Earlier this week, Google announced Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) and it has a lot of the industry worried. Once SEO named Ramon Eijkemans said, "I hate to bring this, but SEOs: we’re gonna be f$@*ed." John Mueller from Google responded on Bluesky and said, "I disagree."
As a reminder, "The Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) is an open standard designed for the future of commerce, empowering you to turn AI interactions into instant sales. Adopt UCP to enable agentic actions on Google AI Mode and Gemini, starting with direct buying," as Google defines it.
It basically gives merchants a way to allow their products to be sold directly through AI experiences like Gemini, AI Mode and other AI engines. But, in this case, I agree with Sundar Pichai, Google's CEO, who said a while back some people like to shop in a physical store and also some like to shop online, you will see some people also shopping through AI agents. All three will continue to exist.
And John Mueller from Google seems to agree.
Ramon wrote:
I hate to bring this, but SEOs: we’re gonna be fucked.UCP takes over all optimizations. Our clients can only fulfill and pay ads.
Non-commerce moves away from search and behind paywalls.
Some might move their career into engineering feeds; others move into PR.
Just saying.
Here is John's full reply:
I disagree, but also, when it comes to technology, it's always good to be nimble.
It doesn't mean you should ignore UCP, it will be something that you should help clients set up so that customer who want to buy via AI can. But it won't be the only way customers buy in the future.
Forum discussion at Bluesky.
