Search Engine Land is your source for Google Shopping ads news and content. You’ll find a variety of up-to-date and authoritative resources, including the latest news, tactic-rich tutorials, and the latest data to help you work smarter and make better decisions.
Google Shopping Ads are a powerful tool for ecommerce businesses, enabling retailers to showcase their products prominently and drive high-intent traffic. Search Engine Land provides actionable insights to help you optimize your campaigns and maximize return on ad spend (ROAS).
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What you read here is written by our experienced in-house team, and subject matter experts from leading brands and agencies. Our goal is to simplify complex concepts and provide clear, actionable steps that can help you achieve measurable results with Google Shopping ads.
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The Google Merchant Blog announced “important changes to Google Product Search feed specification & policies.” These changes go into affect September 22, 2011 and if you are not compliant, you will find your products missing from Google Product Search. To see the changes, you can go to this document and select the country that you […]
This morning Google announced two new ad formats for mobile — or rather the extension of two PC ad types to smartphones — Product Extension Ads and Product Local Ads. Basically these two mobile formats allow marketers to include product images and related data in ads showing on mobile devices (like PC-based AdWords). Further, if […]
Google has acquired Sparkbuy, a comparison shopping site that has focused on laptops. The site closed today as part of the purchase; the three person team will continue on with Google. Was this a talent acquisition, then? Google wouldn’t comment nor give any details on the purchase price for the year-old company. However, a person […]
Way back in 2002 Google launched catalog search. It was ultimately shut down in April, 2009. The product allowed users to browse popular mail-order catalogs or search across catalogs for specific products. In many ways it was crude yet cool and useful. I liked it but it wasn’t enough of a traffic driver to justify […]
Google has launched Shopping, aka Product Search, in four new countries today — The Netherlands, Spain, Italy and Australia. The company has also launched Merchant Center in Australia. Users of Google search in these countries will now see Shopping results on their main search results page, and can refine by clicking a Shopping tab on […]
In a bid to improve the consumer experience with Google Product Search listings, the search giant will soon be requiring three new types of data for feeds targeting the U.S., and one new type for those targeting the U.K. A fourth type of data, which is recommended, but not required, will allow merchants to specify […]
AdWords advertisers have long had the ability to use negative keywords to limit the situations when their ads will display, and now product listing ads — rolled out in November — will have this feature, too. Google announced the new targeting capability, saying it’s the first of more extensive targeting features that it is working […]
Google announced they have added Google Instant to Google Shopping Search view within the web results. If you are on Google.com, search for a product and then filter your search on the left hand side by “Shopping”, Google Instant will allow you to search for new products. Interestingly enough, this does not seem to work […]
Google’s Shopper mobile app is being introduced for iPhone. It already exists for Android devices. Shopper allows users to search for products by voice, with the camera, via barcode scan or by text entry. Users can also share products on Facebook, Twitter, SMS or email. Google Shopper shows prices, product reviews and local inventory availability […]
Google has famously undertaken a high-profile initiative to show users where they can buy products offline in local stores. It has also launched a very non-traditional (for Google) shopping site, Boutiques.com. There have been additional improvements in the Google Product Search destination site, including more product-browse capabilities. Then there are product listing ads, which expanded […]
Google is retiring its Base API and replacing it with two shopping-centric APIs, requiring developers to modify applications that manage and search product data. Google Base will be shuttered permanently as of June 1, 2011. The Content API for Shopping will be used for uploading data, and the Search API for Shopping for accessing product […]
Just over a week ago, the New York Times introduced the world to Vitaly Borker, who boasted of being abusive to customers and claimed, inaccurately, that such behavior had a side benefit of producing good rankings in Google. Now another side benefit: Borker’s arrest. Arrest On Federal Charges From an CNBC article on the arrest: […]
Ladies and gentlemen open your wallets — and start your smartphones. The holiday shopping season is upon is. This year more than ever there are scores of sites, apps and online tools to direct you to the right product at the best price. It can all be a bit overwhelming in fact. Below I’ve tried […]
In time for the holidays Google is making it possible for online (and mobile) shoppers to discover real-time product inventory in local stores. Google certainly isn’t the first company to make a run at this; there are multiple startups that have been working on bringing local product inventory online for a number of years. But […]
E-commerce stores in the U.S. can now hop on the rich snippet bandwagon with Google’s announcement today that it’s supporting enhanced search results for shopping sites. The rich snippet display can make a fairly compelling case for click-throughs with the inclusion of pricing and availability right below the page link. If you already give Google […]
The Google Merchant Blog announced they have opened up the help documents for how merchants can submit content, such as local stock inventory levels, for their products. Google said this is still a limited beta program, which was first announced in March of this year. Google also said that if merchants are interested in being […]
The iPhone may have been outsold last quarter by Android, but Apple’s phone remains at least for the time being the “it device” in the smartphone market. Google and Microsoft are both, let’s say, “ambivalent” about the iPhone. And, in some ways, Google and Microsoft/Bing have changed places vis-a-vis the handset. Of the three major […]
According to comScore data, Google Product Search has become the top comparison shopping engine online. Number two is now TheFind, which moved in front of Yahoo Shopping in terms of average daily users: Source: comScore TheFind has been quietly moving up the ladder over the past couple of years and now has surpassed all longer-established […]
Milo.com has undertaken a most ambitious project — to be the Google of local product inventory data. The site, which just announced it has come out of beta with 1 million monthly users, is trying to create a massive database of real-time inventory from local (mostly big box) stores. Right now the site offers live […]
Here are a couple important areas for Industrial Strength search marketers to focus on right now, both of which are feed-based: Google Product Search and Yahoo! Paid Inclusion. Below I outline why these channels matter more than ever this holiday season, and how they can help you capture substantial traffic and sales. Google Product Search […]
Google Product Search is rolling out three new features today, a new shopping “OneBox” that features popular products in certain categories of searches, a summary of product reviews and a “gallery” view option of products. Popular Products OneBox In the “normal” shopping OneBox, Google lists a variety of products along with an estimated price and […]
Just when you thought paid inclusion was finally dead with holdout Yahoo getting out of the space, it’s come back from the most unlikeliest of sources: Google. Below, a look at the experiment plus reexamining the FTC’s guidelines about disclosing paid ads. Does saying “Promoted Videos” on YouTube rather than “Sponsored Videos” meet these? For […]
The Google Base blog announced the launch of the new Google Merchant Center. This is the location for you to “upload your feeds, check on the status of your items, and get information on the performance of your listings.” The Merchant Center is replacing Google Base for those who submit products to Google. This new […]
The Google Base Blog announced they have added a new attribute for Google Product Search merchants to submit product videos for specific products. Google Product Search can now show videos from YouTube. Here is a picture of the Nikon D90 with YouTube videos: How do merchants get their videos to show up for Google Product […]
Google Product Search is the next Google search property to get its own flavor of search suggestions. Although there is no official post from Google on this feature, yet, we assume it uses a flavor of the search suggestion technology and adds Google’s product search query data. Here is an example of a search suggestion […]
Google has announced they have expanded Google Product Search for mobile to both Palm Pre and any mobile device with an internet connection based in the US, UK, Germany and South Korea. To access Google Product Search on your mobile device, just visit google.com and click on shopping or go directly to www.google.com/m/products. Google also […]
Google Product Search for Mobile now has barcode scanning ability. The obvious convenience factor is that, rather than typing in the name of the product you’re looking at, you can just scan the barcode and get shopping results (and information) on your Android-powered phone. Google’s announcement today explains that barcode scanning currently is at its […]
Google has dropped the “Shopping” link from the main top navigation on Google.com and replaced it with a “Video” link. What is the big deal? Well, in November 2007, Google did the exact reverse. They dropped the video link for products to replace it. Then Google renamed products to shopping but that link remained at […]
Google’s official list of the most popular search activity for 2008, aka Zeitgeist, has yet to make its debut, but the search giant has been leaking out tasty tidbits of data to get us salivating for even more search data. The fastest-rising search terms of 2008 Obama Facebook Att iPhone YouTube Fox news Palin Beijing […]
The image above shows how Google seems to be testing placing product images in lieu of the Google Product shopping bag on the web search results. It seems like Google is showing the first product result’s image in that location. For example, the jordan almonds search returns the image from the first result in Google […]
I’ve personally never found Google Product search all that useful, but hopefully that will change now. Google Operating System reports that Google Product Search has undergone a redesign of some sort. In the past, Google Product Search just showed you results but did not group stores offering to sell the same product with reviews and […]
First it was Froogle. Then it was Google Product Search. Then Google recently promoted product search to its home page. And now, Google’s using “Shopping” in an apparent bid to drum up traffic. We covered earlier how Google Product Search was added to the navigation of Google. But now it’s been noted that the link […]
Google Blogoscoped reports that Google has dropped the “video” link within the main top navigation at Google and replaced it with a “products” link. You can now find the “video” link by clicking on the “more” link, which will expand and show the video option at the far bottom of that drop down.
Philipp Lenssen reported that Google is now using the Google Promotion label within Google Product Search results, for a promotion of the Google Checkout service above listings. Ionut Alex. Chitu saw this for a product search on watch and sent Philipp a screen capture. I don’t see the promotion box coming up myself, though Danny […]
Remember how Google said recently that it might crack down on listings pages that are simply search results themselves? Readr Michael Nguyen dropped an email today to point out how, ironically, Google is now listing pages from its own Google Product Search service exactly as it has warned others not to do. OK, settle down […]
Back in December 2002, Google launched its long expected product and shopping search engine. It was called Froogle, a combination of “frugal” and “Google.” Just over four years later, Froogle is finally losing its cutesy name for something more descriptive — to become Google Product Search. It will also gain a cleaner interface, as well. […]