Amazon says more than 400 million customers used Alexa for shopping in the past twelve months, while Andy Jassy called outside AI shopping agents still not great. Google opened Search and Gemini to third-party apps via MCP. Paris Childress also covers a study on direct answers in AI-cited pages, sponsored products in AI Mode, longer and multimodal AI Mode queries, seoClarity's estimate of ChatGPT at about 7.5% of Google's query volume, and Meta's loss in a Paris appeals court.
Amazon says more than 400 million customers used Alexa for shopping in the past twelve months, while Andy Jassy called outside AI shopping agents still not great. Google opened Search and Gemini to third-party apps via MCP. Paris Childress also covers a study on direct answers in AI-cited pages, sponsored products in AI Mode, longer and multimodal AI Mode queries, seoClarity's estimate of ChatGPT at about 7.5% of Google's query volume, and Meta's loss in a Paris appeals court.
Amazon's Q3 results say more than 400 million customers used Alexa, its agentic shopping assistant, for shopping in the past twelve months, and interactions were up 570% year over year. On the earnings call, Andy Jassy said shopping through outside AI agents is still not great and no more convenient than going to a retailer directly.
Google launched a preview of its connected apps platform:
Paris asks whether this is the App Store moment for AI search or Google Assistant actions all over again. If you already have an API or MCP server, apply for access now and track how Google handles discovery.
GEO agency TJ Digital studied 193,507 AI answers from AI Mode, AI Overviews and ChatGPT, tracked in PiqueAI across 78 client businesses and 4,167 non-branded buyer questions from August 27 to October 21. It found:
The author says these are associations, not proof of cause. Paris treats answer-first as a hypothesis to test, not a proven rule. Disclosure: TJ Digital and PiqueAI are third parties, not affiliated with GEOforge; the study figures cited are theirs.
Google confirmed it is experimenting with an AI Mode format that mixes sponsored products into product results, under headers such as Sponsored or All Products, with every sponsored listing labeled. It came a day after Google expanded AI Mode ads to ten more markets.
Organic product visibility in AI Mode may increasingly share space with ads, and Paris thinks monetization is likely why AI Mode is not yet the default Google experience.
On Google's Ads Decoded podcast, Ginny Marvin and Shivani Mohan said AI Mode queries are three times longer than traditional searches, and Google says more than one in six US AI Mode searches are multimodal. Separately, seoClarity estimates ChatGPT handles about 1.24 billion search-like messages a day, roughly 7.5% of its estimate of 16.4 billion daily Google queries.
seoClarity calls it a modeled comparison, not measured market share. 7.5% is meaningful, but still about an order of magnitude below Google.
Paris: Hi, everybody. Welcome to The GEO Show, brought to you by GEOforge, full self-driving for AI visibility. I'm your host, Paris Childress, and we are recording on a Friday, October 30th, with some great stories. And the headline theme here is agents are becoming the storefront. Amazon says that 400 million-plus have used its own shopping agent, while Google opens Search and Gemini to apps So that's a nice transition into our first story from Amazon. Four hundred million plus customers used Alexa for shopping, and the CEO Jassy calls outside agents "still not great."
Paris: Amazon's Q3 results say more than four hundred million customers used Alexa for shopping, its agentic shopping assistant, in the past twelve months. Interactions were up five hundred and seventy percent year over year. On the earnings call, Andy Jassy said, "Shopping through outside AI agents is still not great and no more convenient than going to a retailer directly." All right, moving on to the next story. Google opens Search, AI Mode Search, and Gemini to third-party apps via MCP. Google launched a preview of its connected apps platform, which lets developers bring their apps into Gemini and Search through an MCP server or Android's app functions.
Paris: Google says more than 50 connected apps already exist, and new apps reach Search in the coming weeks. So here's how this works. Developers integrate through a cloud-hosted MCP server or Android app functions. Then they register, test, and submit in the Google Connected Console and choose Search, Gemini, or both. Brands get verified logos and authenticated accounts. Rollout access opens in phases over the coming months. Already live is Adobe, Experian, Localiza, and Peloton. Users must add an app in their Search settings before it appears there. Well, this seems to be the App Store moment for AI search Or is it Google Assistant actions all over again?
Paris: If you do already have an API or an MCP server, I would apply for access now and track how Google handles discovery. Next up, from an agency study, AI-cited pages opened with a direct answer more often. GEO agency TJ Digital studied 193,507 AI answers tracked in PiqueAI. Pages that AI cited opened with a direct answer 20% of the time. The Google top ten pages the AI never pulled up did so only 5% of the time. The author says that these are associations, not proof of cause. So here's the methodology. There were 78 client businesses, 4,167 non-branded buyer questions, and 193,507 answers from AI Mode, AI Overviews, and ChatGPT collected weekly from August 27th to October 21st The direct answers first.
Paris: Cited pages versus pages that the AI never pulled up, we saw that there were 20% direct answers from the cited pages and only 5% of direct answers from pages that the AI never pulled up And cited pages versus pages it pulled up but did not cite, those direct answers were 23% versus just 14%. So this is one of the largest recent observational data sets that we've seen behind the answer-first heuristic. It is still a hypothesis to test, and it's not a proven rule. I think overall, this is a signal that these AI engines are trying to increasingly provide the user with a shortcut to the answer.
Paris: So even when they get that shortcut via the answer itself, if they choose to click into a citation, we're seeing an increasing, serving of the direct answer also in that citation page once it opens. Interesting. All right, next up. Google confirms an AI Mode test that mixes sponsored products into product results. Google confirmed it is experimenting with an AI Mode format that mixes sponsored products into product results. The results sit under headers such as Sponsored or All Products, and Google says every sponsored listing is labeled. The screenshots came via Search Engine Watch.
Paris: Google told Search Engine Roundtable the format is part of our ongoing experiments with ads in AI Mode. This comes a day after Google expanded AI Mode ads to ten more markets So this matters because organic product visibility in AI Mode may increasingly share space with ads, and I think that Google is most likely holding back AI Mode as becoming the default Google experience, most likely due to monetization with ads. So this is more testing for them to try to solve for that challenge. Okay, next story. Also from Google, AI Mode queries are three times longer, and one in six-plus US AI Mode searches are multimodal On Google's Ads Decoded podcast, Ginny Marvin and Shivani Mohan said AI Mode queries are three times longer than traditional searches.
Paris: Google's AI Mode report says that more than one in six US AI Mode searches are multimodal Very interesting, and not a big surprise actually that they're three times longer than search queries, but the fact that one in six are multimodal also shows that, G-Google is, really keen on showing not just text results, but images and videos and even maybe some graphics that it designs itself for the SERP Next story. SEOclarity estimates ChatGPT at about 7.5% of Google's query volume. SEOclarity estimates ChatGPT now handles about 1.24 billion search-like messages a day.
Paris: That is roughly 7.5% of its estimate of 16.4 billion daily Google queries. SEOclarity calls this a model, a modeled comparison, but not a measured market share. So this is giving a rough sense of the massive scale of ChatGPT. 7.5% is meaningful, but it is still an order of magnitude below Google. Next story. Meta loses Paris appeal and must share revenue and usage data with French press groups. A Paris appeals court upheld interim measures against Meta. Meta now must give French press groups revenue and usage data and negotiate in good faith across its services.
Paris: No payment amount was set. This case was originally brought by APIG, a group of 300-plus newspapers, and DVP, comprised of 920 publications. The court said Meta's practices appear capable of constituting an abuse of dominance in an unofficial translation. Meta says that it is complying. So European regulators here are forcing platforms to disclose the value they get from news, and that precedent is likely to reach AI answer engines as well. All right, let's wrap up with some lightning round stories. First, Gemini 4 Carbon is announced with early access limited to cyber defenders and partners.
Paris: That is starting to become a pattern. Second, Merchant API now reports performance for agentic checkout under UCP, or Universal Commerce Protocol, in an early V1 alpha version confirmed by Search Engine Roundtable. Next, EU search data sharing. DuckDuckGo says Google faces no external audit of the search data it must share with rivals under the EU Digital Markets Act. Sharing is due on January 2027. Next, 404 pages. Google says 404s are not an SEO problem and recommends custom 404 pages. And last, about restaurants. Business profiles now let restaurants turn off third-party ordering providers.
Paris: Okay, that will do it for this episode of The GEO Show. Thanks for tuning in and see you all in the next one.
