What Changed in Digital Marketing: Universal Cart Is Live, Check Your Google Ads Automated Assets

Key Takeaways

Google launched Universal Cart in the US on 15 October, letting shoppers fill one cart across Search and Gemini from multiple retailers. Australia and Canada follow next year.
The cart has two checkout paths: native Google Pay (Google handles the transaction) or cart transfer to the merchant’s site. Shopify merchants have Direct Checkout enabled by default, which means Google Analytics and custom pixels do not fire on those purchases.
From 12 October, Google automatically enrolled Search and Performance Max campaigns in automated promotions, where it scans your site for deals and applies them as assets. It is opt-out.
Meta’s updated Commercial Terms take effect 30 October and expand crawling rights to any business using Meta’s products, including businesses that do not run paid ads. Meta later removed “train” from the stated purposes, but legal experts note “develop, improve, research” is still broad enough to cover AI training.
Google released Ads API v26 with Search Lift measurement, which tracks whether campaigns increased branded or category searches, separate from conversions.
Unexplained Google ranking volatility was reported on 16 October. No update has been confirmed.

Five things moved this week. Two have deadlines. Google’s Universal Cart launched on 15 October, and automated promotions enrolled your campaigns without asking. Meta’s crawling terms expand on 30 October. Anyone who runs Search, Performance Max, or a Facebook Page needs to know what changed and where to check.

Google Universal Cart Is Now Live

On 15 October, Google launched Universal Cart across Search and the Gemini app in the United States, reported by Search Engine Journal. Google had announced the feature at I/O in May and promised a northern-hemisphere summer launch.

The concept: a shopper can add products from different retailers into one cart without visiting any of those sites first. The cart lives in their Google account. They get price-drop and restock alerts. Google Wallet surfaces payment options and promo codes. It works across Search and Gemini, with YouTube and Gmail to follow.

Named merchants at launch include Nike, Target, Walmart, Sephora, Ulta Beauty, Wayfair, and many Shopify merchants.

There are two checkout paths. Native checkout completes through Google Pay and stays inside Google’s interface. Cart transfer sends the user to the merchant’s site with a pre-filled cart. In both cases, the merchant remains the seller of record.

The tracking gap you need to know about

Shopify merchants in the US have Direct Checkout enabled by default for eligible stores. When a purchase goes through Google Pay rather than the merchant’s own checkout, Google Analytics and custom pixels do not fire. The transaction exists in UCP Analytics, a separate dashboard inside Merchant Center, not in the site’s analytics stack.

That creates a gap that matters in practice. A customer adds your product on Monday, receives a price alert on Wednesday, and checks out through Google Pay on Thursday. Your GA4 records nothing from that journey. The sale happened, and Google’s UCP Analytics recorded it, but your normal reporting never saw it. Shopify merchants should check whether Direct Checkout is active under Sales channels, then Agentic, in their admin.

For New Zealand businesses, the immediate relevance is preparation. Google has confirmed Australian and Canadian rollouts for next year. No date is set, but the US launch is the reference. Any retailer with products in Google Shopping Merchant Center should review UCP integration requirements now and confirm their product feed is clean, pricing is accurate, and GTINs match. Those are the prerequisites regardless of when the format arrives here.

Google Enrolled Your Campaigns in Automated Promotions

Starting 12 October, Google automatically activated automated promotions on eligible Search and Performance Max campaigns, reported by Search Engine Roundtable.

The feature scans your website for deals, coupons, and promotional offers, then attaches them as promotion assets to eligible campaigns. Google’s stated aim is to surface valid offers at the moment of user intent.

The eligibility criteria are specific. The feature only runs on campaigns that have linked location assets and no promotion assets already manually set. If you have already added promotion extensions to a campaign, Google will not overwrite them.

It is opt-out. Advertisers were enrolled automatically. To turn it off: go to account-level Assets, click Automated Assets, find Automated Promotions, and switch it to Off.

Why you should check before dismissing it

The risk is not that Google runs promotions. The risk is that it runs the wrong ones.

If your site has an old promotional landing page you never removed, a seasonal discount that has since expired, or a promo code that stopped working, Google may find it and display it in your ads. A user who sees “15% off this month” in your ad, clicks through, and finds no such offer on your site converts at a lower rate than a user who arrived with no offer expectation at all. Showing an inaccurate promotion reduces performance on an otherwise well-run campaign.

The check takes ten minutes. Log into Google Ads, go to Assets at account level, select Automated Assets, and read what Google has found. If the offers are accurate and current, you might leave them running. If any are stale, turn the feature off.

Meta’s Crawling Terms Expand to All Business Users

Meta’s updated Commercial Terms take effect on 30 October and extend the company’s crawling rights beyond advertisers to any business that uses its products. Search Engine Journal reported the initial change on 16 October and followed up on 19 October with a revised version of the clause.

Under the updated terms, Meta, and anyone acting on Meta’s behalf, may use bots, scrapers, and automated tools to collect content from websites tied to a business’s products or services. The stated purposes are to develop, improve, research, and maintain advertising and business products, plus maintaining their integrity and security. Continued use of Meta’s business tools counts as agreement.

The previous version covered advertisers and their linked domains. The new version covers any business use of Meta’s products, including managing a Facebook Page, using Meta Business Suite, or having an Instagram business account, without ever running a paid ad.

The training question

After the initial reports, Meta revised the clause to remove “train” from the stated purposes. Several legal experts quoted in SEJ’s follow-up say that matters less than it appears to. Matt Topic, a media and technology lawyer, noted that “develop” and “improve” can cover training in practice. James Grimmelmann of Cornell Law described the remaining language as “still broad enough to drive a truck through.”

As of 19 October, the UK English version of the Self-Serve Ad Terms still contained the original “train” wording. Meta says the crawling terms apply only to its ads and business products and that the update “does not change how Meta uses web crawlers.”

What you can actually do

Meta operates several distinct crawlers. Meta-ExternalAgent handles AI training. Meta-WebIndexer supports Meta AI search. Meta-ExternalFetcher, per Meta’s own documentation, may ignore robots.txt when fetching pages at a user’s direct request.

You can attempt to block specific crawlers in robots.txt. Meta has said site owners “can still manage how their content is accessed” this way. However, the new terms do not mention robots.txt at all, and legal experts note Meta could argue the contractual agreement overrides blocking instructions.

The practical step before 30 October: check your robots.txt against Meta’s known crawler tokens and decide which ones, if any, you want to block. Understand that it is a technical signal, not a contractual protection under the new terms.

For most New Zealand small businesses using a Facebook Page for organic marketing, the real decision is whether the value of those platforms is worth agreeing to the new terms. For most it is. The important thing is making that decision consciously rather than finding out months later that you agreed by inaction.

Google Ads API v26 and What Search Lift Measures

In mid-October, Google released Ads API v26, covered by Search Engine Roundtable. This is a developer-facing update, but the measurement additions are worth understanding.

The headline feature for measurement is Search Lift. This tracks whether a campaign increased branded or category search volume on Google, independently of clicks or conversions. The distinction from Conversion Lift, which the previous roundup covered in detail, is the question each answers.

Conversion Lift asks: did our ads cause conversions that would not have happened without them? Search Lift asks: did our ads cause users to search more?

A business running awareness-stage Performance Max spend might see meaningful Search Lift on branded terms, reflecting increased recall, without that lift appearing in last-click conversion reports. The branded organic searches that follow earn credit in organic Search, not PMax. Search Lift makes that intermediate effect measurable.

Other additions in v26: Local Services Performance Max campaign creation via API, unified enhanced conversions configuration, and Travel bid modifiers that work across verticals. If your account is managed through a third-party tool, expect platform updates as it migrates to v26.

Google Ranking Volatility on 16 October, Still Unconfirmed

Search Engine Roundtable reported notable ranking volatility and SEO community chatter on 16 October, with site owners noting position changes and referral traffic disruption. Google has not confirmed an update.

If your traffic changed around that date, the check is the same as after any unexplained movement. Open Search Console’s Pages report and look at which pages moved. Broad movement across unrelated topic clusters is a stronger signal of an algorithmic event than a shift on one subject area. If affected pages have thin content, heavily AI-generated copy without editorial review, or recent link profile changes, those are the logical places to start.

If traffic is stable, there is nothing to investigate.

What Connects All Four

The pattern this week is platforms moving commercial activity inside their own infrastructure and enrolling businesses by default rather than asking.

Universal Cart keeps more of the shopping journey inside Google. Automated promotions pull offers from your site and run them without your setup. Meta’s terms create a contractual basis for crawling any business’s web presence, not only advertisers. Search Lift is part of the measurement infrastructure that justifies spend on surfaces where conversion credit is hard to attribute directly.

None of these are straightforwardly bad for the businesses they affect. The Universal Cart will convert some incremental shoppers. Automated promotions running accurate offers may improve performance. Meta crawling your product pages feeds recommendation systems that surface your business to interested users. The point is not that the changes are harmful. The point is that “enrolled” is now the default, and staying across what you have agreed to is the business owner’s job, not the platform’s.

What To Do This Week

Check your Google Ads automated assets today. Log in, go to account-level Assets, then Automated Assets, and find Automated Promotions. Read what Google has found on your site. If any offer is expired, inaccurate, or not something you want in your ads, turn the feature off at account level.

If you sell products online and have a Merchant Center account, review UCP integration requirements now. Universal Cart’s Australian rollout is next year. A clean product feed, accurate pricing, and correct GTINs are the foundation. Get that right before the format arrives.

Review your robots.txt before 30 October. If you use any Meta business product, look up Meta’s crawler tokens and decide which, if any, to block. Meta-ExternalAgent is the AI training crawler. Meta-WebIndexer is the AI search crawler. Blocking is a technical measure, not a legal opt-out under the new terms, but it is the control you have.

Note Search Lift when it appears in your account. It does not require campaign changes now. When the metrics become available after your platform migrates to API v26, they give awareness-stage campaigns a readable signal that conversion reports cannot provide on their own.

We track these updates each week and apply them directly to the accounts we manage. If you would rather have someone running that process on yours, get in touch.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Google’s Universal Cart and when is it coming to New Zealand?

Universal Cart lets shoppers add products from multiple retailers into a single cart, accessible across Google Search and Gemini. It launched in the US on 15 October 2026. Google has confirmed rollouts in Australia and Canada for next year, with no specific dates. New Zealand will likely follow after Australia.

How do I opt out of Google’s automated promotions feature?

Log into Google Ads, navigate to the account-level Assets section, click Automated Assets, find Automated Promotions, and set it to Off. The feature was automatically enabled on 12 October for eligible Search and Performance Max campaigns that have linked location assets and no manually added promotion assets.

Do Meta’s new crawling terms affect businesses that do not run Meta ads?

Yes. The previous terms only covered advertisers and their linked domains. The updated terms, effective 30 October, apply to any business use of Meta’s products, including managing a Facebook Page or an Instagram business account without running paid ads. Continued use of Meta’s business tools is treated as agreement.

Does Meta’s crawling clause allow AI training on my website content?

Meta removed the word “train” from the clause after initial reports. The revised clause covers developing, improving, researching, and maintaining advertising and business products. Legal experts quoted in Search Engine Journal note that “develop” and “improve” are broad enough to cover training in practice. Meta says the update does not change how it uses web crawlers.

What is the difference between Search Lift and Conversion Lift in Google Ads?

Conversion Lift measures whether your ads caused conversions that would not have happened otherwise, using a holdout group. Search Lift measures whether your ads caused users to search more on Google, independently of whether those searches converted. Search Lift is useful for awareness-stage campaigns where the conversion journey involves a subsequent organic search that does not get attributed back to the original ad impression.