2 million product listings tracked from Aug. 9-31 showed Google AI Mode and the regular Popular products carousel rarely surfaced the same items for the same query and day, with just 1.28% overlap.
Among products that appeared in both places, the first-listed seller differed 49.6% of the time and prices differed 38.1% of the time; when prices diverged, AI Mode showed the higher price in 68.4% of cases.
AI Mode displayed far fewer products per query—3.9 on average versus 27.8 in the carousel—while matched products were priced 21.6% higher on average in AI Mode, though Productrise said outliers inflated some gaps.
Google told Futurism it has not verified the report's claims but said AI Mode and standard search shopping results draw from the same Shopping Graph, and shoppers can click through to compare offers from multiple retailers.
For merchants, the findings suggest AI Mode can surface a competing seller first even for the same product, while Google's current AI performance insights report does not show seller- or price-level detail.