Google is planning a major overhaul of its shopping feature in which it will shift to a purely commercial model built on Product Listing ads.
The shift, to be completed this fall, is designed to “make it easier to research purchases, compare different products, their features and prices, and then connect directly with merchants to make their purchase,” according to a blog post from the company.
Google is calling the new experience Google Shopping. Confusingly, a tab called Google Shopping already exists, but when you click on it, it leads to Product Search. Product Search is a mix of paid and unpaid placements. Google Shopping will consist of all paid placements, which is based on bids that retailers send via a constant feed. (However, search results for products will also include purely organic results below the top and right side of the page.) The change will give consumers better search results, says Sameer Samat, vp-product management at Google. It may also add to Google’s revenue stream.
As an example of the changes in store, Google provided the following image for Product Search as it currently appears:
Here is how Google Shopping will look this fall:
As illustrated, the major change is the product ads vs. “product universal,” Google’s term for organic results that it had highlighted the same way.
Another change is for more specific queries. In this case, while the searches above were for “tents,” the following is for “marmot limelight 2p.”
In addition to those changes, Google is rolling out Google Trusted Stores, a program it quietly introduced in April that takes into account reviews, shipping times and other factors to give Google’s seal of approval to merchants. While that program may help level the playing field with eBay, the overall changes to Google Shopping appear to be a bigger threat to Amazon.
In December, The Wall Street Journal reported that Google was in talks with major retailers about a new service that would add cheap 24-hour shipping to Product Search. Google would oversee the shipping feature, which would show whether stores have a product in stock and can deliver it within a day. The program might involve the United Parcel Service and local courier services, according to the WSJ.
Samat declined to comment on that report.
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, kyoshino
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