Online clothes and footwear shoppers can spend hours looking through their favourite stores in search for an item that they want to wear. They might jump from one app to another looking for the outfit for a night out or a special occasion, or they might scroll through their search results for ‘black evening dress’ or similar. We can be sure they will appreciate the recent updated for Shopping Search.
What has changed?
Since January 2020, when you are looking for clothes and footwear from different stores across the world, you now see them all in the one place on Search on your mobile. This means you can browse through similar clothing for all stores and brands without the need to click on individual links or use different apps.
All you need to do is choose the appropriate search term e.g. “Girl’s jackets” and you will be presented with Search results pulled from all of the most popular stores. You are even able to filter the search by details such as colour, style, size etc. so that you can refine your search even further but still get results from all the stores that stock your requirements.
Another change that this brings is the faster access to reviews for specific items so that you can judge whether to make a purchase based on past reviews. Retailers do not pay Google to appear in the search results, it works based on Google having indexed over a million online shops to develop this new feature of Search.
As well as providing the links to the clothing items’ stores so you can make a purchase, the Google Shopping update also presents images along with prices to help you to quickly scroll through different styles to choose your preferred ones.
How do retailers appear in the Search Result Page?
The retailers must set up product feeds in Google Merchant Center and provide all of the required product information that Google requires. If there are missing pieces of information, such as prices, for example, Google will not include the retailer in their search index.
These changes are closer to the kind of search results that Amazon already provided to its shoppers but gives a wider shopping experience with more possibilities for shoppers. For retailers who want to ensure that their business continues to benefit from the new update, it is important to keep up to date with the latest changes through the Google support page that lists the Merchant Center change log.
Here you will find updates that could impact your industry or specifically affects an aspect of content on your website. You will also find useful information that could help your business to work more efficiently. For example, in February they shared news about there being a simpler way to add products directly in Merchant Center.
It is expected that there will be many more updates to improve the Google Shopping experience and the initial reaction is that the update has delivered huge benefits to shoppers by saving them time and helping them to easily find the products they want.