A Technical Guide To Prepare For Google’s UCP

In January, I wrote about the beginning of agentic commerce by means of each Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) and Common Commerce Protocol (UCP), and the way this might influence us all as shoppers, enterprise homeowners, and SEOs. As we nonetheless sit on waitlists for each, this doesn’t imply that we will’t put together for it.

UCP fixes a real-life downside for a lot of, minimizing the fragmented commerce journey. As a substitute of constructing separate integrations for each agent platform as we now have been largely doing up to now, now you can [theoretically] combine as soon as and can combine seamlessly with different instruments and platforms.

However notice right here that, versus ACP which focuses extra so on the checkout → success → cost journey, UCP goes past this with six capabilities overlaying your complete commerce lifecycle.

This, after all, will influence an web optimization’s ambit. As we shift from optimizing for clicks to optimizing for choice, we additionally want to make sure that it’s you/your consumer that’s chosen by means of knowledge integrity, product alerts, and AI-readable commerce capabilities. Structured knowledge has all the time served an essential function for the web as a complete and can proceed to be the driving drive on how one can serve brokers, crawlers, and people in one of the best ways doable.

I allude to a doable new acronym “ACO” – Agentic Commerce Optimization – and the next might be thought-about the closest we will get to tips on how we undertake it.

UCP Isn’t Coming, It’s Right here

UCP was solely announced in January, however there’s already affirmation that its capabilities are rolling out. On Feb. 11, 2026, Vidhya Srinivasan (VP/GM of Promoting & Commerce at Google) announced that Wayfair and Etsy now use UCP to be able to buy straight inside AI Mode, and was observed the next day by Brodie Clark.

UCP’s Six Layered Capabilities

On the day UCP was launched, Google explained its methodology.

From this, I outlined six core capabilities:

1. Product Discovery – how brokers discover and floor your stock throughout analysis.
2. Cart Administration – multi-item baskets, dynamic pricing, advanced basket guidelines.
3. Id Linking – OAuth 2.0 authorization for personalised experiences and loyalty.
4. Checkout – session creation, tax calculation, cost dealing with.
5. Order Administration – webhook-based lifecycle and logistical updates.
6. Vertical Capabilities – extensible modules for specialised use circumstances like journey reserving home windows or subscription schedules.

UCP’s schema authoring information reveals how capabilities are outlined by means of versioned JSON schemas, which act as the inspiration of the protocol. In terms of contemplating this as an web optimization, properties resembling presents, aggregateRating, and shippingDetails aren’t only for surfacing wealthy snippets, and many others., for product discovery, they’re now what brokers question throughout your complete course of.

Schema Is, And Will Proceed To Be, Important

UCP’s technical specification makes use of its personal JSON schema-based vocabulary. While it doesn’t construct on schema.org straight, it stays crucial within the broader ecosystem. As Pascal Fleury Fleury said at Google Search Central Dwell in December, “schema is the glue that binds all these ontologies collectively”. UCP handles the transaction; schema.org helps brokers resolve who to transact with.

Make sure you’re on prime of and populate product schema as a lot as you possibly can. It might appear to be web optimization 101. Regardless, audit all of this now to make sure you’re not lacking something when UCP actually rolls out.

This contains checks on:

• Product schema (with full protection): All core fields: identify, description, SKU, GTIN, model, associated photographs, and presents.
• Provides should embody: Worth, priceCurrency, availability, URL, vendor. Add aggregateRating and overview to make sure you have optimistic third-party perspective.
• Guarantee all product variants output accurately.
• Embody shippingDetails with supply estimates.
• Group and Model: Assists with “Service provider of Document” verification. If you’re not an Group, then fallback to Individual.
• Designated FAQPage: Guarantee you may have an FAQpage as these may be included alongside product-level FAQs and used as a part of its decision-making.

Put together Your Service provider Heart Feed

UCP will make the most of your present Service provider Heart feed as the invention layer. Which means past the conventional on-site schema you present, Service provider Heart itself requires extra particulars that you could populate inside its platform.

• Return insurance policies (required to be a Service provider of Document): Full all return prices, return home windows, and coverage hyperlinks. These might be used not simply inside the checkout and transactional areas, however once more a consideration for choice in any respect. Superior accounts want insurance policies at every sub-account degree.
• Buyer help info: Not solely would preliminary info be provided to the client, however there could also be methods through which entry-level buyer help queries may be utterly managed, thus growing buyer satisfaction whereas minimizing buyer help agent capability.
• Agentic checkout eligibility: Add the native_commerce attribute to your feed, as merchandise are solely eligible right here if that is arrange.
• Product identifiers: Every product will need to have an ID, and correlate to the product ID when utilizing the checkout API.
• Product shopper warnings: Any product warning ought to assert the consumer_notice attribute.

Google recommends that this be carried out by means of a supplemental knowledge supply in Service provider Heart moderately than modifying your major feed, which might stop incorrect formatting or different invalidation.

Lastly, double-check if the merchandise you’re promoting aren’t included inside its product restrictions record, as there are a number of that, in case you do provide these issues, it’s best to contemplate the right way to handle alongside the skills of UCP.

Optimizing Conversational Commerce Attributes

Inside the UCP blog post announcement, Srinivasan launched a manner for extra readability with conversational commerce attributes:

“…we’re saying dozens of recent knowledge attributes in Service provider Heart designed for simple discovery within the conversational commerce period, on surfaces like AI Mode, Gemini and Enterprise Agent. These new attributes complement retailers’ present knowledge feeds and transcend conventional key phrases to incorporate issues like solutions to frequent product questions, suitable equipment or substitutes.”

These present additional readability (and due to this fact reduce hallucinations) through the discovery course of in an effort to be chosen or dominated out.

Not solely would this incorporate product and brand-related FAQs, however take this a step additional to additionally contemplate:

• Compatibility: Potential up-sell alternatives.
• Substitution: A possibility for coping with out-of-stock objects.
• Associated merchandise: Nice for cross-sell alternatives.

Moreover, this can be utilized to develop into much more particular, transferring past primary attributes to agent-parseable particulars. Now, if a product is “purple” on a primary degree, “darkish purple” and even one thing unobvious, resembling “Wolf” (actual instance beneath), could also be extra acceptable for finer element whereas nonetheless falling beneath “purple.” The identical may be thought-about for sizes, supplies (or a mix of supplies), and many others.

Multi-Modal Fan-Out Choice

When executed effectively, optimizing for conversational commerce attributes will enhance the potential of choice inside fan-out question outcomes. When contemplating a few of these attributes, it’s price instruments, resembling WordLift’s Visible Fan-Out simulator, which illustrates how a single picture decomposes into a number of search intents, revealing which attributes brokers could prioritize when performing question fan-out. However how would this look?

For example, I used one product picture and browsed downward three horizons. Utilizing On’s Cloudsurfer Max for instance (used with permission):

Utilizing only one product picture, that is what’s introduced on the floor:

It instantly seen that the product was On, and particularly from the Cloudsurfer vary. Nice begin! Now let’s see what it sees over the horizon:

Right here, you possibly can draw inspiration or route on how greatest to put your self for potential and certain fan-out queries. With this instance, I discovered it fascinating that Horizon 2 mentions efficiency working gear as a big class, then when performing fan-out on that confirmed the associated merchandise round gear typically. This reveals how vast LLMs contemplate choice and how one can current attributes to draw choice.

UCP’s Roadmap Is Increasing Into Multi-Verticals

UCP is already planning to transcend one single buy however expands past retail into journey, companies, and different verticals. Its roadmap particulars a number of priorities over the approaching yr, together with:

• Multi‑merchandise carts and sophisticated baskets: Shifting past single‑merchandise checkout to native multi‑merchandise carts, bundling, promotions, tax/delivery logic, and extra sensible success dealing with.
• Loyalty and account linking: Standardized loyalty program administration and account linking so brokers can apply factors, member pricing, and advantages throughout retailers.
• Put up‑buy help: Assist for order monitoring, returns, and buyer‑service handoff so brokers can handle buyer help post-sale.
• Personalization alerts: Richer alerts for cross‑promote/upsell, wishlists, historical past, and context‑primarily based suggestions.
• New verticals: Enlargement past retail into journey, companies, digital items, and meals/restaurant use circumstances by way of extensions to the protocol.

Every of the factors above is price additional studying and consideration if that is one thing your model could provide. Moreover, its plans to broaden past retail into journey, companies, digital items, and hospitality imply that, in case you’re working inside any of those verticals, you must be much more ready to make sure eligibility.

Social Proof And Third-Get together Perspective

No matter how effectively chances are you’ll optimize on-site to organize for UCP, all this knowledge integrity nonetheless must be validated by trusted third-party sources.

Third-party platforms, resembling Trustpilot and G2, look like incessantly cited and trusted amongst a lot of the LLMs, so I’d nonetheless advise that you just proceed to gather these optimistic model and product opinions in an effort to fulfill consensus, leading to extra alternatives to be chosen throughout product discovery.

TL;DR – Put together Now

In case you personal or handle any type of ecommerce website, now could be the time to make sure you’re making ready for UCP’s rollout as quickly as doable. It’s solely a matter of time, and with AI Mode spreading into default experiences, getting forward of the rollout is crucial.

1. Be a part of the UCP waitlist.
2. Put together Service provider Heart: return insurance policies, native_commerce attribute.
3. Guarantee your builders analysis and perceive the UCP documentation.
4. Populate conversational attributes: question-answers, compatibility, substitutes.
5. Audit and enhance any schema the place relevant.

That is transferring sooner than most earlier commerce shifts, and types that look forward to full rollout alerts will already be behind. This isn’t a short-term LLM gimmick however is a part of the most important change within the ecommerce house.

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Featured Picture: Roman Samborskyi/Shutterstock