DSAs are going away. Here's what that means for large-catalogue Shopify stores
Last week covered Shopify giving AI agents direct access to your store. This week the big story is on the paid side. Google has confirmed that Dynamic Search Ads are being retired, with an auto-migration to AI Max starting in September. For stores that have been running DSAs as part of their Search strategy, this one needs attention before the summer.
Also in this issue: new Adobe data showing AI-referred traffic is now converting 42% better than regular search traffic, a significant Chrome upgrade to Google AI Mode, a podcast milestone, and the usual jobs and partner sections.
On to the news!
Dynamic Search Ads are being retired in September
Google confirmed this week that Dynamic Search Ads will be automatically migrated to AI Max for Search in September 2026. The tools to run the migration yourself are available now, and Google's strong recommendation is to make the transition before the auto-migration rather than letting it happen to you.
DSAs have been a useful campaign type for large-catalogue stores for reasons that go beyond just scaling ad coverage. One of the more underappreciated uses was spotting gaps in taxonomy. If you could see that category-level terms were being served by DSAs rather than dedicated collection pages, that was usually a signal that a collection needed creating. The DSA was surfacing demand that the site structure had not caught up with, and that logic applied equally to SEO as it did to PPC. Losing that visibility is a genuine loss, even if AI Max turns out to be a reasonable replacement in most other respects.
AI Max is positioned as the successor, building on DSA's targeting approach while adding more content signals for both targeting and creative. The practical additions include text guidelines to set guardrails for AI-generated assets, brand and location controls at the ad group level, and consolidated workflows where keywords, landing page targeting, and assets sit together. Search term reporting also improves, which matters because that is where trust in any automated campaign type lives or dies.
The concerns being raised in the PPC community are worth being aware of. DSA's URL targeting gave granular control over which pages were served for which queries, and the ability to combine URL and page content conditions was particularly useful for large catalogues where you need precision over what surfaces for what. Whether AI Max replicates that level of control needs to be verified in practice. Google's guidance is that keywords are not required in AI Max ad groups and that keywordless targeting works similarly to DSA, but that needs testing before anyone builds workflows around it.
The auto-migration lands in September, just before Black Friday. Starting the migration now gives you time to test, catch issues, and stabilise performance before peak rather than inheriting whatever Google's automated process produces.
🔗 Google: We're upgrading Dynamic Search Ads to AI Max
Google AI Mode is now built into Chrome
Google rolled out a significant upgrade to AI Mode in Chrome on 16 April. The headline change is a split-screen interface: when you search in AI Mode and click a link, the page opens alongside the AI conversation rather than replacing it. The AI can see the page you are reading and use it as context for follow-up questions.
A new plus menu lets you pull content from open tabs (including PDFs and images) directly into an AI Mode query. So a buyer researching products can have multiple tabs open, add them as context, and ask questions across all of them at once.
This is currently US-only and rolling out to other regions. The SEO implications are real. If more discovery is happening through AI Mode rather than traditional search results, the click behaviour changes significantly. Someone getting their question answered within Chrome without visiting your site is a pattern that will affect organic traffic in ways that standard impression and click data will not capture.
🔗 Google: A new way to explore the web with AI Mode in Chrome
AI traffic to retail sites is up 393% but most product pages are not readable by AI
Adobe published a report this week with some numbers worth looking at, with the obvious caveat that Adobe are promoting their own AI visibility tool and the scoring methodology is theirs. Take the specific percentages with that in mind, but the directional story is interesting regardless of who is telling it.
AI-sourced traffic to US retail sites grew 393% year on year in Q1 2026. More significantly, that traffic is now converting 42% better than non-AI traffic, a complete reversal from March 2025, when it converted 38% worse. AI-referred visitors are also spending 48% longer on site and browsing 13% more pages once they arrive.
The visibility data is where it gets relevant. Adobe scored pages across the US retail sector on how readable they are to LLMs. Product pages averaged 66%, meaning roughly a third of the content on each product page is currently invisible to the AI systems increasingly driving purchase decisions. Homepages and category pages came in slightly higher at around 74-75%.
For large-catalogue stores, that product page figure is the one to sit with. The gap between the best and worst performing retailers in the dataset is 52 percentage points, which suggests this is not a technical inevitability. It is a choice that some brands have already made and others have not.
🔗 Adobe: AI traffic grows but retail sites lag in AI search visibility
A small but useful update in the Shopify customiser
Andy Russell, our senior developer, spotted this one. The Shopify theme customiser now displays the viewport dimensions of your preview window - so as you resize or switch between device views, you can see the exact pixel size you are working at.
A small change, but useful for anyone doing responsive theme work where the exact breakpoint matters.
A useful B2B resource as a follow-up to last week
We covered Shopify's B2B expansion recently. Core wholesale features are now available across all Shopify plans, not just Plus. Ross Allchorn has put together a thorough feature comparison across all plan tiers that is worth bookmarking if you are advising clients on this or evaluating it for your own store.
🔗 Shopify B2B: Feature parity across all plans, April 2026
Google Ads accounts targeting Canada will receive credits
A short one for anyone running campaigns into Canada. The Canadian Digital Services Tax was formally rescinded on 26 March 2026, and Google has confirmed it is issuing credits for all DST fees previously charged. Credits will be applied to the payments profile that was originally charged.
Episode 300 is a genuine milestone for any podcast, and I was extremely grateful that Chloë Thomas asked me to be part of it. The episode pulls together top tactics for growing an ecommerce store from a range of guests. I'm obviously biassed, but it's well worth a listen.
🔗 Keep Optimising episode 300: Top tips for ecommerce store growth
Jobs
Hiring:
Ancient + Brave, one of our absolute favourite clients, are actively hiring. Open roles include a Front End Developer and a Performance Media Executive, both on-site in Lewes, East Sussex. B Corp, Shopify Plus, £20m revenue in 2024.
Brooklinen are looking for a Director of Digital Commerce in New York. A player-coach role owning digital storefront performance and site merchandising, leading a team of four, reporting to VP of Ecommerce and Marketplaces.
Aeon Athletics are hiring a Head of Growth. Fast-scaling activewear brand operating across European markets with a €50M+ revenue target. Full ownership of paid acquisition across Meta and TikTok, building a creative testing system. Looking for someone who has scaled a DTC brand from around €1M to €10M-€30M+. Remote, international.
Looking for work:
Ashley Allen is a Buyer and Marketplace Specialist with a background in menswear, sports and outdoors. Most recently E-Commerce Manager at Vault Menswear. Open to new roles now.
If you are hiring and the role fits someone with large-catalogue Shopify experience, or you are looking and have that background, send me a message.
Partner shout-out
John Brolly is Head of Partnerships EMEA at Athos Commerce, a platform we are big fans of for large-catalogue stores. Athos brings together product discovery, site search, merchandising, and personalisation in one place, and their focus on getting the right product in front of the right shopper is very aligned with how we think about catalogue structure. John is also wonderful and has exceptional taste in music.
🔗 athoscommerce.com
See you next week.
Sam
Who am I and what does Blink do?
I'm Sam Wright, Managing Director and co-founder of Blink SEO. We're a search marketing agency that works exclusively with large-catalogue Shopify stores - the kind where the challenge isn't just visibility, but helping customers find the right product in the first place.
We specialise in SEO and PPC for merchants managing hundreds or thousands of products. Most of our work starts with taxonomy: how a store is structured and categorised, and what that means for organic performance, paid efficiency, and on-site discovery.
If you found this useful and aren't already subscribed, you can sign up at blinkseo.co.uk/blinktank.
If you run a large-catalogue Shopify store and want to talk about organic or paid performance, reply to this email or find me at blinkseo.co.uk.