Google Data

This holiday season, shoppers are acting more quickly and more purposefully than ever before, with 7% less time spent in each mobile shopping session.¹ Yet those same shoppers are making 64% more mobile purchases than last year in the retail category, according to Google Analytics data.² Intent-filled shopping micro-moments will replace shopping marathons this season, and we’re rolling out three new features to help retailers act on these critical moments.

Optimize your shopping bids with remarketing lists

We’re excited to extend remarketing capabilities to both shopping ads (PLAs) and local inventory ads (LIAs) with shopping remarketing lists. Now you can optimize your shopping bids to re-engage high-value customers the next time they shop on Google.com. For example, when those who’ve abandoned their carts on your sites or your loyal customers shop again on Google on desktop or mobile, you can use remarketing lists to tailor your shopping bids and reconnect with them at a more cost-efficient ROI.

Early adopters are seeing great success with shopping remarketing lists:

“Shopping remarketing lists have proven incredibly successful for Magazines.com. We’re able to strategically target consumers who did not convert in previous visits, driving 285% higher mobile and desktop conversion rates with 68% lower CPAs, making it one of the most effective features we’ve ever tested.”
- Yuly Gonzalez, Sr. SEM Specialist, Rakuten Search

“With Shopping remarketing lists, our client Cruiser Customizing increased their conversion rate by 78% and their ROAS by 66%. We don’t want to have a single Shopping campaign now without shopping remarketing lists attached.”
- Jeremy Brown, Chief Marketing Officer, Metric Theory

Get better insights into the products in high demand online and near your stores

To help you make better decisions about which products to merchandise and promote in your stores, online, and via your Google shopping data feed, we recently rolled out two new tools:

First, with the new Shopping Insights tool, you can identify the products people are actively looking for online and around your stores.* Based on aggregated and indexed data from April to September of 2015, the tool lets you explore the most popular shopping product terms on Google, measure their significance over time, filter for cities, and compare how consumers search for products differently on mobile or desktop.

The Assortment Report uses your existing Google Merchant Center data feed to identify gaps in your product assortment based on the popular products shoppers are clicking on, in real-time, by product category. For example, if you offer toys, you might learn that you’re not yet stocking the Sphero BB-8 App-Enabled Droid from Star Wars, one of the hottest toys right now on Google. This report also provides benchmark selling prices for each of those missing products to help you with sourcing and pricing decisions.

Posted by Archana Kannan, Product Manager, Google Shopping

We know that retailers are always interested in new opportunities to meet online customer demand — especially during the busy holiday season. Today, we’re excited to introduce the Shopping Assortment Report in Google Merchant Center to help you plan your product assortment and reach even more shoppers online.

With the Shopping Assortment Report, you can quickly discover the top 100 products that you don’t already offer in your Merchant Center product feed for each Google Product Category. You can also see benchmark selling prices for these products. This information can be helpful in identifying new brands and products to add to your assortment, and reach even more customers with in-demand products. The data is based on the popularity of these products on Google Shopping, offering a near real-time view into online consumer demand for shoppable products.

Already, retailers are seeing success with the new Shopping Assortment Report. Daniel Dutton, Strategy leader at Target, says “Google’s new Assortment Report has already become a useful tool for us to identify white space opportunities, from newly emerging products we didn’t already carry, to out-of-stock products to prioritize for restocking.”

With this fresh and detailed information from the Shopping Assortment Report, you can:

• Identify key products that are missing from your feed. Identify popular products you do sell, but may have forgotten to include in your data feed, or may have the incorrect GTIN associated with the product. 
• Expand your product offerings. Identify popular products you currently do not sell, but may wish to source from suppliers and add to your product feed.

Whether you’re looking to add more products to your inventory or research pricing, the Shopping Assortment Report can help you reach even more shoppers online this holiday season, and beyond. For information on how to get started, check out our Help Center article.

Posted by Matt Henderson, Product Manager for Google Shopping

We’re constantly looking for ways to give thoughtful, relevant information as shoppers browse, compare and research during their I-Want-to-Know moments. At the same time, we want to help you differentiate your products and stand out on Google.

Promotional text, an optional message added to your ad groups in AdWords, was part of our first efforts to do just that. We noticed many of you use promotional text to highlight special offers or free shipping, so today, we’re excited to introduce new automated extensions for shopping ads (PLAs).

Automated extension for shopping ads

These new extensions are displayed alongside your shopping ads (PLAs) at no additional work or cost. They use existing information you’ve provided in your Merchant Center settings and data feed to automatically show free shipping and price drop information in a consistent and digestible way for shoppers.

Promotional text retirement

Based on initial results, we’re seeing shoppers prefer these new automated extensions over promotional text and advertisers are getting better click through rates with it too. Thus, we’ll be retiring promotional text at the end of September 2015 and start surfacing automated extensions more frequently instead.

For those who use promotional text, no additional action is needed. Your ads won’t be otherwise affected and will continue to reach shoppers searching on Google. If you want to highlight other offers aside from free shipping and sale prices, we strongly encourage you to take advantage of our other shopping extensions:

• Merchant promotions to share discounts and promo codes
• Product ratings to display aggregated star ratings and link to customer reviews
• Trusted Stores certification to show the world you’re trusted by Google as a great place to shop

Availability of this extension may vary by country, so check out the above help center articles for more details. You can find more information on automated extensions in our help center as well.

Posted by Tom Beyer, Product Manager, Google Shopping

Your data feed is key to promoting your products on Google.com — it lets you capture the attention of shoppers by letting them know you’ve got exactly what they’re looking for. To help you seamlessly update ads and quickly get products in front of new customers, today we’re excited to announce two data feed enhancements to Google Merchant Center — one that improves efficiencies for large retailers, and one that helps small retailers get on board more easily:

• Online product inventory feeds: a new feed type that lets you quickly update price, availability and sale price of your key products. This is especially useful for larger retailers that need to change these attributes frequently. 
• Google Sheets add-on: a Sheets extension that connects your spreadsheet directly to Merchant Center for a faster and easier upload. This is especially useful to for smaller retailers looking to get up and running quickly with shopping ads.

Whether you use Google Sheets or text file formats to upload your products, these new data feed enhancements make it faster and easier to upload your most up-to-date product information to Google Shopping and find more customers online.

Online product inventory feeds help you quickly update key attributes 

If the price, availability, or sale price information for some or all of your products changes frequently, online product inventory feeds is a new feed type to make quick updates to these product attributes, without having to re-submit the full product feed:

• Save time with even faster feed processing: Submit new information for price and availability throughout the day to update these specific attributes. You can submit updates for just a small subset of your products for faster processing. If there’s an error processing your online inventory feed, your full product feed will not be impacted.
• Show shoppers the most accurate product details: When your pricing or availability suddenly changes, update your affected items on the fly, allowing fresher information to appear on Google Shopping. 

For more information on how to get started with online inventory feeds, check out our Help Center article.

Validate and upload your feed directly from Google Sheets

Google Sheets was designed to provide a fast and friendly way to get started with shopping ads for small and medium sized retailers. If you use Google Sheets to upload your inventory to Google Merchant Center, the new Google Sheets add-on simplifies how you create, upload and validate feeds:

• Validate your products directly from Sheets: The sidebar in the add-on allows you to validate individual rows or your entire Google Sheet, showing you any errors and warnings before you upload your data feed. 
• Upload your products directly from Sheets: From the sidebar, you can upload your entire spreadsheet into Merchant Center, without leaving Sheets. The results of your upload are displayed directly in the sidebar, giving you immediate feedback on feed processing.

For more information on how to get started with Google Sheet add-on, visit our Help Center article.

Be sure to check out these two new enhancements today to get up and running on Google Shopping and make the world your storefront.

Posted by Sven Herschel, Product Manager for Google Merchant Center 

On March 14, we let you know about a new set of data requirements for Product Search merchants. As part of these changes, we communicated that shipping and tax information would be required in your data feeds as of June 6.

However, based on feedback we’ve received from merchants, we are extending the deadline until September 1, allowing you more time to modify your data feeds. We are also permitting estimates for tax/shipping information. However, we recommend reviewing the submission options and submitting the most accurate information that you can, as this ensures the best experience for shoppers.

Here is a summary of what’s changing:

For Feeds Targeting the United States, United Kingdom, France and Germany: The June 6 deadline for providing shipping information has been extended to September 1.

For Feeds Targeting the United States: The June 6 deadline for providing tax information has been extended to September 1.

Posted by Robin Zuger, Product Manager on the Google Shopping Team

At an event in New York City today, we announced Google Wallet, an app that will turn shoppers’ phones into their wallets. Google Wallet will enable consumers to store their credit cards, coupons, loyalty and gift cards securely on their phone, so they can pay, redeem offers, and earn loyalty points – all with a single tap of their phone. It is in a field test now and will be available to all consumers this summer.

A key benefit to retailers will be the integration of coupons, or offers, into Google Wallet. We’ve been testing a variety of offers – from discounts directly within search ads to check-in offers to offers in Google Places. Over time, consumers will be able to save each of these offers directly to their Google Wallet. That means consumers will get the benefit of carrying their offers with them at all times, bringing retailers targeted foot traffic.

The integration of offers into Google Wallet will enable merchants to close the loop by directly connecting their online and mobile advertising with offline purchases. In addition, Google Wallet provides merchants with a way to engage with customers in-store, enhancing the customer experience. Many leading merchants are integrating Google Wallet into their stores.

From the outset, Google Wallet will be compatible with more than a hundred thousand merchants nationwide that are part of the MasterCard PayPass network – a merchant point of sale service that enables consumers to tap to pay.

We’re also working with leading retailers and point of sale systems companies to integrate Google Wallet into their physical store experience. Participating retailers include: American Eagle Outfitters, Bloomingdale’s, Champs Sports, The Container Store, Duane Reade, Einstein Bros. Bagels, Foot Locker, Guess, Jamba Juice, Macy’s, Noah’s Bagels, Peet’s Coffee & Tea, RadioShack, Subway, Toys“R”Us and Walgreens.

Posted by Spencer Spinnell, Director of Commerce Partnerships

If you’re a retailer, you’ve probably seen the shopping results on Google.com and Google Product Search. These results are generally based on product feeds that retailers submit, for free, to the Google Merchant Center.

There are four key benefits for retailers who upload product feeds:
Free, Qualified Traffic through Google Product Search, a shopping search engine that helps consumers discover product information, compare prices and find a retailer from whom they can make a purchase. This is free traffic to your retail website, which you can only benefit from by submitting a product feed.
Richer AdWords Formats such as product extensions use the product feed to automatically display your products within AdWords ads where relevant.
Improve On-Site Conversion with Google Commerce Search. Commerce Search leverages your product feed and innovations of Google.com to deliver a powerful search and discovery experience on your e-commerce site. Among other things, Google Commerce Search provides an interactive shopping experience – which includes features like automated promotions and instant results – found only on the top retail websites, as well as a powerful merchandising suite that helps you integrate business goals and adapt to market dynamics.
Reach Mobile Shoppers through Google Shopper, our shopping application for Android and iPhone, Shopping for Mobile, our shopping website, and Google Commerce Search on your mobile website. On-the-go shoppers will be able to discover goods you submit in your product feed.

To take advantage of the unique features associated with the merchant feed, first submit your product data feed at the Google Merchant Center and then explore the hyperlinks listed above.

Posted by Kirill Kounik, Google Commerce Team