Late in the afternoon of October 28, 2026, Google quietly opened one of the most consequential doors of the agentic web era. Reporting by TechCrunch consumer editor Sarah Perez confirms the launch of the Google Connected Apps Platform, a program that lets any business or developer submit their service for use directly inside Google Search and the Gemini app — not as a link, but as a set of capabilities an AI can act on.
If that sounds like a new kind of SEO, that's because it is. TechCrunch's own framing calls it "one of the initial steps for businesses that want their services to be more visible to users on the agentic web." We'd go further: this is the land-grab phase of AI-search distribution, and the companies that understand it early will own visibility their competitors can't buy.
What Google actually launched
Connected apps themselves are not new. Google introduced them in Gemini and Search earlier this year as a way for users to securely link third-party services and then take actions through them — connect Canva to design a flyer, or YouTube Music to build a playlist, without ever opening those apps.
What changed on October 28 is who can build them. Until now, the roster of connected apps was assembled by Google, one partnership at a time: over 50 apps in Gemini including Adobe, Experian, Localiza and Peloton, plus Google's own services, and a shorter list in Search including Instacart, Canva, YouTube Music and Yahoo Fantasy Football. The new platform turns that curated program into an open, self-serve pipeline. Any U.S. developer on the waitlist can now build, submit and monitor a connected app across Google's surfaces.
How it works, technically
The build path is refreshingly concrete for a company as opaque as Google can be. According to TechCrunch's report:
- Build the capability layer. Developers integrate with a cloud-hosted MCP (Model Context Protocol) server or an Android MCP server using Google's AppFunctions APIs. MCP is the emerging open standard that lets AI models discover and call external tools safely — the same protocol behind moves like Webflow's Gemini-connected app initiative.
- Register through the Google Connected Console. That's where you test and submit the app for review.
- Choose your surfaces. Developers decide whether the app appears in Search, the Gemini app, or both.
- Operate it like a real channel. Once live, you get traffic, latency and error-rate analytics, and you keep control of your brand identity — verified logos and authenticated accounts.
That last point matters more than it looks. Google is not asking businesses to surrender their brand to a generic AI interface. The platform design suggests Google understands that companies will only hand their customers to an agent layer if the experience stays recognizably theirs.
SEO for the do-web
The mental model to internalize: on the classical web, visibility meant a page that a human clicks. On the agentic web, visibility means a capability that an AI can invoke. The Connected Apps Platform is Google building out the infrastructure for the second model at population scale — which is why the "SEO of the agentic web" comparison isn't hype.
| Dimension | Classic SEO | Connected Apps visibility |
|---|---|---|
| Unit of visibility | A URL that ranks | A capability (or function) that an agent can call |
| How you compete | Content, links, technical quality | MCP server quality, action design, reliability metrics |
| Who executes | The human visitor | Google's AI, on the user's behalf |
| Analytics | Clicks, impressions, CTR | Traffic, latency, error rates per invocation |
| Gatekeeping | Crawling and indexing | Console review and approval |
Two honest caveats. First, the preview is U.S.-only for developers and access is via waitlist, with no timeline for general availability. Second, nobody knows yet how Google will rank or feature connected apps once hundreds exist — that discovery layer, the thing SEOs will spend the next five years reverse-engineering, hasn't been defined publicly. That is precisely why the brands sculpting their agent-ready surfaces now are buying optionality at pre-market prices.
Why small and mid-sized businesses shouldn't sit this out
It's tempting to read this story as "another big-tech program for big-tech partners." The current roster reinforces that: healthcare (Ro-style platforms), fitness (Peloton), design (Adobe) and finance (Experian) incumbents. Calm, the meditation app, is the newly announced partner on both surfaces.
But the program's structure tells a different story. A cloud-hosted MCP server is a weekend-proof-of-concept-level build for any company that already exposes an API. If your business does anything task-shaped — quoting, booking, checking inventory, reordering, scheduling, filing — there is a plausible connected-app version of it. The businesses that will win here are not necessarily the biggest; they're the ones that reduce a valuable service to three to five safe, well-instrumented actions an agent can execute without adult supervision.
Our practical read at Vivid: this pairs with what we saw when Google's Gemini agent started acting with persistent identity and its own email account. Google is assembling the full agentic stack — an assistant layer (Gemini), a discovery surface (Search), a protocol layer (MCP), and now a developer marketplace. Each intervention it makes is a signal about where engagements between you and your customers will actually happen in two to three years, and how little of that will look like a website visit.
A sober playbook for the next 90 days
- Inventory your task-shaped value. Which of your services could an AI complete end-to-end on a customer's behalf tomorrow, with minimal risk? That list is your connected-app roadmap.
- Prototype an MCP server. Even outside Google's program, a clean MCP surface makes you legible to every major agent platform — this is infrastructure you own, not a Google dependency.
- Join the waitlist. U.S. entities can apply now; non-U.S. companies should prepare, because the pattern of these launches is a fast second wave.
- Instrument. Expect the measurement culture of SEO's early days: operators who log invocation data first will define the playbooks everyone else copies.
Designing an MCP server, a connected app submission, or the automation behind it is exactly the kind of build our team takes on — tell us where you're headed at our contact page.
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From the archive: Webflow opens its Creative Exchange to Gemini: MCP goes mainstream
