What's changing with Google Product Search?

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I’ve come across a fair few sellers complaining that Google doesn’t appear to be displaying eBay listings and that product feeds are broken. There appear to be a number of reasons for this – Shop Inventory Format listings no longer exist, eBay feeds appear broken and also Google are now insisting on item condition being included in Google Base feeds.

There could be even more changes around the corner though – Google are beta testing what’s known as the “Product Plus Box”, which is linked to AdWords.

The Product Plus Box is a limited trial in the US and recently expanded to include a few select UK merchants.

At the same time as the Plus Box experiments, some retailers have reported a drop in traffic from Google Product Search of as much as 60-80% in June. If your business relies on Google to send you traffic, whether that be to your eBay listings or especially to your own website you need to be aware of the changes taking place.

ChannelAdvisor are holding an online seminar at 7pm on the 23rd July which will look at what is going on with Google Product Search, reports on some Google ecommerce-related tests you may not know about, and finally give online retailers 10 “ready to implement” strategies to help you counteract the steep decline in traffic and sales from Google Product Search.

Disclosure: ChannelAdvisor advertise with TameBay.

14 Responses

  1. To be honest I haven’t a clue. Currently it’s a closed beta for a few retailers, but how it’s rolled out in the future to adwords users in general I don’t know. I also don’t now how it’ll impact Google Product search (aka Froogle, Google Base, Google Shopping) but hopefully Scot Wingo will have more info in the seminar on the 23rd.

  2. Well our products had dropped out of product search a few weeks ago from our website, we uploaded them all again and sales have shot up!

    Its no surprise to hear that google are going to look at charging for this in the future!

    Chris will you be doing a follow up to this after the webinar?

    Stu

  3. This is really interesting. I have found exactly the opposite and been frustrated the last few months trying to find shipping materials on Google Shopping search that were NOT on eBay. The main problem being that when I click on the specific GS item I am often directed to eBay.com index page rather than to an individual item listing.

    Then I get to deal with the incredible ever changing eBay search, eg type in Womens Institute Wine Making Recipe Book (long out of print) and the search automatically changes to Womens Wine showing a selection of wine colored shoes, handbags, sweaters and dresses. Just what I was looking for to help me make elderflower champagne.

    PS If you have that book please contact me through the website or my blog, I am still looking but not finding.

  4. Google are already giving prefrence to the big brands I see
    Boots John Lewis etc .. are using Google Base /Products/Shopping now .
    When I upload my product feed from eBay if the product is selected it shows up as eBay .co.uk ,not my shop name . 😥 If you search Google products for Palmer Cutler you will see what I mean .

    Everyone is very quick to blame eBay ,Google mess about with a lot of things as well .Since June last year the click rate from my products in google base have been dire.
    I don’t think Google want eBay shops anymore . 😥

  5. Sarah
    Listing showing as eBay UK will be from the feed eBay sends to Google.
    It’s possible that this feed may not be working also. None of the Palmer Cutler items are listings starting after Google’s change of June 30th.
    eBay feeds still being sent to Google still show the shop name.

  6. If you missed the ChannelAdvisor Google Product Search webinar with Scot Wingo last night – check out the recording online – https://tinyurl.com/lmwght – lots of interesting UK content and an even more interesting question from Chris (oh sorry I hit the wrong button 😉 )

  7. #11 Thanks for posting the link John, I was watching a re-run of Wickers World and got carried away with the excitement.

  8. Is Product Search dedicated to US search only? Or using it (Google Base) I may be found in Polish Google search results? Thx for hint.

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