Walmart said conversion rates for purchases made directly inside ChatGPT were three times lower than when users clicked through to its website.

Why we care. This suggests agentic commerce isn’t ready to replace traditional shopping. Sending users to owned environments still drives higher conversion rates.

The details. Starting in November, Walmart offered about 200,000 products through OpenAI’s Instant Checkout. Users could complete purchases inside ChatGPT without visiting Walmart’s site.

• Daniel Danker, Walmart’s EVP of product and design, said those in-chat purchases converted at one-third the rate of click-out transactions.
• He called the experience “unsatisfying” and confirmed Walmart is moving away from it.

Goodbye, Instant Checkout. Instant Checkout was designed to let users complete purchases directly inside ChatGPT without visiting a retailer’s website. However, earlier this month, OpenAI confirmed it was phasing out Instant Checkout in favor of app-based checkout handled by merchants.

What’s changing. Walmart will embed its own chatbot, Sparky, inside ChatGPT. Users will log into Walmart, sync carts across platforms, and complete purchases within Walmart’s system.

• A similar integration is coming to Google Gemini next month.

The WIRED report. Why Walmart and OpenAI Are Shaking Up Their Agentic Shopping Deal (subscription required)

Perplexity’s new Comet browser for iOS defaults to Google Search. That’s because mobile queries often focus on navigation, local results, and transactions, where “Google does a much better job … than anyone else … including Perplexity,” according to Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas.

Comet for iOS. It includes Perplexity’s AI assistant directly in the browser. Comet for iOS also blends AI answers with standard search results. For many queries, you’ll still see a traditional results page.

• You can ask questions by voice while browsing.
• The assistant can summarize pages, answer questions, and take actions like drafting emails.
• Deep Research features generate cited summaries and prep materials.

What Comet does. According to Perplexity, the assistant can act on your behalf. Examples include:

• Summarizing articles and sharing outputs.
• Researching people or topics across tabs.
• Assisting with bookings or form fills.

What Perplexity is saying.

• “The search experience in Comet iOS provides traditional search results pages for fast, local, and high-intent queries that are more common on mobile. Meanwhile, the Comet Assistant easily allows for more advanced knowledge and intelligence powered by the Perplexity answer engine. The intention is for users to have the smoothest browsing experience possible for the real use cases of iOS.”

Why we care. The near future of search increasingly looks hybrid, which means you’ll need to optimize for traditional Google results and AI-driven answers. This also reinforces Google’s dominance in commercial and local search while shifting competition to the AI layer.

The announcement. Comet is Now available on iOS

Google’s AI Overviews now appear on 14% of shopping queries, up 5.6x from 2.1% in November 2025, according to new Visibility Labs analysis.

• Ecommerce brands have been mostly unaffected by AI-driven click loss in Search. That seems to be changing.

Why we care. As Google’s AI Overviews expand across product searches, ecommerce brands face a growing risk of losing visibility and clicks before shoppers reach standard organic or Shopping listings.

The details. The analysis targeted product-intent keywords tied to results with a Shopping box, paid or organic — terms like “weighted blanket,” “mushroom coffee,” “protein powder,” and “blue T-shirts.”

• That produced 20,900,323 shopping keywords.
• Of those, 2,919,229 triggered an AI Overview — 14.0% penetration.

What they’re saying. Report author Jeff Oxford, founder and CEO of Visibility Labs, concluded:

• “Focusing on AI SEO is no longer a luxury, it’s becoming a necessity. Ecommerce sites need to think beyond traditional SEO and start incorporating AI SEO best practices into their search optimization strategy.”

The report. AI Overviews Now Appear on 14% of Shopping Queries, Up 5.6x in 4 Months (Study of 20.9M SERPs)

Small publishers are seeing sharp traffic declines from AI search experiences, according to new data from thousands of global sites using Chartbeat analytics.

The details. Publishers with 1,000 to 10,000 daily pageviews lost 60% of search referral traffic over two years, Chartbeat found.

• Mid-sized sites with 10,000 to 100,000 daily pageviews lost 47%.
• Large publishers with more than 100,000 daily pageviews were down 22%.

Reality check. AI referrals aren’t replacing lost search traffic.

• Google Search pageviews fell 34% year over year.
• Google Discover dropped 15%.
• ChatGPT referrals rose 200% but still account for less than 1% of total traffic.

Yes, but. Traffic is shifting, not disappearing. Total weekly pageviews across publishers fell just 6% from 2024 to 2025, a typical swing tied partly to the news cycle. Search is shrinking as a share of traffic, while direct, internal, and messaging channels are growing.

Why we care. SEO has long been the growth engine for smaller sites. That’s no longer true. If you don’t have a strong brand, direct audience relationships, repeat visitors, or differentiated value, you face the biggest risk as search referrals decline.

The Axios report. Exclusive: Small publishers hit hardest by search traffic declines.

Visibility is no longer just about ranking. It depends on whether your content is discovered, evaluated, and selected in AI-driven search experiences.

We’re kicking off our new monthly SMX Now webinar series on April 1 at 1 p.m. ET with iPullRank’s Zach Chahalis, Patrick Schofield, and Garrett Sussman on how you must adapt.

The session introduces iPullRank’s Relevance Engineering (r19g) framework for executing Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) through an omnichannel content strategy. You’ll learn how AI search uses query fan-outs to discover and select sources, and how to structure content so it’s retrieved, surfaced, and cited.

It also emphasizes that GEO success isn’t universal. It requires testing, tailored strategies, and a three-tier measurement model spanning discovery, selection, and citation impact.

Save your spot

Search Engine Land is proud to be a media partner for iPullRank’s upcoming SEO Week event.

Google is expanding Personal Intelligence across AI Mode, Gemini, and Chrome in the U.S., moving it beyond beta into broader consumer use.

Why we care. Personal Intelligence pushes Google further into fully personalized search, using first-party data like Gmail and Photos. That makes results harder to replicate, rank against, or track — especially in AI Mode, where outputs may vary based on user history, purchases, and behavior.

The details. Personal Intelligence now works across:

• AI Mode in Google Search (available now in the U.S.)
• Gemini app (rolling out to free users)
• Gemini in Chrome (rolling out)

How it works. Users can connect apps like Gmail and Google Photos so Google can tailor responses using personal context. Examples Google shared include:

• Shopping recommendations based on past purchases and brand preferences.
• Tech troubleshooting using receipt data to identify exact devices.
• Travel suggestions using flight details, timing, and past trips.
• Personalized itineraries and local recommendations.
• Hobby suggestions inferred from user interests.

Availability. These features are available only for personal accounts, not Workspace users, Google said.

Dig deeper. Google says AI Mode stays ad-free for Personal Intelligence users

Catch-up quick. Google introduced Personal Intelligence as a U.S.-only beta for Gemini subscribers in January. At the time:

• It was limited to AI Pro and Ultra users.
• It focused on Gemini, with Search integration “coming soon.”
• The feature was opt-in and off by default.
• This update delivers on that roadmap by:
• Bringing it to Search AI Mode.
• Expanding access to free users.
• Extending it to Chrome.

Privacy and control. Google emphasized:

• Users must opt in to connect apps.
• Connections can be turned on or off at any time.
• Models do not train directly on Gmail or Photos content.
• Limited data, such as prompts and responses, may be used to improve systems.

Google’s blog post. Bringing the power of Personal Intelligence to more people

Yahoo CEO Jim Lanzone said AI-powered search — especially Google’s AI Mode — is putting the open web’s core traffic model at risk and argues AI search engines must send users back to publishers.

• “I think that the LLMs are one big reason that they’re under threat, with AI Mode in Google being the biggest challenge.”
• “Those publishers deserve [traffic], and we’re not going to have the content to consume to give great answers if publishers aren’t healthy.”

Why we care. Many websites are seeing less traffic from answer engines like Google and OpenAI — and I think it’ll only get worse. So it’s encouraging to see Yahoo trying to preserve the “search sends traffic” model. As he said: “We have very purposefully highlighted and linked very explicitly and bent over backwards to try to send more traffic downstream to the people who created the content.”

Yahoo’s AI stance. Yahoo is taking a different approach from chatbot-style interfaces, Lanzone said on the Decoder podcast. He added that Yahoo isn’t trying to compete as a full AI assistant:

• “Ours looks a lot more like traditional search and it is more paragraph-driven. It’s not a chatbot that’s trying to act like it’s a person and be your friend.”
• “We’re not a large language model. We’re not going to be the place you come to code. We’ve really launched Scout as an answer engine.”

What’s next: Personalization + agentic actions. Yahoo plans to expand Scout beyond basic answers and is embedding AI across its ecosystem:

• “You are very shortly going to see us get into very personalized results. You’re going to see us get into very agentic actions that you can take.”
• “There’s a button in Yahoo Finance that does analysis of a given stock on the fly… It is in Yahoo Mail to help summarize and process emails.”

Yahoo vs. Google isn’t a thing. Yahoo isn’t trying to win by converting Google users directly. Instead, Yahoo is prioritizing its existing audience and increasing usage frequency over immediate market share gains:

• “Nobody chooses, you will not be surprised, Yahoo over Google or somewhere else to search. The way that we get our search volume is because we have 250 million US users and 700 million global users in the Yahoo network at any given time. There’s a search box there. And infrequently, they use it.”

A warning. Companies — including publishers — should be cautious about relying too heavily on AI platforms as intermediaries. Lanzone compared today’s AI partnerships to Yahoo’s past reliance on Google:

• “You are tempting fate by opening up a way for consumers to access your product within a large language model.”
• “The big bad wolf will come to your door and say everything’s cool.”

The interview. Yahoo CEO Jim Lanzone on reviving the web’s homepage