Google Shopping and SMBs: What you need to know

We’re excited to launch a series of Hangouts on Air to help guide small and medium sized businesses through the transition to Google Shopping. This series of Hangouts will guide you through an introduction to Google Shopping--giving you all the information you need to list your products on Google Shopping:

Session 1: Google Shopping Introduction and Overview: Friday, July 13th - 9:30am PDT
Session 2: Introduction to Merchant Center: Tuesday, July 17th - 9:30am PDT
Session 3: Creating and Optimizing Your Product Listing Ads for Google Shopping: Friday July, 20th - 9:30am PDT
Session 4: Trusted Stores Overview and Setup: Monday, July 23rd - 10:30am PDT

To tune into this Hangout On Air:

1) Visit the Google Ads Google+ Page at 9:30am PDT / 12:30pm EDT.
2) Look for the stream post (see image below for what it will look like), and click to tune in. Be sure you’re signed into Google+!

We look forward to seeing you there, but if you cannot join us, we’ll be posting each session to this blog and the Google Business YouTube channel.

Posted by Jon Venverloh, Senior Manager, Google Shopping

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Merchants: Get deeper insight into your product performance on Google Product Search

We frequently hear from merchants that data is gold - especially when that data provides insight into the performance of their products and their customers’ buying habits. We’ve listened to the feedback, and today we’re rolling out the first in a series of improvements to Google Merchant Center to put more data in the hands of merchants.

Starting today, retailers who submit product feeds to Google Product Search can view more detailed product performance data directly on the ‘Performance’ tab of their Google Merchant Center account.

In addition to seeing clicks on all products in aggregate over a specified period of time, merchants can now drill down to view click metrics for specific product categories, brands, condition and country. With these tools, it’s easy to compare the performance of different types of products, brands, and more to assess how you’re doing and identify areas that may need additional optimization.

With these improvements, merchants now have more detailed insight into product performance, allowing them make informed decisions about their business and drive increased ROI. We’re continually working to improve the Google Product Search experience for merchants and more tools are on the way. Check back soon for updates!


Posted by Mayuresh Saoji, Senior Product Manager, Google Merchant Center team

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Implementing the new Google Product Search feed specification

On September 22, the new Google Product Search feed specification that we announced in July went into effect. Since then, we’ve been gradually enforcing the new requirements by implementing additional checks over time in order to ensure a smooth roll out and give our merchants more time to react to errors and data problems.

We’re well on our way toward implementing all compliance checks, including those for Google Product Category, Tax & Shipping, and Variant attributes. Here are a few ways that you can make sure your product data feed is in good shape:

1. Review the information on the “Data Quality” tab in Google Merchant Center to see data quality errors. We recently changed this tab to give you a clearer view of the status of your items and to make it easier to see which errors are most critical. Where possible, we’ve also provided actionable advice and feedback on how to fix errors.

2. Also be sure to also check the “Data Feeds” tab in your Merchant Center account. This is where you’ll find error reports for feed-level issues (e.g. errors in syntax of submitted attributes).

3. Use the “New Test Data Feed” functionality (on the Data Feed tab) to submit a new test feed. This test mechanism also allows you to download a full feed processing report and get detailed insights into potential issues with your feed. Note that this functionality is currently only available for test feeds.

As we head into the holiday season, we want to thank our merchants for investing in making the necessary changes to their feeds and sending high-quality product data. We’re committed to maintaining a high bar for data quality and are working hard to make Google Product Search even better in the coming months.

Happy Shopping!

Posted by Mayuresh Saoji, Senior Product Manager, Google Product Search team

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Enhancing the shopping experience on Google Product Search

Shortly after joining Google from Like.com, my team and I developed and launched Boutiques -- a fashion website offering women new ways to browse and shop for apparel. Today, we’re taking the features that shoppers absolutely love from Boutiques and incorporating them into Google Product Search -- so millions of people can use them every day. This is the first in a series of improvements we’re making to Google Product Search leveraging the computer vision and machine learning technology developed by the team we affectionately call our fashion and computer nerds. We hope you’ll enjoy what’s new today, and what’s around the corner for the upcoming holiday season. A Redesigned Homepage The first thing you’ll probably notice is our new homepage. This new look and feel is designed to inspire and facilitate easy, enjoyable browsing and shopping.

Better Ways to Shop, Starting with Dresses

By increasing the size of each image, simplifying much of the text around the images, and lightening the text color, we’ve emphasized the more visual aspects of apparel shopping. We’ve also integrated the most popular search refinements from Boutiques. Using the same innovative machine learning and computer vision technologies we developed for Boutiques, you can now browse dress collections that match the color, silhouette and genre you desire.

Explore visually similar styles
And because we think browsing and discovering new items is what makes shopping fun, we’ve added a feature to Product Search that makes it easy to do just that. Let’s say a particular dress catches your eye. Now, you can explore similar styles and discover new designers by clicking on that dress and viewing dozens of visually similar ones. We think you’ll find this fun --and addictive!-- and we hope it brings that element of surprise and discovery we all love with brick-and-mortar shopping to the online shopping experience.

An update on Boutiques.com and related properties
As we continue to integrate technology and lessons learned from Boutiques.com into Google Product Search, we will be redirecting shoppers from Boutiques.com to Google Product Search. The former Like.com team, alongside the Google Product Search team, will drive new ideas for apparel shopping through one unified product. The team is excited to be a part of the shopping experience on Google and have our work displayed to millions of users every day.  
If you’re a user of Boutiques.com and other Like.com websites, you’ll soon receive an email with instructions for saving your data before those websites are transitioned on October 14. If you have any questions please email us at boutiques-feedback@google.com. 
Like other teams that have joined Google, we’re thrilled with the opportunity to showcase our experience and technology to all of Google’s shoppers.
Burak Gokturk, Like.com Co-Founder and member of the Google Commerce team

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