'Net Features : google commerce search

Google's New E-Commerce Search Service is Priced to Sell

Linc Wonham — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 17:00:00 GMT

Maybe it doesn’t qualify as the sale of the century, but Google has improved its six-month-old e-commerce search product and sliced the cost in half — to $25,000 per year. Not exactly a drop in the bucket, but Google is hoping the new platform and price tag will invite at least a look from e-commerce businesses not counted among the top 1,000 revenue-producers.

So, while you’re getting your checkbooks, here’s a list of some of the new features for Google’s Commerce Search 2.0:

New merchandising dashboard: Gives merchants more control over promotions, search-ranking rules and filtering. Marketers and product merchandisers can now do all of this themselves without requiring custom codes. New retailer controls such as time-based promotions, navigation bar with filters and simple product-ranking rules allow seasonal optimizations to be done on the fly.
Improved search quality: Retailers can offer common queries to shoppers in real time without any custom coding with the new query auto-completion. Search results are returned to shoppers in less than a second. New spelling and stemming dictionaries and custom synonym options make shopping on a retail site as easy and accurate as searching on Google.
Better browsing and navigation: Consumers can shop by browsing on a retail site as well as searching directly for products.

Since the launch of the first version of Commerce Search last year, businesses such as Birkenstock, SmartFurniture, Coveroo and DiscountOfficeItems have used the product to integrate powerful search into their e-commerce sites. Other companies that offer e-commerce search platforms include Omniture, Endeca and IBM.

Google Commerce Search for Your Retail Site

Mike Phillips — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:51:00 GMT

Google has launched a new product just in time for the holiday retail rush. Google Commerce Search is a retail-focused search utility that retailers can put on their sites to help customers find what they want faster and more efficiently. The interface is customizable to fit the look and feel of the website and - best of all - results can be tracked with Google analytics. It's also entirely hosted in Google's cloud, so should a website get a sudden rush of activity, it is not in danger of crashing. Another nice feature is the ability to promote certain products at the top of results - of course, your analytics should be used to tell you what products are selling best and therefore should be featured. Products can be uploaded via data feeds, direct uploads or by using the Google API.

This is an important step for Google to get more in-line with the retail sector. But the real winners here are retailers. Site search is imperative for any online retail shop - it's the most common and fastest way consumers find products to buy and, without question, it improves conversion rates. If you're not currently using site search, this is a no-brainer. Even if you have your own site search, Google's system might be worth a look. After all, when it comes to search nobody does it better.

Finally, there's the issue of pricing. Here's the limited information given by Google: The pricing model for Google Commerce Search is based on the number of products/items (SKUs) in your data feed and the number of search queries entered on your site each year. If you want real specifics, you need to contact a Google representative. See the video below for a quick overview of Google Commerce Search features.