Google Loyalty Customer Match Expands To AI Mode & More Regions
Google has updated its Merchant Center help documentation for merchant loyalty programmes, extending Loyalty Customer Match into AI Mode and Gemini. The change means loyalty member data can now be used to shape what those surfaces show shoppers, not just conventional ad placements.
The programme has grown from nine markets to 14. India, Italy, the Netherlands, South Korea and Spain join the existing list of the US, UK, Germany, France, Canada, Brazil, Mexico and Australia, with Japan handled separately for points programmes. The documentation also adds a country-by-country and device-by-device availability matrix.
Several eligibility rules were rewritten. Loyalty participation is now explicitly open to non-advertisers, and free-to-join programmes cannot require an eventual payment, including certain free trials. Loyalty points and completed orders are recognised as qualifying membership types, and Loyalty Customer Match is now delivered through the Merchant API.
For brands chasing citations in AI answers, the expansion matters because loyalty membership data is a first-party signal Google can use to decide which merchants appear in AI Mode and Gemini responses. Merchants in the newly added countries can now feed that signal in.
Reported by Search Engine Roundtable ↗
Topics: AI Mode, Gemini, Google Search