Google Shopping announced yesterday that the European roll out of the paid Shopping will start in February. Marc Warren, MD of Periscopix, looks at what this means for retailers
Background:
Yesterday, Google announced that is has made changes to Google Shopping in the UK, and that it will starts the transition to a paid service in the UK from February 2013. Currently, Google Shopping is a free service that showed the searched-for product in the ‘shopping’ section of the search results (it took this information from retailers’ product feeds).
By the end of Q2 2013, retailers will need to create a Product Listing Ad to show up on Google Shopping. This can be done either within AdWords or within the Google Merchant Centre.
This transition has already been completed in the US (on 17 October).
Google is giving retailers plenty of time to get ready for the transition to a paid shopping service, with the first commercial formats appearing in February and the full transition scheduled for completion by Q2 next year.
What retailers can do now?
Sign up for Product Listing Ads (you need an AdWords account and a Merchant Centre Account to do this). Companies who do this now will have a competitive advantage if Google tests the system or offers promotions ahead of full launch in February.
Plan your bidding strategy and targets in advance. The new system will show results based on both relevance and bids.
Now is the time to make sure your product feeds are working efficiently, and not showing things like out of stock products. If there’s work that needs to be done on your feeds, get it done before you have to pay for the clicks. Check things like whether your product names, images, and product pages are all optimised.
Google talks about offering incentives to early adopters. I imagine these will be similar to those offered in the US, which were AdWords credits and discounts on Product Listing Ads.
More information on getting started can be found on Google’s Shopping page: http://www.google.com/ads/shopping/index.html
By Marc Warren
Managing Director
Periscopix
www.periscopix.co.uk