graphics or pictures.

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Google Says You Don’t Need Special SEO For AI Overviews

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While AI overviews upend much of how we look for information online, marketers have been split on how to respond. Some say that traditional SEO is all that is necessary to get your site cited by Google’s AI overviews, while others have been arguing that a new “SEO for AI” is needed. Now, Google has weighed in. 

During a talk at Search Central Live, Google’s Gary Illyes, told attendees that AI search tools don’t mean marketers need to use a new type of optimization and that standard SEO practices are all that is needed to be included in Google’s AI overviews and AI mode. 

While we were not present at the event, Google Search Advocate Kenichi Suzuki shared a detailed overview of what Gary Illyes discussed, including three main focus areas: 

  1. AI uses traditional SEO infrastructure and signals.
  2. Content quality matters, but so does authenticity
  3. Google has used AI in its traditional search for a long time.

How AI Uses SEO

Illyes emphasized that Google’s AI tools rely on the same basic systems and infrastructure used elsewhere by Google, including relying on the same search signals and indexing approach. 

As Suzuki says:

“[Illyes] explicitly stated that there is no need for a new acronym or a separate discipline. The core principles of creating helpful, reliable, people-first content remain the foundation for visibility in all of search formats.”

Authenticity Matters

Gary Illyes said that while Google does not punish sites that publish content made with AI, it watches for signs of abuse, including sites that churn out tons of low-quality AI content or pages with deceptive information like fake author personas or AI-generated images presented as real. 

Suzuki summed up Illyes’s statements, saying:

“Search Quality Raters are instructed to give the lowest possible rating to any content that is deceptive. This includes creating fake author personas with AI-gen images or churning out content that simply rehashes information from other sources without adding unique value or experience.”

Google Has Been Using AI For a Long Time

Throughout his presentation, Gary repeatedly emphasized that Google’s use of AI goes back years before the current surge in generative AI tools. Specifically, Illyes pointed to Google’s MUM system as a form or predictive AI to understand the intent behind queries.

While the introduction of MUM did cause some shifts in how we approach SEO in general, it did not call for an entirely new optimization discipline, just as new generative AI tools do not require a new “SEO for AI”. 

The Takeaway

While AI is undeniably making us change some aspects of search engine optimization, it doesn’t call for your business to adopt “GEO” or “AI SEO” or any other separate approaches to optimization. 

Instead, it is essential that you adapt your current SEO strategies, focus on providing content that provides real value to readers, and develop strategies to cement your authentic authority in your field.

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