Google Shopping: Playing Middleman (OR) Peer to Ecommerce Sites

by Prejushya Kalicharan - 10/26/2012 6556 Views

Google Product Search - Another feather on Google’s hat

Google Shopping! Certainly, a matter of concern even for big players in the ecommerce business industry, like Amazon and Ebay. Google’s step-in into the ecommerce field should have hit these big players bang on their roots, as the search giant excels and exceeds in whatever it sets its foot on. However in the past, getting a place in Google Shopping results was absolutely free of cost, which was also a cause of curse on their shopping results. Most of them were irrelevant and misleading. But now, that’s not the case since Google lists products only when retailers pay to get included in the resultant page of “Google Shopping”. In simple terms, if you need your product listed within Google Shopping, you will have to pay.

What Google believes in switching from free product search to a paid version? – Retailers will list accurate and reliable products under their brand name, avoiding confusions and chaos that already existed over the shopping search section. Quite few retailers feel pleasant with this paid listing strategy while others feel this to be a not-so-necessary feature, that it’s just an ad and doubt to ruin their business. Of course, this is one among Google’s tactics to increase ad revenue. This led to all e-retailers scratching their heads to find new routes of customer acquisition and sources of capital for their advertising budgets. But what a user experiences is, accurate and up-to-date information for a key product they search in Google via a crystal clear SERP. And that’s what Google and we need at the end of the day.

Google also shared the former tablet-only Google Catalogs facility to the web, a real threat to Amazon and eBay. Google assures that in future it will “incorporate catalogs more deeply throughout the Google Shopping experience, giving you more ways to find ideas and inspiration as you shop and engage with your favorite brands.” Here comes the debate, if Google is gearing up its steps to dominate the ecommerce world, bringing the current king players Ebay and Amazon, under its umbrella. Though Google may highlight the word “IMPROVING USER EXPERIENCE” anywhere and everywhere it makes a change, we beg to differ, having an insight of its cunning advertising efforts. Cost-per-click is very low now (20% less that paid search CPC’s), but for the higher rates for bidding in Adwords.

Here, is a short drive into how concise the paid product page is being presented by Google

Search done in Google Shopping (Google.co.uk) for the keyword “toy shops”
The top section as usual goes for ads

The left part shows more options for selection based on brands and stores

The organic search result area displays the price of a particular product along with an added button “Compare prices”

Google Shopping 3

When you hit this button the page that opens lists other sites that sell the same product. This way you can manage and perform a wiser purchase.

At the bottom of the page are displayed products similar to the key search item

Google Shopping 5

And the most attractive part is the “reviews” section, right below the related products area. You could purchase based on these results.

Retailers, keep in mind!

Retailers who display products in Google Shopping should keep the following in mind to make up a profitable investment

Each of you will need a Google Merchant account and a Google AdWords account
Gain the appreciation of Google to become a Google Trusted Store
Clean landing pages for each campaign you launch via Google Shopping
A good quality of content feed helps in users identifying your product among others
Analytics tools well synchronized for measurement
Track your competitor feeds as well
Identify niche areas to showcase your product and do optimization yourselves without leaving the task to Google
Update your hot products and their pricing without fail
A good sitemap is always helpful in better ranking and navigation
Update yourselves on the industry you deal with
Stay focused on the reviews you receive and gain the good-will of your customers

Ecommerce Industry after and before ‘Google Shopping’

Just see one of the comments Google shopping has received before the launch of paid search,

“Google shopping has been crap for years. I rarely use it because each time I do it's usually because I need to find something close to locally and I end up with a load of useless results that don't accurately compare with the page they link to anyways.”

This should be the main reason Google thought to get back free service to their shopping sub-search-page. Google is finding new ways to provide additional options of search to their users, keeping them engaged once they land Google. The chances that I see for Google to dethrone Amazon and Ebay is much more; their powerful search engine data’s are the key. The data that I have presented above on doing a search in Google shopping is an example. At present Amazon and Ebay collect around 5% to 15% in commissions to each of their merchants for every sale of their products made via display in these sites. This means much more for e-retailers as yet another portion of their advertising budget vanishes as credit card fees, and what remains will be a low level profit. Google shopping opens its door wide now, where people wish to experiment with. The bonus is that these paid listings in ‘Shopping’ mode will also appear in regular results depending on the reach. “Google Shopping” – No doubt is going to become a virtual shopping mall throwing out the present e-commerce dominants.

Here is video on how to do a quick sign-up into ‘Google’s Product Listing Ads’ campaign:

Category :

Google

Tags :

Google Product Search, Google Shopping, Amazon, Ebay, Ecommerce

About Prejushya Kalicharan

SEO is a challenging field and I try my best to surpass this challenging environment which is unconditionally filled with opportunities, knowledge building and problem solving. I pursue what I .... more info about the author