Great news for online shoppers! Google is enhancing its product search results, making price comparison a breeze. No more need for typing brand names. You can simply search for “buy blue women’s sun dress” and Google will provide you with the necessary shopping information. A win for convenience, right?
The refreshed product search results will be displayed in a matrix below the primary Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) that gets triggered by such purchase-intent queries. Within this matrix, you’ll find product cards with all the details needed – product name, images, cost, store name, average ratings, and number of reviews.
However, instead of whisking you to the ecommerce site directly, these cards will direct you to shopping panels within the SERP. These panels will list out the prices from various merchants. A bit more work for the online shops, but a significant step towards transparency for consumers.
For businesses, it prompts a rethink in product marketing strategies and requires an enhanced focus on creating appealing shopping information panels.
Enhancing Google’s online shopping search
It’s not only about capturing customer clicks, but about providing the most accurate, competitive product details as well.
However, as with any change, there are challenges. For SEO specialists and store owners, deciphering Google’s ranking methods for these product cards poses a hurdle. A better understanding of the structured data and its importance is crucial, and a deep-dive into the nuances of this update is necessary.
Earlier this year, Google introduced new shipping, return classes, and product variants to its structured data support. Not catching up with these updates could mean losing visibility on the merchant list. So, stay alert, store owners, and ensure your structured data is current!
On the downside, the focus is shifting from landing pages as most users are likely to move directly from the product grid to the shopping panel, skipping the product details page. This could be a boon for ecommerce giants like Amazon with their aggressive pricing, but a bit challenging for smaller online businesses.
Google’s relentless pursuit towards enhancing user experience using AI is slowly reshaping the digital marketing landscape. With dwindling significance of traditional SEO, marketers might need to look beyond and focus on vast, untapped channels like video content, voice search, and image search. But, remember – Google is still the King!
