Google said these 10 features are live in the UK. We checked. Four aren't.

Every year Google Marketing Live produces a list of shiny new things. Every year a chunk of the marketing internet publishes those announcements as if they're your to-do list for Monday morning.

We didn't do that this time.

After GML 2026 in May, we sat down as a team and went through every announced feature one by one - checking Google's own help pages, testing in live UK accounts, and reading the small print. What we found was a familiar pattern: several features flagged as "live now" are anything but. Some need a Google rep to unlock. One is a restricted global pilot. One is in beta for a single use case only. And one had a deadline that already passed in April - which means some advertisers may have a quietly broken audience list they don't know about.

This matters more than a pedantic correction. If you restructure a campaign around a feature you can't actually switch on, you've wasted time and possibly money. Knowing what's real right now is the difference between planning real work and chasing something that doesn't exist in your account yet.

So here's the honest version. This is part of the broader picture we've been mapping of the 2026 Google search shift.

The verified status table

We checked each feature against Google's own announcement pages and UK accounts as of 27 May 2026, with a further currency pass on 22 June 2026.

The four that aren't

Four features sit in the "not live in the way it was described" column. Here's why each one matters.

1. Attributed Branded Searches - rep-gated, Demand Gen only

This is the metric that tells you how many people searched for your brand after seeing a YouTube or Demand Gen ad. Useful in theory - upper-funnel attribution has always been hard to measure.

The problem: it's not self-serve. You need your Google rep to activate it, and it only works with Demand Gen campaigns right now. A broader rollout covering AI Mode and DV360 was described as coming "within six months" at GML. If you're planning campaign restructures around this metric, you can't pull that data without rep involvement.

Rep-gated means the feature exists and Google has announced it, but you can't find it in your account today without asking.

2. GTM visual editor - purchase conversions in Google Ads only

The visual editor - where you browse your own site and click elements to set up tracking, without writing tag configuration - is in beta. But only for purchase conversion setup in Google Ads. Not for GA4 events. Not for custom triggers. Not for general GTM work.

If you're waiting for this to replace standard GTM implementation, you'll be waiting a while. The broader "anyone can tag anything visually" version is coming. It isn't here yet.

3. AI Performance Insights - US and a handful of other markets, not UK

This is the new reporting inside Merchant Centre that shows your brand's share of voice across AI Mode, Gemini, and AI Overviews - how often your products appear in AI-generated answers compared to competitors. It matters, and when it arrives in the UK it will be immediately useful.

It's rolling out in the US, Australia, Canada, India and New Zealand. The UK is not on that list yet. Ask your Google rep about early access if you want it now.

4. Qualified Future Conversions - restricted pilot globally

This is Google's most ambitious measurement claim from GML: their AI watches what people do after seeing your ad, predicts which ones will buy in the next few weeks, and adds that forecast revenue to your conversion reporting before the sale has happened.

It is a restricted global pilot. A beta is planned for later in 2026. If you saw this announced at GML and assumed you could turn it on: you can't. Not yet, and not in the UK.

The one with a passed deadline

The most operationally urgent item in the table isn't on the "not live" list. It's the one that's very much live, and whose deadline has already expired.

Google switched off the old Customer Match API on 1 April 2026.

If any of your customer list uploads - email addresses, phone numbers, CRM data fed into Google Ads for audience targeting or Smart Bidding signals - were running through the old API path, they stopped refreshing in April. The audience list still shows up in the interface. It may still show members. But it isn't updating. The data is stale and ageing out.

We found exactly this in an account we audited: a list that looked fine in the interface, showed a 62% match rate when last uploaded, but had an active audience size of zero across all surfaces. It had simply stopped refreshing. Smart Bidding was running without the signal, and no one had noticed. For more context on the data and tracking picture, the piece on how AI agents discover your products is relevant.

"Several features flagged as 'live now' aren't - we verified each one against Google's own announcement pages."

- Coffee Marketing (verification exercise, 27 May 2026)

What to check this week

Go to Google Ads, then Tools, then Data Manager (or Audience Manager), and look for any customer list. If one exists, check when it was last uploaded and whether its active audience size has dropped to zero or near-zero. If it hasn't refreshed since April, it's on the old API path and needs migrating to a Data Manager native connector.

The practical fix is moving to one of the direct integrations Google now supports: Klaviyo, Mailchimp and ActiveCampaign all have native Data Manager connectors. No custom API work required. But you need to act - the list won't fix itself.

The broader point

A "live now" announcement from Google means "we've started rolling this out somewhere, and it may reach your account at some point." It doesn't mean it's in your account today, or that it's self-serve, or that it covers your campaign type, or that it's available in the UK.

The gap between announcement and actual availability can be weeks or months - and in the case of Qualified Future Conversions, the feature simply doesn't exist in UK accounts yet.

Our job isn't to echo the announcement. It's to tell you what you can actually act on. These are the features you can switch on today. These are the ones to watch. These are the ones to ignore until your rep calls.

If you'd like us to check your account - Customer Match status, feed health, which GML features are live in your specific setup - that's what a Google Ads or tracking audit covers. And if you're thinking about your broader readiness for AI-driven search, start with Conversational Attributes - that's the one genuinely live feature most UK retailers still haven't acted on.