Akhil Suresh Nair
Founder & CEO, XENA Intelligence
Akhil Suresh Nair is the founder and CEO of XENA Intelligence, the Louisville, Kentucky company behind Searchpanel. He writes the Searchpanel blog and the Xenalytics infographics on AI search visibility, answer engine optimization (AEO), Amazon marketplace growth, CPG ecommerce and retail media. He is a Babson College alumnus.
Blog posts
ChatGPT now shows brands their mentions. Here's what the count misses for CPG brands
OpenAI launched Business Hub and Business Agents in ChatGPT on November 10. Brands can claim a profile, connect a product feed and see mentions and clicks. But a mention only counts when ChatGPT cites your own website, and ChatGPT's product answers lean on retailers. Here's how CPG brands should set it up, with a readiness checklist.
ChatGPT and Gemini pick the store before the product. What new grocery data means for CPG brands
EMARKETER's AI Visibility Index tracked 22,500 ChatGPT and Gemini store recommendations. In grocery, Costco and Whole Foods lead, Aldi slipped four points in a month, and Gemini leans on Tasting Table and The Kitchn while ChatGPT spreads its sources. Here's why the store answer matters for CPG brands, with a store-answer audit.
One in seven retailers turned away an AI shopping agent. What CPG brands should check before Black Friday
Blend Commerce sent an AI shopping agent to 200 U.S. and U.K. retailers. Bot protection turned it away at 29 of them, even though every refusing store whose robots.txt could be read welcomes AI search crawlers. Only 18% of readable stores published a GTIN. Here are the CPG sector scores, a filterable table of U.S. retailers and a checklist for brand teams.
Nearly half of shoppers who bought an AI pick sent it back. CPG brands should fix the data
Blue Yonder's 2026 Consumer Retail Returns Survey found that 24% of U.S. consumers have bought a product on an AI recommendation, and 46% of those shoppers returned one in the past year. The top reason was not size. It was that the item was different than described (36%, vs. 20% of all U.S. returns). Here's what the survey measured and a product-data checklist for CPG brands.
Amazon's shopping agent now takes orders by text. Here's how CPG brands make the short list
On November 6 Amazon started letting invited U.S. customers text Alexa for Shopping, and its examples read like a CPG shopping list. Digiday reports Sponsored Products in the replies, free for now, while auto-buys stay ad-free. An 11-day test found 67% of recommendation slots went to 50 products. Here's what decides the picks and a hero-SKU checklist.
Google AI Mode linked only to Google in nearly half of US product answers. Here's what CPG brands should fix in their Shopping feed
Findrix measured 55,198 AI answers and found Google AI Mode linked only to Google in 46.5% of US product answers, with 57% of those links going to Shopping pages. ChatGPT still leans on Ulta, Reddit and Walmart. Amazon's new Shop Direct portal makes the same feed bet for Alexa. Here's the category data and a Merchant Center checklist.
Three AI models shopped the same product list and never agreed. Here's what CPG brands should check in their catalog data
Three Claude models given the same Shopify Catalog list never agreed on a top pick across six searches. Two models cited a review count about 68 times higher than the brand's page. With Shop Pay live in Muse and Google UCP checkout expanding, CPG brands should audit what agents read.
Shopify says AI shoppers reward specific products. Here’s what CPG brands should fix in their product data
Shopify’s Q3 call put numbers on AI shopping: orders up 3.3x, product-page landings at 3x the rate of organic search, and three quarters of AI purchases outside its top 100 categories. Add a new survey on how shoppers double-check AI answers and Google’s brand panel change, and the job for CPG brands is clear: make every variant’s facts specific.
ChatGPT ads are getting easier to buy. The first sales data says CPG brands should fund the organic answer first
OpenAI is making ChatGPT ads easier to buy through Magnite and PubMatic, and Google is testing a Sponsored-first layout in AI Mode. But the first independent sales data shows organic ChatGPT referrals out-earn every channel while paid ChatGPT clicks trail. Here’s the data, a parity-price calculator and what CPG brands should do this quarter.
ChatGPT now says how it ranks stores for a product. Here’s what CPG brands should fix
OpenAI’s rewritten ChatGPT shopping help page names the factors behind its merchant list: availability, price, quality and whether the seller is the maker or primary seller. Two new studies show most brands rarely get named at all. Here’s what CPG brands should fix in their product data first, plus a checklist.
Amazon, Google and Meta just reported on AI shopping. What CPG brands should take from it
Meta (Oct 21), Alphabet (Oct 28) and Amazon (Oct 29) all reported on AI shopping. Alexa for Shopping reached 400M+ customers, AI Mode queries are 3x longer, sponsored and organic product listings click at similar rates in AI Mode, and Muse users average $200+ purchases. Here’s what each call means for CPG brands, plus a readiness checklist.
Retailers are building AI shopping agents. Most CPG brands aren’t ready
BCG (Oct 30) found 59% of U.S. CPG companies report no meaningful agentic AI capabilities. Kearney (Oct 21) found only 2 of 53 consumer products makers run anything live, while Walmart just taught Sparky to turn a handwritten list into a cart. Here’s the gap, what visibility work has returned so far, and a 90-day plan.
Amazon and Shopify just handed AI agents the reorder. What CPG brands should do
On Oct 28 Shopify opened its catalog and checkout to outside AI agents. On Oct 29 Amazon’s Alexa for Shopping started managing Subscribe & Save by conversation. Here’s what that means for the household restock, what shoppers say they’ll allow, and a checklist for this quarter.
AI is building Thanksgiving carts. Which grocery brands make the basket?
Walmart’s Sparky can now add the whole $35 Holiday Meal Basket to a cart, and grocery AI assistants are building Thanksgiving lists from scratch. Here’s which brands end up in those carts and how CPG teams can win a slot before November 26.
ChatGPT picks its brands before it searches. What new data means for CPG
Being cited isn’t enough. Fresh research shows ChatGPT usually has a brand shortlist before it searches, but for physical products search changes the answer far more often. Here’s what that means for CPG brands.
Walmart let the AI shopping agents in. Amazon kept the door shut. Here’s what CPG brands should do this week
Walmart opened its doors to outside AI agents on October 21 and Amazon is still blocking them. Add ChatGPT’s new “Shop at” buttons and fresh HFS survey data, and CPG brands have a clear to-do list for Monday.
Xenalytics infographics
Walmart sells $150B online. Its ads are growing faster
Walmart now books roughly one in five sales dollars online. The faster story sits on top of that traffic: Walmart Connect, the retail media arm, has grown 40% or more for four straight quarters.
e.l.f. Beauty grew 5.8x in six years. Here's who sells it now
Seven straight years of growth, and a very different shelf. Target and Walmart still matter most, but Amazon, Sephora and e.l.f.'s own e-commerce now carry a much bigger share of the business.
Volume or price? How 7 CPG giants grew in Q3 2026
Four of the seven grew mainly by selling more. Three leaned on price. Toggle the chart to see who sold more units and who charged more.
AI shoppers went from converting 38% worse to 60% better in 16 months
Traffic from ChatGPT-style assistants to US retail sites is still growing fast. The bigger story is quality: AI-referred shoppers now buy more often than everyone else.
Shopify merchants sold $378 billion in 2025, 49× more than in 2015
The platform behind millions of direct-to-consumer storefronts keeps compounding. Here is how big the Shopify economy has become, year by year.
Store brands now take 21.3% of US grocery-aisle spending
Private label grew nearly three times faster than national brands in 2025. Find out how exposed your category is.
Amazon's ad business made $68.6 billion in 2025
Advertising is now Amazon's fastest-growing major business line. It is bigger than Prime and other subscriptions, and it is built on the same shelf your brand competes on.
Online shopping now takes 17.1% of US retail sales
Twenty-seven years of US Census data show online's share of retail rising steadily, jumping during the pandemic, then dipping, and now setting new records again.