Google Product Search
Have you done a Google search lately and noticed product listings or news results located at the top of the page? Do you see a competitor’s products being listed above that number 1 ranking you worked so hard for? Universal Search results blend your typical search results with news, images, video, products, etc, and is becoming the norm when it comes to search results. Some universal search results are found and displayed automatically based on relevance, like news and video, but others may require submission. Get your share of that traffic! Submit your feed to Google Product Search!
Google Product Search is similar to other shopping engines with one huge exception, this one is integrated with the largest search engine in the world. Google Product Search has been around since 2002, but it was known as Froogle until mid 2008 when the service was changed to it’s current name (If you ever hear me refer to Froogle, this is what I’m talking about). Since then it’s has undergone several improvements, one of which was deciding to add a shopping link to the Google homepage. Product listings are made searchable and sortable over a wide variety of categories and merchants. This make it easy to compare prices and features among competing retailers. Related product results will often show up when you search at Google.com.
More on Universal Search Results
When you see a video link in the search results, it could actually be forcing one or more of the standard page listings to the next results page (this does not always happen). For example, let’s say your site was ranking in position 10 for a given search, but all of a sudden a video begins ranking in position 3 for that same search. Well, the video is replacing one of the 10 listings, which in turn is pushing your number 10 ranking to position 11 and off of the first page. Granted, position 10 isn’t the best place to be, but for the sake of an example let’s just assume. I’m not going into video search, rather, my point is that you should be doing everything you can to get your links, products, videos, etc. to appear at the top of the page. Submitting a list of your products to Google is an easy way to do so.
Here’s an example of a search results page with some universal results, including shopping results:
Notice the product listings at the top of the results. Google product listings are currently displaying 3 additional results, usually at the top of the results page. Sometimes you will notice the shopping results in different locations, like in position 4 or at the bottom of the page. Because of the size and style of the shopping listings, they do attract the attention of the searcher and result in click-throughs.
What’s in it for you?
If you are reading this post, them I’m sure you have a reason to list your products with the shopping engines. Most shopping engines require payment for listing your products or charge on a PPC basis. Well, Google offers this service for FREE! And seeing that almost 70% of searches are handled by Google, I think it would be a wise idea to submit your data feed to them. Free traffic, people!
We’ll discuss the data feed submission process for Google Product Search in the near future, so stay tuned.
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