Google introduces new ‘Deals’ features for the Shopping tab and Merchant Center

Google is introducing a new “Deals” feed in the Shopping tab along with additional Merchant Center features to support retailers running promotions, sales and price drops, the company announced Thursday. It is also expanding its integrations with Shopify and WooCommerce to enable merchants to showcase their deals across Google surfaces.

The new “Deals” feed. All products with a deals badge are now automatically eligible to show in a new feed within the Shopping tab of the search results. This new feed is shown when a user searches for generic deal-related or shopping event-related queries, like “deals” or “black friday,” (shown above) or when “Deals” is selected from the drop-down menu in the Shopping tab (shown below).

New ways to track your deals in Merchant Center. Merchants can now see which of their products is eligible for a deals badge from the products tab in Google Merchant Center. Eligibility is based on promotions, sales prices and/or price drops.

In addition, a new dashboard (shown above) breaks out data on impressions, clicks and click-through rate for Shopping ads for products with a deals badge. The data can be segmented by promotion type, product, brand and category.

Deeper integration with Shopify and WooCommerce. Building on Shopify and WooCommerce integrations announced earlier this year, retailers on these platforms are now able to show their existing deals across Google surfaces (Search, the Shopping tab, Images and Lens).

And, starting next month, retailers that use Shopify’s Google channel app or WooCommerce’s Google Listings and Ads extension will be able to show their promotions in Search and the Shopping tab.  Retailers can sync both existing and new promotions to their products listed on Google directly from their store dashboard.

Why we care. As we approach the peak of the holiday shopping season, retailers now have multiple places in Google where their deals can appear — the newly announced Deals feed, the “Deals related to your search” section of the Shopping tab and the deals carousel (which appears when users search for deals during major sales events). Retailers that are offering promotions, sales or price drops should keep their product feeds up to date to ensure they’re eligible for these organic opportunities to get in front of shoppers. To that end, being able to see which of your products are eligible for a deals badge can be very useful, and now Google is showing that information in the products tab of Merchant Center.

Breaking out the performance of Shopping ads based on products with a deals badge can help merchants understand the types of deals that are driving conversions and the product categories that perform the best when on-sale.

And, the proliferation of e-commerce integrations offered by Google (and also Bing) lowers the barrier to entry for discovery and promotion in search. This leveling of the playing field works in favor of smaller retailers that may not have the resources or technical savvy that it used to take to establish a presence on these platforms. For Google, this not only strengthens it as a shopping destination but also makes it a no-brainer for retailers since, unlike marketplaces such as Amazon or eBay, Google doesn’t take a cut of the sale.