by Claudia Bruemmer

As ecommerce becomes more competitive, online merchants must work harder to be successful. Most merchants have heard of Google Product Search, the Google price comparison service that displays products in the organic SERPs. Originally named Froogle, Google Product Search has been around for a while and continues to become more important because the comparison shopping engine helps drive customer traffic to merchant sites through Google’s search algorithms and technologies.

However, not all online merchants are using Google Product Search. Product Search offers retailers the opportunity to display specific products in search results. As indicated by Google: “It provides potential customers an on-hand price comparison service, with searches by keyword, which can then be broken down by category and ordered by price.”

When searching on Google, users can find your products via shopping results as part of organic search results, or through Google’s products search page.

Merchant access is available at the Google Merchant Center, where you can submit your product feed for display in search results. Ecommerce sites can gain visibility by uploading their products to Google’s free service, which has become a source of more revenue for many ecommerce merchants. You can potentially see millions of visits from product searches once you start uploading your feeds through your Google Merchant Center account.

• You can upload manually, but it’s not recommended
• Because of the changing nature of most products in your inventory and potential price changes, uploading product feeds should be automated
• To save time, your feed uploads should be in an XML file hosted on your main domain using a static file name
• You can then build a function into your CMS that can refresh (or auto refresh) your feed whenever necessary or when you add and remove products
• Your data feed can then be submitted through the Google Merchant Center requesting that Google download your feed contents on a daily/weekly/monthly basis

Google changed its feed specifications and policies in September, requiring additional fields to be filled in, so you will want to review the new instructions. It’s important to adhere to the new policies and to provide all the necessary information.

The formerly required attributes below are no longer required. If included in your feed, it’s not a problem, but the information will not be included in Google Product Search.

• Quantity
• Feature
• Manufacturer
• Genre
• Featured product
• Year
• Author
• Edition

The following are now required attributes:

• Image Attributes: required worldwide
• Availability Attribute: required in the US, UK, Germany and France
• New Google Product Category Attribute: required for US, UK, Germany, France and Japan
• New Clothing Attributes: required for US
• New Variant Attributes: required for variant clothing products in the U
• Prices: your most prominent price on the landing page must be the same price on Google Product Search

Data Freshness: This has to do with the availability, pricing and general product information of each product. If any of these attributes are inaccurate or false, Google will take action against the account. Therefore, you must monitor availability and price changes regularly.

Success with Google Product Search: Adhere to Google’s guidelines, keep your data fresh and make your product titles relevant so searchers can find them. Another thing you can do is encourage your customers to write reviews on third party sites since this gives you trust and authority. Be aware that merchants with better pricing are ranked higher as Google uses a combination of price, authority and relevance for ranking products.

To get the best results with Google Product Search and increase your revenues, be certain your files are correct when first entered, adhere to the new regulations, and ensure your data is always fresh.