I Believe the Robots are Our Future: Or Pros and Cons of The Google Business Agentic AI Agents

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Google has been preparing their Agentic Business Agents for quite some time and they are ready to go live. We first heard of this opportunity as a beta test in Q4 and now they are slowly rolling out to Google Merchant Center accounts. But what are Agentic AI Agents and will they be helpful or will they find users shouting at their computers?  Let’s break it down.

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Google’s Business Agent support doc is found here: https://support.google.com/brandprofile/answer/16410382?hl=en. 

In it, Google speaks to these agents functioning as virtual sales associates that can answer product questions for users looking to make a purchase. These Agentic Agents are found on your Brand Profile page and can be interacted with through the chat function.

Currently, these agents will only be able to interact with users regarding the products that are found in your Google Merchant Center account. They will not be able to compare & contrast your products with competitors. They are also for users who are already showing an interest in your brand who may have questions prior to making a purchase. 

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Currently, Business Agents are only available to merchants in the US that have a verified Google Merchant Center account, at least 50 approved offers and have a claimed brand profile. 

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For those users who have met the criteria, they may start to see the below in their Google Merchant Center, under the section “Business Agent,” under the “Marketing,” category. 

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The “start customizing” or “customize identity” buttons will open up the below menus for allowed customization.

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Once the business agent has been customized, consumers can start to engage with it from the link in your brand profile. According to Google, “Business Agents use Gemini models to analyze information from your Merchant Center account and additional business data you provide, including your website. It then provides conversational responses to customer questions about your products.”  Users and advertisers can provide feedback on Business Agent’s performance by clicking the thumbs up or thumbs down to certain responses within the chat window.

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Like any newly launched Google feature, we want to approach this cautiously.  There are, however, many pros to a feature like this. You can provide real time product expertise to users who are interested in purchasing your product.  This could move the needle from consideration to purchase.  Coming soon will be the ability to purchase directly from this agentic agent which may increase checkout completions even further.

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You can also customize the agent to more accurately reflect your brand, unlike generic AI chatbots. The customization includes adhering to your brand identity through the custom welcome and handoff messages.  Google has included a toggle to match your website’s tone of voice so the agent becomes an extension of your brand identity.

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In addition to offering support on your current offerings, the agent can seamlessly hand off the chat to your own customer support team or provide customer service contact information.  This ensures that if something is left unresolved your team can follow up on it.

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Lastly, a Google Business Agent is available 24/7 - including weekends and holidays and they do all this work for free.

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Now, of course there are cons and most of these revolve around the uncertainty of how the AI will perform - especially in this relatively recent product iteration Google has created.  As mentioned prior, there are currently strict eligibility criteria - so not every advertiser will be able to take advantage of this feature.  To those that do, here is what to watch out for:

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Data Quality Sensitivity:  Google’s agents are only going to be as good as the data you feed it.  If you do not have a well populated & optimized product data feed, the agent could provide hallucinated or incorrect advice to the shoppers looking for answers to one of your products.  Having excellent data integrity is a key determining factor on how successful these AI agents will be trained to answer questions about your product.

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Reduced Site Traffic: Because the agent populates in a chat window within your brand profile, expect to see reduced traffic to your website. This will impact your ability to retarget users in the future as well as collect additional data from them on your website. 

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Limited Customization: While there is a limited number of customization options, the majority of the trust lies in the Gemini models interpreting both your website and your product data.  You cannot train or hardcode answers into these agents. 

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Brand Safety Monitoring: By now we know that generative AI is not trustworthy 100% of the time.  There are no guarantees that this agent will not misinterpret a policy or promise something that can’t be fulfilled.  This could especially be true if your business data is not frequently updated on your website or within your feed.

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Ultimately, whether Google Business Agents are helpful to your business needs depends entirely on your preparation, diligence, and data quality. The appeal of 24/7 product expertise, seamless handoffs to customer support, and customized brand representation is significant, offering a real opportunity to move shoppers from consideration to purchase for free. However, these benefits are balanced by the critical need for impeccable data integrity - as the agent is only as good as the product data it is fed - and the necessity for continuous brand safety monitoring, given the known uncertainties of generative AI. For eligible advertisers who can ensure their data is clean and frequently updated, this new agentic feature offers a powerful, round-the-clock extension of your brand identity.

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