With all the recent Google Shopping buzz circulating the web, you may have heard the terms paid inclusion or pay-to-play and wondered, ‘what does this mean for e-commerce?’ In this blog post, I’ll explain the basics of the Google Shopping policy transitions and what it means for shoppers and search marketers.
What exactly are Google Product Search and Google Shopping?
Google Product Search, formerly Google Products and Froogle, is a free price comparison service. Merchants submit their products via a feed for free which allows shoppers to quickly and easily find your site.
Last week on the official Google Commerce blog, Google’s Product Management VP Sameer Samat announced that by this fall, Google Product Search in the United States will transition from a free service to ‘purely commercial model’ called Google Shopping.
What’s the big deal?
In the past, Google has always been against requiring shopping merchants to pay in order to appear in search results. According to Danny Sullivan’s post on Search Engine Land, this is the first time ever that Google will decommission a service that previously listed companies for free. This transition has sparked much controversy and now many search marketers are worried that Google will begin cutting more free services elsewhere.
Shopper Incentives
Google explains that the reason they are agreeing to paid inclusion is to provide the shopper with the following benefits:
- Overall better shopping results
- More accurate pricing
- Updated offers
- Updated product availability
Merchant Incentives
- Overall higher quality traffic
- Greater control over where products appear
- Opportunities to market special offers
- Monthly credit for 10% of their total Product Listing Ad spend through the end of 2012, if you join by August 15, 2012
- $100 AdWords credit toward Product Listing Ads for existing Google Product Search merchants, if you join by August 15, 2012
Other changes?
- Google Trusted Stores program
- Participants of Google Shopping can apply to become certified as a Trusted Store and receive a badge next to their PPC ads and Google Shopping results
- Trusted Stores get $1,000 lifetime purchase protection guarantee for each shopper
- To become certified, your site must meet certain shipping and customer service qualifications
What does this mean for you?
Google shopping feeds will no longer be free but shopping results will have higher quality data. This is bad for merchants, especially small businesses with lower budgets, but good for shoppers and user experience. Either way you look at it, paid inclusion is here to stay.
