Google Certified Shops has been launched as a pilot program in the UK.
The aim for consumers is to convince them to shop online with confidence knowing that they’ll receive reliable dispatch, excellent customer service and free purchase protection with Google Certified Shops. In the rare instances where there’s a problem Google will help resolve the issue and protect purchases up to £1,000.
Google Certified Shops programme, launched in the US last year before bringing the program to the UK this week. Qualifying retailers display the Google Certified Shops badge on their site, letting visitors know that they can trust that store. When a shopper hovers over the badge, they’ll see helpful performance metrics, plus information about free purchase protection from Google. It’s all about adding consumer confidence and convincing them to click that buy button.
There are already a handful of ecommerce sites running as Google Certified Shops including: Schuh Trueshopping; Gorgeousshop; Wayfair; Ghdhair; Spartoo; Physioroom; Bestbathrooms; and Rubbersole.
If you’d like to apply to become a Google Certified shop you’ll need to request to be added to the beta program on the Google Certified Shop website.
11 Responses
I wonder when Amazon will be signing up to join then?
Just another attempt by the chocolate factory to rig the market and gouge online sellers for more money by giving you better visibilty in search if you pay up.
The break-up of this monoply like business cannot come soon enough.
It’s a free service though, not seeing many negatives here
Nothing from the chocolate factory is ever ‘free’ – they always have an agenda and it is all about making money from you at some point.
So if you want to share your sensitive online business metrics with a third party go right ahead.
If you already have an excellent reputation from Amazon, eBay & your own established online shops why bother?
We won’t thanks but good luck to those that do but we still advise that you proceed with caution.
the chocolate factory is nothing like eBay, they make services that you will use and perhaps pay for or they can revenue on the other.
what ebays doing these days is hard to tell, what they are trying to achieve.
In monetary terms it is free. Also we don’t see Google as a competitor so sharing our daily sales, delivery and cancellation reports with them (from what I’ve read from the T&C that’s all they want) is not in our eyes a huge deal.
I believe there is also an insurance part to the scheme, they will cover the value of goods under £1000
The chocolate factory is not a competitor but it is a supplier who exists to slurp your data for profit period!
Unfortunately they are effectively a monopoly supplier of online search which means they will inevitably abuse that position.
And no we don’t choose to allow any of our suppliers to be given daily data on a range of our performance metrics or allow them to post program code on our sites either.
The grave danger is that merchants may be required to participate in such a program in order to optimise organic or paid search or even to access the paid for product listing ads and price comparison boxes.
Given the almost complete dominance of the chocolate factory in the search arena they will seek to control and then gouge merchants still further since there is no effective competition.
Occasionally I come across a phrase that I have not heard before but can work out what it means or refers to but not why.
In this case its “The Chocolate Factory” so in my quest to know everything in the world I thought I would find out and surely I am not the only one who didn’t know!!
A quick search on Google, I mean where else was I going to look, I found the following explanation:
https://wikibin.org/articles/mountain-view-chocolate-factory.html
So there it is, I am now wiser and a step closer to being the all knowing Oracle.
I do wonder why certain phrases are used instead of the actual term, ie The use of “The Big River” instead of Amazon was quite prevalent on ebay messaging boards due to the belief that ebay didn’t like Amazon being used or referenced too, a bit like the youngsters of today, or in fact in any generation changing the meaning of words or phrases so as to stop the grown ups knowing what they talking about, but the difference today is that there is the internet to reference!