Online businesses worldwide are currently reeling from the recent news that Google’s Shopping search engine will no longer allow retailers to list their products free of charge.
Sameer Samat, VP of Product Management for Google
Shopping, announced the news via the official Google blog at the
end of May this year, striking fear into the hearts of paid search
advertisers everywhere as the prospect of losing yet another source
of free search engine exposure hits home.
Businesses will soon need to create official
Product Listing Ads, most likely within their Google Adwords
accounts, to ensure their products appear in shopping search
results. There’s no knowing exactly when the changes will come into
place outside of the US and further details are sketchy at best,
news which concerns marketers eager to stay one step ahead of the
game.
Announced in 2002 and first known to users as
Froogle, Google’s shopping platform was then renamed ‘Google
Product Search’ in 2007 in a bid to rebrand the concept and avoid
translational issues. Used by millions of merchants worldwide, the
service was an undeniable hit with online businesses looking to
advertise to mass audiences for free (aside from labour costs
incurred from creating and uploading products and their
descriptions).
Around 96% of Google’s revenue is generated from
advertising, so unsurprisingly many industry insiders are
questioning the motives behind the announcement. The monetisation
of another of Google’s well-worn advertising platforms has led to
much discussion and debate amongst UK PPC marketing professionals,
most of which are considering whether this will have a largely
negative impact on the relevancy of the returned results and the
actual choice of products presented to users.
In response, Google representatives insist that
ranking results will be based on a ‘combination of relevance and
bid price’, which could potentially mean it could also push down
lower priced products in favour of ads that have been paid for. The
question is, does this in turn compromise the representation of
each company’s offerings?
Developments such as these are seen by many to
dramatically influence the historical purpose of a search engine;
ie, to return the most relevant and the most useful results without
the inevitable bias generated by a largely undisclosed paid
advertising concept. Many SEO and PPC experts have criticised the
move for potentially allowing larger Ecommerce corporations to push
smaller online stores out of the equation, as these companies can
typically allocate less of their budget towards online marketing.
Do these businesses have the time and resources to trawl through
their existing listings and update them so they fall in line with
the criteria of Product Listings ads? They will need to delegate
staff to this task on an on-going basis if they are to continue to
see worthwhile conversions from the platform. They will also need
to reassess several crucial budgeting factors to make sure they’re
generating a strong ROI – something many SMEs simply aren’t in a
position to do in the current economic climate.
Ben
Austin, Managing Director at Essex-based digital marketing
agency
SEO
Positive, believes that businesses and consumers alike should
not underestimate the impact of the changes on the buying process
online.
“Fundamentally, the original concept is being
transformed into a comparison shopping engine, which is going to
hit many advertisers hard, especially smaller companies. We’d
highly suggest that businesses start preparing for the changes well
in advance, as the transition is expected to disrupt retail budgets
considerably.”
According to Samat, new ad formats will be clearly
displayed as ‘sponsored’ to avoid any confusion, but many believe
this simply won’t be the case. One established SEO journalist has
even written a letter of complaint to the Federal Trade Commission
referring to the shady way in which Google discloses its paid
listings. In his text, Danny Sullivan, the editor of renowned
blogging hub Search Engine Land, points out Google’s attempts to
re-write the standard definition of paid inclusion, a practice that
allows companies to pay for their listing to appear alongside the
organic search results.
It must be noted, however, that some Pay Per Click
marketers are placing a more positive spin on the news and remain
of the opinion that the model will allow them to better monitor the
effectiveness of their ads within certain categories and create
accurate reports detailing their conversion rates. These can then
be used to fuel future optimisation strategies to improve the
performance of their campaigns overall. Our verdict? As with any
development from Google, only time will really tell whether
Shopping will pave the way for a better retail experience. All we
can hope is that the platform is managed ethically and responsibly
and results in higher quality data for all involved.
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