Searching retail sites can be frustrating at times. While many retailers try to present product search in a visually appealing way, search can often be slow or difficult to refine. Tonight, Google is making a huge play in retail space with the launch of Commerce Search, a hosted enterprise search product to power online retail stores and e-commerce websites.
Google offers a general hosted search product that is used by organizations that want to add customized Google search functionality to their websites. Google is now entering the vertical space, by the first tailor-made enterprise product, with retail optimized space. There are four key components to thew new search offering for retailers:
Speed: Google promises “ultra-fast speed and accuracy” by leveraging Google’s search technology to provide sub-second response time to customer searches on retail sites. Commerce Search also uses a proprietary ranking technology to analyze the products in each data feed and serve the most relevant match. Google says that faster search speed will help increase conversions to buy products, as customers can quickly find specific products without having to navigate complex search interfaces.
E-commerce-Specific Search: Google Commerce offers a variety of features that are optimized for retail and product search, such as parametric search, sorting of results, spell checker, stemming, and synonym suggestion, which in some way or another let users to refine and target their searches. I’m told hosted search uses several proprietary signals to determine the ranking of search result. Commerce also offers a compelling product promotions features, that lets retailers fine-tune search results to push promoted products to the top of results. The search interface allows for retailers to specifically label products as promoted.
One of my bones to pick with Google Commerce was that it’s interface may be to simple for retail sites like Saks, Bloomingdales or others who tend to display products in a more visually appealing way. Presentation, whether it be real-store or online, matters. But Nitin Mangtani, Lead Product Manager for Google Enterprise Search, told me that the Google Commerce Search API allows retailers to fully customize the search experience on their website and add all the bells and whistles they need to make the interface match the rest of their site. And, retailers using Commerce don’t need to show the Google logo on the search site.
Scalability: Because Commerce Search is hosted by Google and based in the cloud, Google says it’s easily scalable to absorb additional traction on the site. For example, says Mangtani, during the holiday season, retailers will most probably experience high traffic on search. Google will ensure that retailers can manage the boost in traffic and scale the search application. And Mangtani adds that once all product data is incorporated, search can be deployed on any e-commerce site fairly quickly.
Leveraging Other Google Products: Google promises integration with other Google products like Google Analytics and Google Product Search. Using Commerce, retailers can measure clicks, conversion rates, number of transactions, average order value and other data via Google Analytics. And e-commerce vendors can provide a single feed of products and catelogue items that will power Commerce and indexing of their products on Google Product Search. Product Search (formerly Froogle) was blends shopping results with Google search.
Google didn’t release too many details on its pricing mode for Commerce Search, but a spokeswoman told me that the product will start at $50,000 per year. Beyond that, pricing will be based on the number of products (SKUs) in the customer’s database and the number of search queries entered on their site each year. This pricing isn’t cheap so obviously this appeals to bigger retailers and e-commerce shops. Google has already partnered with Birkenstock USA to power search, which looks mediocre. It was a little simple for my taste and it lacked a visible search bar but I’m really interested to see what can be done with Commerce for more embellished e-commerce sites. Google Commerce will now compete with the likes of Omniture, Endeca, and others.
Google is playing into “conversion rates” when advertising the product for retailers, saying that while the average online retailer conversion rate is just three percent, it could be five to ten times higher with a powerful search technology. With Commerce, Google is making an aggressive move in the retail space. Google Product hasn’t really taken off, but Commerce could and could effect the use of Google Product as well (and maybe Google Checkout?). Google’s other enterprise search offerings have steadily gaining users, so it should be interesting to see if the search giant can make inroads with big-name retailers.
I wanted to watch the demo video on Google’s page, but it says “This is a private video. Make sure you have received a friend request…”. Silly Googlers haven’t figured out how to use YouTube yet.
Dan, you said it. Why they private’d their own video demonstration is beyond belief.
Get with the times Google. Share everything!
Google is trying to leverage their new friend connect feature with regards to the above comments on the video.
It seems like Google is making larger strides towards paid enterprise solutions like this new commerce search. However, keep in mind the customer isn’t always right and sometimes a mere search term won’t help you. The quality of the site IA and UI is still equally important I think.
For example, compare finding something on Amazon.com and Apple.com and see who wins in you mind.
“The pricing model for Google Commerce Search is based on the number of products/items (SKUs) in your data feed … ”
Their pricing model is wrong: based on # of SKUs,
it will make it expensive for low volume – high SKUs long tail retailers .
I am just curious about the pricing model.
According to what they said “The pricing model for Google Commerce Search is based on the number of products/items (SKUs) in your data feed and the number of search queries entered on your site each year.”
Does that mean, the larger products database you have, the more money you will have to pay. I guess this pricing model is targeting those big online retailers such as amazon.
So did google just re-brand Froogle for a third time?
This is great news, can’t wait to see how it works.
Hi my name is Google..I have become the only game in town..if you want to make money successfully on the Internet you have to come to me.
Give 50.000 a year and Ill make it easy on you, otherwise your screwed.
Google über alles
Please Google – stop trying to corner every single market.
@Andrew
@Joe
I agree. I pretty annoyed and sceptical, Google is great but the fact is the search system still has flaws listing many spam SEO’d sites to the top, for over months and months I have noticed the same sites (domains are parked) ranking for terms.. they need to fix up their search engine first!
On the commerce note – I do not think its much of a threat to existing stores as Froogle is not as big as people make out – Froogle (or base whatever you want to call it) is good for indexation of XML feed, displaying more results of your products in Google search and showing stars, sitelinks and reviews so making sure your keywords and site cover all Googles databases.. if this was a script that you could add to your site, automatically allowing you to filter results and such – it would be better, but its Google hosted – imagine sites with thousands of products.. Google will index them and sort out those products making it better for customers to search…. this has just BLASTED many many many opensource and “web2.0″ carts out the window..
No comments about the competitor, Yahoo! stores? I wonder how much revenue the Yahoo! stores brings in? Just talking about hosted solutions, I would guess Yahoo! to be the dominant player.
This is different. Yahoo!Stores is a complete ecommerce platform, this is just a search element. Having had a YahooStore in the past, I’d say search functionality is a critical element of any ecommerce site, and is (or was) something you’d do custom with Yahoo. I’d be certain a developer in that market is looking at an integration now, same with release of analytics, checkout, etc.
Whilst as a search engine Google are helping businesses by improving the consumer experience they, as well as others, are failing when it comes to ‘business search’, something which is high in demand.
* Will ecommerce sites really go for this?
* Doesn’t any ecommerce site already have search functionality? (without it, they wouldn’t remain in business for very long)
* Why would an ecommerce site pay *annual subscription of $50,000*, _plus_ have pricing that depends on the size of their catalog when they can get super-fast, scalable, versatile, and solid search through something like Solr? Even if you pay Solr experts (see http://www.sematext.com/ ) to do everything from A-Z to make the best use of Solr, it will still cost you less than $50K *one time* fee.
* Even Whitehouse uses Solr – http://www.jrol...ama_uses_lucene
I know of many eCommerce sites that pay 50k a year or more to similar companies like Celebros, SLI Systems, Endeca etc..
50k year = $4,200 a month
This may be a good fit for a company doing 10-20m in annual revenue. But then again, these companies would want to see other companies this size using it first…
This is a pretty big announcement to the SEO industry.
If from what I read correctly, GCS will be a hosted platform.
Does this mean domains need to redirect to a GCS portal?
Or is this something which can be embedded into a webpage via JS?
If its the JS method, how is the website going to be crawled ? Since googlebot doesn’t read JS content that well.
I am a little bebaffled how they will deliver this product via a SAAS method and still keep the site search engine friendly?
Time to dig deeper into this, does anyone know an actual website that is utilizing GCS?
The http://www.birkenstockusa.com page as referred to by this article does not appear to be running GCS. it looks exactly the same as it did a year ago.
http://web.arch.../sandals/Madrid
Or am i missing something?
The actual e-commerce search is implemented on http://www.betterwalking.com – not the main Birkenstock USA site.
Thanks Martin, your are a legend
confuse about the price?
This is an awesome idea by Google. They keep revolutionizing the we we shop and search the internet. No wonder why they are the #1 search engine in the world. Its the take over haha! Good job Google!
Judah Swagerty
Internet Marketing / Entrepreneur Success & Life Startegies Coach
I took a look at the search experience on the Google store – which is powered by the new Google commerce search and found a few issues with the filters and the relevance: http://www.sli-...a-critique.html
I’ve only just seen the betterwalking example (thanks Martin) – but it lacks any sort of filtering/sorting or view options and the AJAX implementation means that you can’t use the back button to see a previous search.
I’m biased (because we provide a competing service) but the search looks a little underdone to me.
As CEO of Nextopia, a site search technology vendor I founded almost a decade ago, I welcome the spotlight that Google has cast for now on our industry. Regardless of how the competitive landscape plays out in the coming years, this product introduction reinforces the same message that we and our site search competitors have been preaching for year; good site is critical to maximizing site conversion and revenue.
With a starting annual price of $50,000, Google is targeting the peak of the online retailing pyramid. In contrast to the top 100-200 retailers who might be able to budget $50,000, Nextopia is affordable (starts at $995 per year) enough to be used by virtually any website. We’re obviously very happy about this distinction.
For an expanded perspective on Google’s foray into site search, please visit our blog: http://www.next...ommerce-search/
Nobody expects a “1.0” to provide the same coverage as do products that are out there 5, 6, 8 or more years. However, a newcomer has the advantage of bringing a new point of view and learning from other people’s mistakes. This is why we at Celebros (www.celebros.com) are not quick to judge but rather look to learn.
For clients looking to make an immediate investment the choice is clear. Celebros products and services provide a complete answer to your needs and are proven through numerous deployments. In the longer run however – clients are looking at Google’s doings with interest and so are we!
Yossi Hermush
VP Marketing, Celebros (www.celebros.com)
I’m hoping I could get some highly educated recommendations.
I’m currently in the middle of picking out a search solution for an e-commerce company I work for.
To confuse me further, Google commerce pops up. Here are some important specs.
Approx 20 mil annual sales, 15000 sku, approx 300,000 monthly visitors, current site has a terrible search.
We are looking for a highly advanced automated indexing solution. Setting up search criteria manually is the biggest reason why our current search is not up to par.
Cost is not out primary solution criteria, but a consideration as well. Any constructive suggestion is greatly appreciated.
Ps. So far I think sli-solutions are my best fit. Please let me know your opinions as well.
$50,000 is too rich for our startups blood. what happened to free?