Google Shopping global transition is underway

On February 13, Google Shopping results in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Japan, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Brazil, Australia, Switzerland and the Czech Republic began to transition to a new commercial experience built on Product Listing Ads. If you’re a merchant in one of these countries and you’re currently promoting your products on Google Shopping for free, you’ll need to create a Product Listing Ad campaign to maintain your traffic and presence. You can learn more about this transition in our recent announcement.

KEEP YOUR PRODUCTS VISIBLE
To ensure that your products remain eligible for promotion on Google Shopping, we’ve built an easy way for you to create Product Listing Ads.

You can complete the following three simple steps in Merchant Center:

1. Set up a basic Product Listing Ad campaign
   You’ll be able to create a new AdWords account in Merchant Center if you don’t already have one.
2. Customize your campaign
   Set a daily budget and one single maximum cost-per-click bid. You can modify these settings any time after you create your campaign.
3. Provide your billing information
   You’ll be taken to your AdWords account to provide or confirm your billing information.

For a detailed step-by-step guide to getting started with Product Listing Ads and to apply for a promotional credit (available for a limited time only), please visit this page.

PROMOTE YOUR PRODUCTS ACROSS DEVICES
With the recent launch of AdWords enhanced campaigns, it’s now easier than ever to promote your products across devices. This is crucial in a world where people are constantly connected and moving from one device to another. We encourage you to upgrade existing product listing ad campaigns to an enhanced campaign with appropriate bid adjustments.

If you need help getting started with Google Shopping, please visit the Google Shopping website or email us through this form.

Posted by: Sameer Samat, Vice President of Product Management, Google Shopping

Google Shopping: Promotional Credit and Update to Feed Spec for International Merchants

Last month we announced the international rollout of the new Google Shopping model built on Product Listing Ads. Starting in February 2013, Google Shopping in ten more countries will be transitioning to a new experience built on Product Listing Ads. We believe these changes, and the improved user experience, will create new opportunities for merchants and help retailers of all sizes attract more customers to their stores. The new model will be rolled out completely by the end of Q2 2013.

To encourage merchants in Australia, Japan, Brazil, Spain, Italy, France, Netherlands, U.K., Germany and Switzerland to make this transition on Google Shopping, we are offering promotional credit. Merchants who apply and create a Product Listing Ad campaign promoting all of their products in Merchant Center by 12 April 2013 could qualify for this credit. They could also qualify for a monthly credit for 10% of their total Product Listing Ad spend.

To learn more and apply for promotional credit, please visit this page.

Feed Specification Updates

In an effort to improve the data quality on Google Shopping, we have updated our international feed specifications. These changes will take effect in March 2013. They will align our global product feeds more closely and enable us to surface better results to users. Advertisers who are using the reduced Product Ads feed spec will need to bring their feeds into compliance with these new requirements. For more information on the upcoming changes, please visit the Help Center.

In addition to this update, we will also be releasing a new set of Google Shopping program policies. The detailed policies will be announced in January next year.

Posted by Sameer Samat, Vice President of Product Management, Google Shopping.

Google Shopping goes global

On May 31, we announced a new initiative to improve our shopping experience over time. We designed this initiative to help shoppers better research purchases, compare different products and their features and prices, and then connect with merchants to make their purchase.

As part of this new initiative, called Google Shopping, we transitioned Google Product Search in the U.S. to a commercial model built on Product Listing Ads. We made this transition because we believe that having a commercial relationship with merchants will lead to better, more up to date product data -- which will mean better shopping results for users and in turn, higher quality traffic for merchants.

We completed the transition in the U.S. on October 17 and have seen a great deal of success so far.

Google Shopping – international rollout
With that success in mind, we are pleased to announce that we are rolling out this commercial model for Google Shopping, built on Product Listing Ads, in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Japan, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Brazil, Australia and Switzerland. We think this will bring the same high-quality shopping experience to people -- and positive results to merchants – around the world.

In order to give merchants time to make this transition and optimize their campaigns, we’re rolling out the new model gradually, via several steps. The first major change will take place on February 13, 2013, when visually cleaner results for shopping queries, including some new commercial formats on Google.com that will display products in a single unit, will replace current search results. These new commercial formats will be labeled as "Sponsored" and appear in the space currently occupied by AdWords ads.

These visually cleaner results for shopping queries will enable shoppers to refine a search by brand or price, and feature larger product images to provide a better sense of a product’s attributes. Starting today, we’ll begin testing this new format for a small percentage of searches.

The transition to the commercial model will be complete by the end of Q2 2013. We’ll also be offering some incentives; details will follow, on this blog and via email, in the coming weeks.

To learn more and get started merchants can visit: http://support.google.com/adwords/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2456103

Ranking in Google Shopping, when the full transition is complete in the countries listed above, will be based on a combination of relevance and bid price.

A better shopping experience
These changes will create a better shopping experience that will benefit both shoppers and merchants. Shoppers will find products in one convenient place and quickly be able to compare features, find the best prices, read reviews, and identify great merchants -- while advertisers will be given more granular control over product listings and traffic.

We look forward to continuing to evolve the experience with the help of our merchant partners, to help people find what they’re looking for at lightning speed -- and to help businesses of all sizes reach people at the moment of interest, with helpful information.

Posted by Sameer Samat, Vice President of Product Management, Google Shopping

Google Shopping: transition update and new functionality in time for the holidays

Over the last 4 months, Google Shopping has been moving to a commercial model built on Product Listing Ads. One of the reasons we decided to make this transition was to get better data from merchants in order to build a better shopping experience for users. We are very pleased with the participation from retailers in our new model and many are starting to report success.

Starting on October 17, Google Shopping results in the US will come only from merchants who are Product Listing Ads advertisers. We will be ranking these results based on relevance, with bidding as an additional factor. The ranking of natural search results on Google.com will not change.

Help for the Holidays 

For merchants who have not yet made the transition, it’s not too late to get your products on Google Shopping and optimized in time for the holiday season. You can do so by signing up for Product Listing Ads; please visit www.google.com/ads/shopping for more information. For merchants attending SMX East in New York City this week, we would love to hear from you during the Google Shopping Q&A session on October 4 at 2:30 PM local time. We look forward to making ourselves available to answer any questions you may have regarding Product Listing Ads on Google Shopping.

For help optimizing your Product Listing Ads, check out our Google Shopping best practices guide or watch our optimization video. Additionally, we’ll be hosting a ‘Bidding Strategies for the Holidays’ Hangout on Air on Monday, October 29 at 10:00am PST. Visit the Ads Google+ page to join the Hangout.

A New Way to Optimize Campaigns

We’ve gotten a lot of requests for tools that make it easier to manage campaigns at a more granular level, so we’re pleased to announce the availability of product level bidding. This addition to the Product Listing Ads toolkit will help merchants during the holiday season and beyond in a number of ways.

• Optimize bids for individual products. You can now improve your Product Listing Ad performance by setting your cost per click bid at the item level. This functionality should help you meet your volume and profit targets at the product level.
• Easily create product targets. It is now possible to create product targets using the product ID in your Merchant Center feed to manage your bids at the product level.

We believe this feature will create new opportunities for optimization by allowing you to easily target individual products, and will help you make the most out of your Google Shopping campaigns.

For more information on product targets please visit the AdWords Help Center.

We look forward to releasing more tools and features in the coming months to help you reach new customers on Google Shopping. Stay tuned!

Posted by Sameer Samat, Vice President of Product Management, Google Shopping

Google Shopping: momentum and merchant success

Originally posted on the Google Commerce blog

In May, we announced Google Shopping, a new way for people to find and research products, and discover where to buy those products online or nearby. Google Shopping helps people turn their shopping intentions into actions quickly and easily, and then connect directly with merchants to make purchases.  

Progress, improvements and easier onboarding 
We've been pleased by the rapid adoption of Google Shopping in the retail community; tens of thousands of merchants, including many marketplaces, have come on board and are participating in Google Shopping via the new model, based on Product Listing Ads (PLAs). Overall, this represents inventory from over one hundred thousand sellers. 

As the transition to the new model continues, we’ve made changes that will make it easier for merchants to participate in and get more out of Google Shopping. We outlined several of these last month and are pleased to share several more: 
 

• Google Trusted Stores annotations are appearing on product pages within Google Shopping, providing participating merchants with greater ability to attract new customers and helping shoppers to make more informed shopping decisions.
• For merchants that are not familiar with Adwords, we have created a simplified sign-up flow in Merchant Center to make participation easier.
• AdWords Editor updates are reducing the amount of time it takes to optimize a PLA campaign -- from hours to minutes, in many cases.
• Campaign Tracking URL templates have decreased the number of steps required to set up tracking in AdWords and are making the process easier for merchants.
   

 Google Trusted Stores annotations are now appearing on Google Shopping

Of course, it’s not too late for merchants to get on board and optimize their campaigns prior to the upcoming holiday shopping season. We’ve recorded a series of Hangouts on Air to help small and mid-sized businesses transition to Google Shopping, and have made some Google Shopping best practices available here.  

Some Google Shopping Superstars, and the Three C’s 
We’ve seen some early success stories from a variety of retailers, demonstrating how Google Shopping has helped them to connect with consumers, drive clicks to their websites and improve conversion rates. Highlights from some mid-sized merchants are listed below; you can find the full text of all these success stories following each description.
 

• Adorama, one of America’s largest photo retailers and mail-order suppliers, saw their click-through rate (CTR) jump by 176 percent and their conversion rate rise by 100 percent in June 2012, as compared to a year earlier; a similar year-over increase also occurred in July 2012. The full success story can be found here.
• Campmor, a recreational equipment retailer, saw sales increase 10x between January 1 and the present, using PLAs and Google Shopping. The full success story can be found here.
• Empire Covers, an online retailer offering protective covering for cars, trucks, boats, RVs, and motorcycles, along with accessories for pet travel and outdoor living, saw their cost-per-acquisition (CPA) decline by 36 percent between April and August 2012. Additionally, CPCs dropped by 11 percent from July to August 2012. The full success story text can be found here, and a video with more details here.
• Plow & Hearth, a leading retailer of products for the home, hearth, yard, and garden that includes all of its products for all of its brands in PLAs on Google Shopping, saw a number of dramatic results: unique site visits increased by 129 percent, pages per visit increased by 6.3 percent and average visit duration increased by 14.7 percent, while their bounce rate dropped by 9.8 percent. The full success story can be found here.
• ToolKing.com, an Internet Retailer 500 company offering tools, hardware, home-improvement items, outdoor goods, and more across multiple e-commerce channels, lists all its products in Google Shopping via PLAs. Since signing up for PLAs, ToolKing.com’s traffic and conversion rates have risen by more than 50 percent, average order value is up by nearly 15 percent and the sale of thousands of items it once considered “dead” have been reinvigorated. The full success story text can be found here and you can watch a video with more details here.
• TravelSmith Outfitters, an outfitting resource for savvy travelers, used the expertise of Mercent to implement PLAs. Since then, product sales originating from PLAs and Google Shopping have increased by 200 percent. They have also increased consumer traffic by approximately 10 percent and have seen orders go up by 35 percent, with more than a 26 percent increase in sales conversions. The full success story can be found here.

 
There’s more to come! 
We look forward to sharing more with you over the coming months -- from new merchant tools that provide more control and flexibility, to new features that will make holiday shopping easier and more fun for consumers. We’re also in the process of planning our 2013 roll-out of Google Shopping in Europe, Asia and Latin America. We’ll have more to share in the next few weeks, so stay tuned.

Posted by Sameer Samat, Vice President of Product Management, Google Shopping

Helping Merchants Succeed: Updates to and Reminders for Google Shopping

We’re dedicated to helping merchants succeed with Google Shopping and a huge part of this success involves making it easy for businesses to optimize their accounts, especially before the holiday season. For example, we recently released an update to AdWords Editor that allows retailers to easily manage Product Listing Ads at scale and delivered a series of four Hangouts on Air to help merchants make the transition to Google Shopping.

We’re continuing to actively release improvements to the product and we recently started ranking the results in Google Shopping based on a combination of relevance and bid price--just like Product Listing Ads are ranked. While products listed without a bid will continue to show until the final transition to a commercial model is complete in the fall, advertisers who are promoting their products with Product Listing Ads will have better positioning and increased traffic.

Merchants who create Product Listing Ads will also have greater control over where their products appear in Google Shopping, due to the inclusion of bid as a factor in ranking. And in the future, they will have the opportunity to differentiate their businesses and market special offers, such as, "30% off all refracting telescopes”.

9 Days Left To Take Advantage of Limited Time Offer

In May, we announced Google Shopping, a new initiative to improve our shopping experience that makes it easy for shoppers (your customers) to easily research purchases, compare different products, their features and prices, and then connect directly with merchants to make purchases.

A key part of this initiative was helping make this transition easier for merchants by offering two incentives:

• All merchants that are promoting all of their online product inventory and who are compliant with Google Shopping policies by August 15, 2012, will receive a monthly AdWords credit of 10% of their total US spend on Product Listing Ads through the end of the year.
• Additionally, merchants active on Product Search as of May 30, 2012 can fill out this form by August 15, 2012 and receive a $100 AdWords credit to use toward Product Listing Ads.

With only 9 days left until the August 15th deadline, we suggest visiting this site to learn more about these incentives today.

We’re focused on ensuring that merchants of all sizes succeed with Google Shopping and the roadmap includes even more exciting changes that will make it easier to manage Product Listing Ads. To get started with Google Shopping, visit our getting started guide.

Posted by Jennifer Dulski, Director of Product Management, Google Shopping

Google Shopping Hangouts on Air Recap

Last month we announced a series of Hangouts on Air designed to help guide small and medium sized businesses through the transition to Google Shopping. We appreciate how many of you took the time to join the Hangouts and wanted to make the sessions available for those who were not able to attend live.

Session 1: Google Shopping Introduction and Overview
Our first Hangout on Air provides an introduction to Google Shopping, including an in depth overview of the changes. Watch it here.

Session 2: Introduction to Merchant Center
Session two provides an introduction to Merchant Center and walks through best practices for getting started. Watch it here.

Session 3: Creating and Optimizing Product Listing Ads
The third Hangout in our series guides you through the creation of Product Listing Ads and covers best practices for optimizing your performance. Watch it here.

Session 4: Google Trusted Stores Overview and Setup
Our final Hangout on Air covers Google Trusted Stores and walks through how your business can participate. Watch it here.

We hope you find these sessions useful as you transition to Google Shopping. You can find these videos and all future Google Shopping videos hosted on our YouTube playlist.

Posted by David Kaufman, Google Shopping Team

Reach mobile and tablet shoppers with Google Shopping

Smartphones and tablets are changing how people shop for goods and services. More than ever, consumers have near constant access to information from their mobile devices. This global trend opens up new opportunities for businesses to influence purchasing decisions -- at anytime or place, at home or on the go.

To help businesses reach customers while they’re shopping, today we’re launching our new Google Shopping experience, built on Product Listing Ads, for tablets and smartphones in the United States. Just like on desktop computers, Google Shopping for mobile makes it easier for your customers to find and compare different products. Product images enable shoppers to make quick visual comparisons while browsing products. Search refinements, now on tablet devices, help to surface the brands, features and price point they want, so shoppers can easily buy the product they want from the merchant of their choice.

We designed this new shopping experience to fit naturally with the activities people love to do on their smartphones and tablets. For example, tablets are largely used at home, and often while watching TV. In fact, more than a third of tablet owners surveyed said they used tablets to look up products they saw on the big screen at home*. These consumers are making more and more purchases on their tablets. We see similar trends amongst smartphone owners. Our recent Our Mobile Planet research found that one third of Americans (34%) have made a purchase on their smartphones**, and across all global markets surveyed in the study, 62% of people who’ve made a mobile purchase do so at least on a monthly basis.

Product Listing Ads can be set up in AdWords, after you’ve linked your Merchant Center account. To ensure that mobile and tablet shoppers can view your Product Listing Ads, make sure that your campaigns are targeting mobile and tablet devices with full browsers.

To help online merchants drive sales across smartphones and tablets, as well as desktop computers, we’re offering some incentives:

• Both new and existing merchants who create Product Listing Ads by August 15, 2012 will automatically receive a monthly credit for 10% of their total Product Listing Ad spend through the end of 2012; and
• Existing Google Product Search merchants who are new to Product Listing Ads can receive $100 AdWords credit toward Product Listing Ads if they fill out a form before August 15, 2012.

Learn more how to get started with Google Shopping across smartphones, tablets or desktop computers, visit: www.google.com/ads/shopping


Posted by Anurag Agrawal, Product Manager, Mobile Ads
_____________________

*State of the Media”, Nielsen, April 2012
**Our Mobile Planet, Google, 2012

Helping businesses get started with Google Shopping: A new, easy way to create Product Listing Ads in Merchant Center

Also posted on the Google Commerce Blog

We announced that we’re creating a new shopping experience, Google Shopping, to empower merchants of all sizes to compete effectively. Through feedback from our merchant partners, we understand that the transition to the new Google Shopping experience may seem intimidating for first time AdWords advertisers. We take this feedback seriously and want you, our merchant partners, to know that we’re here to help.

As a first step, today we’re launching a new simplified setup flow for Product Listing Ads in the familiar Merchant Center interface. The new setup flow provides a step-by-step guide on how to create an AdWords account and set up a Product Listing Ad campaign, as well as how to control when and where your products appear in Google Shopping with bids. You can also view basic campaign reporting through your Merchant Center account.

Also, as previously announced, we’re offering two incentives to help merchants get started with Google Shopping:

1. All merchants who create Product Listing Ads by August 15, 2012 will automatically receive a monthly AdWords credit of 10% of their total spend on Product Listing Ads through the end of the year. 
2. Additionally, active Product Search merchants (as of May 30, 2012) can fill out this form by August 15, 2012 and receive a $100 AdWords credit to use toward Product Listing Ads.

To create a Product Listing Ad campaign, sign into your Merchant Center account today. For more information please visit: www.google.com/ads/shopping.

Posted by Mayuresh Saoji, Product Manager, Google Shopping

Google Shopping and SMBs: What you need to know

We’re excited to launch a series of Hangouts on Air to help guide small and medium sized businesses through the transition to Google Shopping. This series of Hangouts will guide you through an introduction to Google Shopping--giving you all the information you need to list your products on Google Shopping:

Session 1: Google Shopping Introduction and Overview: Friday, July 13th - 9:30am PDT
Session 2: Introduction to Merchant Center: Tuesday, July 17th - 9:30am PDT
Session 3: Creating and Optimizing Your Product Listing Ads for Google Shopping: Friday July, 20th - 9:30am PDT
Session 4: Trusted Stores Overview and Setup: Monday, July 23rd - 10:30am PDT

To tune into this Hangout On Air:

1) Visit the Google Ads Google+ Page at 9:30am PDT / 12:30pm EDT.
2) Look for the post in our stream (see image below for what it will look like), and click to tune in. Be sure you’re signed into Google+!

We look forward to seeing you there, but if you cannot join us, we’ll be posting each session to this blog and the Google Business YouTube channel.

Posted by Jon Venverloh, Senior Manager, Google Shopping