TUGCG – The Unofficial Google Commerce Guide

Over the past month (even the past week!), Google has made lots of Commerce related updates/announcement that retailers might have missed, so I thought I’d sum them up really quickly.

1.  Google Merchant Center (GMC) updated its data feed specifications, significantly cutting the list of attributes.  As far as SingleFeed knows, all attributes which were formerly listed are still supported, but Google Product Search might not be highlighting those attributes for refinement purposes.

2.  Google Checkout is accepting holiday promotions!  While Geckout is no longer footing the bill for these types of promotions, this is still a great opportunity for merchants.  From the blog post: “Last holiday season, merchants who ran a Checkout promotion increased their Google Checkout sales by an average of 209%, compared to a 25% increase for merchants who did not participate.”  Merchants who set up a holiday promotion will benefit from a special badge and what sounds like a ton of promotion from Google: Google will market the promotion through AdWords ads, emails to buyers, and social networking posts…Social Networking Posts???

If you participate, we’ll change your standard Google Checkout button on your website to the special promotional Checkout button that features an orange starburst labeled with the promotion discount. When the minimum cart requirement is met, the discount will automatically appear for buyers when they shop with Google Checkout from November 23, 2010 at 4:00 PM Pacific to December 16, 2010, at 4:00 PM Pacific.

Additionally, if you are an AdWords advertiser, Google will change the standard Checkout badge appearing on your Google.com AdWords ads to a new badge that features the promotion discount. These badges have been introduced to enable shoppers who search on Google.com to easily identify and take advantage of promotional offers.

3.  Data Feeds now influence your SEO listings.  While I’ve talked for years about the opportunity to mine your data feed for keywords for SEO and PPC, Google one upped me by putting the GMC feed content in organic results.  This is the Rich Snippets program (microformats).  For you non-webmasters, I’m not talking about the OneBox listings, I’m talking about rich product information within merchant organic listings. Check out the highlighted sections below for Amazon, HSN, and Williams-Sonoma rich snippet info garnered from the data feed.

Merchants can take advantage of this as follows: 1) providing a data feed and specifying rel=canonical (merchants need a lot more info on rel=canonical…way too many unanswered questions) on product pages, 2) providing markup to your site, and 3) through the Product Reviews program.  Read the Rich Snippets for Shopping blog post to find out more.

4.  Google Boost – Advertise your local business in San Francisco, Houston, and Chicago.  Local store information (location, hours, coupons, etc.) is going to become more and more critical as Google continues to help offline merchants make more money through local and mobile applications.  Assuming you’ve claimed your free Google Places listings (for any city – this is a must), it’s now time to test advertising through Boost.

Boost enables business owners to easily create online search ads from directly within their Google Places account. No ongoing management is needed after the initial set up, and this beta is currently available to select local businesses in San Francisco, Houston and Chicago.

And with Google’s recent Android updates for Maps, this local information will be even more critical for the holidays.

5.  Product Ads.  In case you feel behind the ball in understanding Product Ads, don’t worry, there are more changes.  Google has hardened up its Product Ads attributes for the GMC data feed (stop using that prefer_for_query attribute!).  And Google is giving merchants more control of Product Ads through GMC (no data feed changes required).

I’m sure that Stephanie and her team have plenty of ideas how to integrate Google Checkout into Google Product Search and other Google commerce products, but for inspriation, the team should just head over to Ask and search for any product.  Besides finding lots of Ask Smart Answers for shopping powered by Pronto (similar to Google’s OneBox results for shopping powered by Google Product Search), Ask is also giving Amazon a lot of real estate on each page.  However, it’s not just a simple link in the organic results, but rather a deep link directly into the Amazon cart.

Imagine Google adding a Google Checkout button to their OneBox results (and other Google Product Search areas).  This is pretty much a no-brainer:

(now that you’re done laughing at my graphic design skills), now imagine that link going directly to the Checkout checkout flow similar to the Ask/Amazon integration above.

Merchants have raised concerns about Google cutting them out of the equation by allowing consumers to search within a site right on Google’s SERPs.   Merchants wanted to control their own on-site search experience (think merchandising, cross-selling, upselling, etc. – although this was all before Google Commerce Search).

And after all these years, I’m still weary about merchants giving Google Checkout too much access and not getting enough in return (as consumers can hide their email address from the merchant).  What is Google eventually going to do with all the purchase data?  If Google is trying to organize the world’s information and they know you’ve purchased a camera from J&R through Google Checkout, what’s to stop them from sending a special offer to the consumer for a camera bag from eBags, another Google Checkout merchant?

Some might argue that this is actually all good for the merchant…Google could be a better marketer than the merchant.  But Google Checkout giving the consumer the option to “keep your email address confidential, and easily turn off unwanted emails from stores where you use Google Checkout” scares me.  As an internet marketer, I know that an in-house email list (your own customers) is gold, or better than gold.

Google has a lot of amazing opportunities to tightly integrate Google Checkout into a lot of their commerce properties.  That was one of the points from my Googazon post that started this blog.  The integrations between all of Google’s commerce related products are mind boggling.

In some ways this could be an amazing experience for the consumer and an extremely profitable flow for the merchant.  It’ll be interesting to see how merchants react and how Google addresses questions about disintermediation.

For the first time in a while (maybe ever?) Google Product Search is not just listing a search box and links to popular product searches, but also product images on it’s homepage.  If you’re looking for Father’s Day presents, Google is listings what I’d have to assume are popular products/categories/searches for Dads.

Google Product Search looks a little more like a mall than a shopping search engine.  I’m sure this is just a test (Google runs tests all the time), but considering that Google is pushing images in Product Listing Ads and Product Extension Ads, maybe this will stay around for a while.   Why shouldn’t Google surface their top products with images as opposed to the normal links if this strategy can increase click-through rate and create a more engaging shopping experience?

In addition, Google Checkout has been running special deals for Father’s Day.  Nice to see Google Checkout getting some attention.  Expect more since Stephanie Tilenius previously headed PayPal’s merchant services business when she was at eBay.

As the Google Checkout blog states, “Hundreds of Checkout stores are offering exclusive discounts of $5, $10, or $20 on purchases made now through June 18, 2010.”  Now, if only Google Product Search could list the merchant’s Google Checkout promotion within the Product Search results as they do within Google AdWords listings:

Google Product Search/Google Shopping already allows consumers to filter results by those merchants that accept Google Checkout. I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw these BIG, BOLD Checkout offers on Google Product Search/Google Shopping in the near future.  Wouldn’t this be a great way for Google to get additional adoption for Google Checkout?