Google has transformed its free ‘Google Product Search’ to paid form and called it ‘Google Shopping’. This will be applicable to all the merchants in U.S. who want to list their products in Google. In this new paid format, the merchants and retailers in US have to pay in order to get their products listed in Google.
Under this ‘Google Shopping’ the rankings of products will be based on bid price and relevancy. The transition from free service to this commercial model will be completed by this fall. Once Google Shopping is launched, the existing Google Product Search will be discontinued. These paid product listings ads will be displayed as ‘Sponsored’.
Better shopping experience
With ‘Google Shopping’, the customers can have better shopping experience as they can view all the product details at one place and compare them. This service also features better display of products, fresh information on availability of products, special/latest offers and good refine search by product or brand type.
Also, in one of its new commercial format, a customer looking for a specific product can even see summarized information of that product (reviews and product attributes) mentioned clearly at one side of the search results page.
For retailers, this service being based on bid-for-placement, increases competition among them to get better listings for their products. And also having to pay for every product to be listed, the retailers can also market few products, thus reducing the clutter that will give refined shopping results for customers.
Incentives
Google had given few months of time for the merchants to get transitioned to this new model. It is also offering few incentives for the merchants who are going to adopt this new model.
Merchants who create their Product Listing Ads by August 15, 2012 will be given a monthly credit for 10% of their total Product Listing Ad spend till the end of 2012.
And for the existing Google Product Search merchants, who will fill out a form before August 15, 2012 will receive $100 Adwords credit for Product Listing Ads.
Google Trusted Stores Program
Also, to maintain a good relationship with merchants, Google has started ‘Google Trusted Stores Program’ in which a badge is given to the e-commerce sites, also providing the whole background information of the merchants, regarding their size, ratings for on-time shipping and customer service, for the customers to review.
A merchant having earned a Google Trusted Stores badge will be given a $1,000 lifetime purchase protection guarantee per shopper.
Hence, Google is balancing its new initiative by establishing good relationship with merchants as well as by providing delightful shopping experience for customers.
Source: Google blog