Seznam has put a number on its agentic shopping ambitions. In a Lupa.cz feature published on 1 October, the Czech search company said that “at the current pace of expansion” coverage of its AI checkout feature on Zboží.cz could reach thousands of e-shops by the end of the year. For a national search engine that most international teams still file under “Czech Google alternative”, that is a meaningful move into the transaction layer.
What Seznam has actually launched
The feature itself started testing on 31 August. Seznam’s own press release describes AI-assisted “agentic shopping” on Zboží.cz, its price-comparison service: a signed-in user skips retyping personal details and wrestling with delivery options, and finishes the purchase in two clicks. The crucial detail is that the purchase still happens at the merchant. Seznam built it on UCP, the open Universal Commerce Protocol that Lupa notes comes from Google, which keeps the retailer as the party that processes the order and carries responsibility for it.
Lukáš Behúň, director of Seznam’s e-commerce division, framed the focus as “the last part of the whole process”: AI already helps people search, compare and decide; now Seznam wants it to help finish the purchase. Product manager Tomáš Jindra pointed to foreign case studies showing higher completion and conversion rates. Seznam says the feature is in testing on Zboží.cz and will come “soon” to other parts of Seznam.
The first wave covers shops that are already agent-ready — in the Czech Republic that currently means stores on Shopify. Integration of merchants on the local platform Shoptet is in preparation, and Seznam told Lupa it is also negotiating with “other significant e-shops”. Only some Seznam users can try it, and the company declined to publish user numbers, saying they are not a relevant metric. It did claim that users with access are actively using it and that it sees higher conversion than a normal click-through to an e-shop.
Merchants are not all cheering
Lupa’s reporting is useful because it asked retailers. Adam Durčák, CEO of Růžový slon, called agentic commerce “a double-edged sword”: a new route into the customer’s decision, but one where “the customer may never see our e-shop at all” and the retailer becomes “a very efficient warehouse somewhere at the end of the process”. His shop is investing in reviews, testing and video so that its real-world product experience makes it into structured product data — “we don’t want AI to know only what is written on the box.” Many smaller shops told Lupa they are watching the trend but not joining yet.
Our take: this is Seznam playing to its real strength
Seznam is one of the few European engines running a national-scale index of its own, and its share is holding up. StatCounter’s Czech search figures put Seznam at roughly 15% in September 2026, up from about 12% in January, with Google near 79%. That will not win a general search war. But Zboží.cz gives Seznam something more useful than share points: a home-grown product catalogue with long-standing local merchant relationships. Moving from “compare prices” to “complete the order” turns that catalogue into something an AI assistant can act on.
Building on Google’s protocol rather than inventing a Czech one is the pragmatic choice. Merchants who make themselves agent-ready for Seznam via Shopify or Shoptet are, in effect, preparing for every UCP-speaking agent. The risk for retailers is the one Durčák describes — commoditisation into fulfilment — and the risk for Seznam is that its conversion claim stays a claim until it publishes numbers.
What to do if you sell in Czechia:
- Audit your Zboží.cz feed as if an agent will read it literally: availability, delivery options, prices and variants need to be accurate, because there is no persuasive landing page in the middle any more.
- Check your platform’s readiness. Shopify merchants are in the first wave; Shoptet merchants should watch for the integration.
- Put experience into data, not just into blog posts — reviews, sizing notes, tested specs.
- Keep the brand alive outside the flow. If the agent does the shopping, your email list and repeat-customer experience do the remembering.
Seznam is small next to Google, but in its home market it is now testing exactly the agentic checkout Google and OpenAI are pitching globally. Watch Shoptet: when that integration lands, “thousands of e-shops” stops being a forecast. More European engine coverage lives in our Global Search Engines archive.