Google Product Extensions Are Changing The Search Landscape

Google has released Product Extensions to all UK paid search advertisers making a dramatic change to how Google product Search & Adwords Ad are displayed. What product extensions does is inter-connect the keywords with the relevant products from Google Product Search for which there is no additional cost. Product extensions display a selection of the products images and price and link to a list of retailers. For an example, type in Dvd player in Google.

In earlier blog posts, we commented on the lengths that Google are going to ensure that merchants populate as much product attribute data as possible to improve the quality of product search results. There is a direct relationship between the quality of the search results via Product extensions and Google Product Search results accuracy and quality of listings.

If you an online retailer then making the most of Google product extensions with your Adwords could lead to higher click through rates and conversions. If you want to enable this feature then you can do this from your Google Adwords account under Ad Extensions>Product Extensions, or refer to the help section if you need more help.

With the changing search landscape it makes even more sense for online retailers to contact our ecommerce consultants for help developing their online channels with best practice search marketing.

Google Instant Impact on SEO?

Some of our customers have been asking what impact the new Google Instant feature will have on their SEO campaigns. In our view, which has since been validated by Matt Cutts, Google Product manager, in his online Blog, is that search engine positions will not be affected and that unique pages will not be generated for every single user. However, what may happen over a period of time is that users may begin to use Google’s search facility slightly differently. However, we believe that those long tail searches phrases will not generate a significant shift in usage patterns but we  will pay close attention to changes and provide an updates as they happen.

Matt Cutts of Google notes in a post on his own blog that the effect on the “long tail” of results

“The search results will remain the same for a query, but it’s possible that people will learn to search differently over time. For example, I was recently researching a congress person. With Google Instant, it was more visible to me that this congress person had proposed an energy plan, so I refined my search to learn more, and quickly found myself reading a post on the congress person’s blog that had been on page 2 of the search results.”

If you would like more information on developing a powerful SEO strategy then our search engine optimization experts are ready to help. Just contact us and we will be delighted to discuss any requirements that you may have going forward.

Changes to Google’s Product Search Listings

Google Product Search will soon require all merchants to add  unique product identifiers to content such as MPN, GTIN, UPC, EAN or the ISBN firstly in the US, and then rolled out to the UK and Germany. After the cut off period any content that has been uploaded to Google without these mandatory attributes will not be listed.

So why are Google making these changes? We believe it is to add greater  quality depth to the number of huge listings that get added to Google’s product database so that they can offer  more accurate results to their product search database and provide better product search results on web search engine results pages. Google’s product search is very similar to Ebay’s  fixed price listings. The customer submits their product feed and the search results pages are dominated by numerous independent listings mainly for the same product although product descriptions and search terms regularly deliver incorrect products for more generic searches.  The move represents a step closer to Amazon’s model of submitting content which aims to have one listing for each product by matching unique product identifiers.

Whilst, this in theory is does generate better and more accurate search results this is not always the case due to fact that the original content that was submitted to the database may have been incorrect or the new data that retailers are adding is incorrect it is highly recommended  that all data once submitted is checked against results.

Googles Changes Mean Retailer Who Do Not Act Risk Traffic Falling Off A Cliff  AFter the Deadline?

For many retailers the race is now on add all the relevant mandatory details to their product content so they do not experience traffic levels fall off a cliff after the cut off date if they have not added the required data attributes.

If you would like more information on how to develop powerful Comparison Shopping Feeds or to optimize an existing Comparison Shopping Feed then Seek4Commerce can help. Our internet marketing experts have sophisticated knowledge of Channel Advisor and posting to numerous comparison engines.