Google has announced a slew of features that will make it easier to hunt for deals and discounted products, especially during shopping fests like Black Friday and Cyber Monday. The search behemoth has lately given a huge push to its e-commerce endeavors, integrating it with the core search experience to help shoppers. The most notable effort that the company made recently was allowing merchants to get their products listed for free.
The shopping tab on the main Google Search page and the dedicated website already offer a comprehensive set of user-facing tools. Aside from product details and reviews, potential buyers can also track products, save items for future viewing, see product listings based on their search activity, and a lot more. However, finding deals has not always been a convenient experience, especially on the search page or even in the shopping tab.
That is finally changing, as Google will now surface deals directly on the Shopping section of Search. The Shopping tab will now have a dedicated deals section called “Deals related to your search” that will be populated by similar products that are currently discounted, and might be of interest to buyers. These deals will be sourced from retailers across the web, which means buyers will be able to check discounts on similar products from multiple e-commerce platforms, all in a single place.
Google Search Aims To Become An Online Shopping Hub
To make the shopping experience even more rewarding, Google is making some changes especially for major e-commerce events, such as Black Friday. Starting October this year, users will see a new section in search that features the best deals from retailers during popular shopping events. This will allow buyers to directly land on the deals page of a retailer like, say, Newegg or Best Buy. However, the aforementioned feature update is only for buyers in the United States, and there is no word if the same will expand to more markets. Google is also taking cues from the Chinese market where livestream shopping has now transformed into a multi-billion dollar business via platforms like Taobao Live and Baidu. To implement it, Google will allow shoppers to buy products while watching the livestream of a creator or social media influencer they trust.
This will work in a similar fashion to YouTube videos where products advertised by the host or channel are listed in the descriptions along with purchase links. Google is commencing the pilot test of livestream shopping in partnership with a handful of creators and brands. However, it’s not just buyers whose shopping experience is going to improve. After allowing merchants to list their products for free on the Shopping tab, the company is now letting them list promotions and deals as well — without incurring any additional cost whatsoever. Moreover, the merchant doesn’t have to be a paid customer of Google’s advertising services to become eligible for a free deal listing. Google's latest moves aim to take on Facebook's endeavors in the e-commerce domain as it aims to exploit the mass social media appeal of the platforms it owns.
Source: Google