By the Mayab Media Team
Until this week, getting your service inside Gemini meant working closely with Google. Now there's an application form.
On October 28, Google opened a preview of its Connected Apps Platform. Developers can plug their service into the Gemini app, AI Mode in Search, or both, and manage it from a new Google Connected Console. More than 50 apps already work this way. Adobe, Experian, Peloton and the car rental firm Localiza are live for Gemini users, and Google says they'll reach Search in the coming weeks. Calm is launching on both.
So should your business build one?
For most businesses we talk to, the honest answer is no, or at least not yet. But a few should start now, and everyone should understand what Google is building, because it changes what "showing up in AI search" actually means.
How it works, minus the jargon
Your app talks to Google through MCP, the Model Context Protocol. It's an open standard that lets AI assistants call outside tools and services on a user's behalf. You either run an MCP server in the cloud, or on Android you expose functions through Google's AppFunctions APIs. Customers sign in to your service once (OAuth handles the account link). After that, someone can type a request in AI Mode, choose your app, and get something done: a grocery order, a playlist, a design.
You register and test in the Connected Console, pick Search, Gemini or both, and then submit for review. Once you're live, the console reports traffic, latency and error rates, and you keep your verified logo and branded sign-in.
The Search side is narrow for now. Google's Search help page says connected apps in AI Mode work in the US, in English, for signed-in users who already have an account with the app. The list it shows is short: Instacart, Canva, YouTube Music and two fantasy football apps.
Small. For now, anyway.
Who should actually apply
Here's the test we'd use. Do your customers already log in to do something with you?
If they do, take a serious look. Booking software, a subscription service, a B2B tool with an API, a retailer with customer accounts and order history. You've built most of the plumbing already, and an MCP layer on top of a working API is a project rather than a rebuild.
If they don't, there's nothing useful for an app to do on their behalf. A website that's mostly service pages and a contact form has no task to hand off. A dental clinic with two locations doesn't need a Connected App. It needs to appear accurately wherever AI answers pull their facts from.
Run the numbers before anyone writes code. Say a developer quotes 80 hours at $120 an hour to build, secure and test an MCP server. That's $9,600. To earn that back, enough people have to link your app inside AI Mode, in English, in the US, during a preview that Google says will widen "over the coming months." Many companies can't make that math work yet.
That's fine. Waiting is a legitimate strategy here, especially while the Search side is limited to one country and one language.
What we'd do this month instead
Most of the value for a typical business is indirect. Google is teaching people to finish tasks without visiting a website, and the apps that get picked are the ones people already use. That points to a short list:
- Check your presence on platforms that are already connected. 9to5Google reports that Instacart, OpenTable and Ticketmaster are among the existing Connected Apps in Gemini. If you sell through one of those, your listing there just got more important.
- If you have a product team, have them read the developer docs and the Connected Apps policy, and apply for the preview so you're in line. Applying costs nothing.
- Don't promise your boss AI Mode traffic from this. Even Google's John Mueller, who sounded excited about it on LinkedIn, called it "still extremely early" and said he doesn't work on the product (Search Engine Roundtable has the quote).
The bigger shift
For years, search visibility meant a blue link and a click. AI Overviews moved part of the answer onto Google's page. Connected Apps goes one step further: the action happens there too. Booking, ordering, creating. Your website starts to look like the back office, while the front counter is a chat box you don't own.
That's no reason to panic. It is a reason to know which platforms your customers already trust, because those are the ones Google is plugging in first.
Build for AI Mode when your customers already log in to you; until then, make sure you're findable inside the apps that are already connected.
Want us to check how this affects your business? Book a free audit.
