Google Shopping Optimization- A Comprehensive Guide

What is Google Shopping?

Google Shopping is a product search platform that helps customers discover and compare products on its search engine. Google Shopping has made a change in its product search experience. The free product listings are picked by the algorithm over the paid ones. This was a relief to merchants during the Corona crisis.

The Google Shopping button is seen on the search page from where customers can view products they want to buy.

In his blog published in April 2020, Bill ready, President, Commerce at Google said, “We’re advancing our plans to make it free for merchants to sell on Google. Beginning next week, search results on the Google Shopping tab will consist primarily of free listings, helping merchants better connect with consumers, regardless of whether they advertise on Google.”

Google Shopping consists of

1. Google Ads (Old Google Ad words) — This is where you set up shopping campaigns, bid for keywords for your clickable ads to appear on search results

2. Google Merchant Center — This is where you upload your product information, update and manage them.

How Google Shopping Works

When customers search for a product on Google, the most relevant product listings posted by merchants like you will show up.

I searched for lighting distributors and a list of products from the distributors is displayed. Listing on Google Shopping is a great way to be visible to your target audience (for B2Bs too).

Upon search, the buyers can see product information like the image, the product link to the seller’s website, pricing, and applicable taxes. They have an option to sort their search by category, price, or review score.

• Google Shopping collects product information from the sellers and shows them on the search engine based on relevance.
• Merchants should have a google account, using which they can sign up for the Google Merchant Center.
• Give your business information, choose your checkout pages, give any third-party platform information that you use, and list your products in accordance with the Google shopping guidelines and your products are ready to be shopped on Google.

Sellers’ Benefits of using Google shopping

Merchants have the best shot at the highest organic visibility through Google shopping ads also called Product Listing Ads (PLA’s). Of course, only if SERPs that crawl up your website find your product listing to match with the users’ search terms.

The product listings on Google Shopping have product images displayed which is more appealing than the other text-only search results. This gives merchants a better chance of selling their products. Statistics show that Google shopping conversion rates are 30% higher than the text ads. Here’s how Google Shopping Optimization gives you great results.

• Your products are out there for sale before the customer even visits your website. This opens the door to customer loyalty if they end up liking your product.
• The direct product link to your website makes the buyer’s journey easier by skipping the process of doing multiple searches and navigations.
• You will get high-quality leads because your products matched the buyers’ search terms to rank on Google shopping.
• Google Shopping is unlike any other marketplace because it leads customers to shop from your website (and not from Google) thus enabling you to establish a personal connection with your buyers. (exception- Buy from Google Option which we will talk about later)

Why care about Google Shopping Optimization?

Exactly because of the benefits you read about in the previous section. More on it as we proceed.

Google shopping optimization involves

1. Optimizing your campaigns, ad spends, keyword bidding.
2. Optimizing your shopping data feed.

Optimized ad campaigns are bound to get returns by way of Search query level bidding, Bid adjustments, showing customer ratings on ads, experimenting with ad groups, and so on. Ad optimization decreases your ad spends and brings you a better ROI.

Whereas Google Shopping Optimization of product data is important for your product
1. To first show up to the right customers.
2. To reduce your ad spends because your optimized product data shows up more organically.
3. To increase your visibility on search.

You can read in detail about How to get Google Optimization right and how to optimize your Google Shopping feed in our blog.

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