Hey there, I’m Benjamin from Loves Data.
In this video, we’re going to talk about the recent announcement from Google about
Google Shopping.
In case you missed it - Google announced that businesses will be able to list their products
for free on Google Shopping.
Previously, all of the results for Google Shopping were paid ads, but moving forward
it will work like Google search results - there will be a mix of paid and organic results
for Google Shopping.
So if you sell products online, then you should absolutely get ready to list your products
on Google Shopping, if you’re not already.
Let’s take a look at what you’ll need to do to get up and running...
The first thing to point out is that organic or free Google Shopping results are currently
only available in the US.
I’m currently looking at the Google Shopping results for my location, which is Sydney,
Australia.
And if we look closely, we can see that there is a small ‘Sponsored’ label above the
results.
If we click on this label, it tells us that the results are ranked using a combination
of bid and relevance.
So these are all sponsored or paid results.
I’m going to enable my VPN so that Google thinks I’m located in the US and I’m going
to refresh the page…
We can now see Google Shopping results from the US.
And we can see that there are two labels…
At the top we can see ‘Sponsored’ and then below these results, we can see ‘About’...
If we click ‘Sponsored’ we will see a similar message to the one we saw previously.
It tells us that these are paid results.
When we click ‘About’ for the results lower down the page, it tells us that these
results are only based on relevance.
These are the organic or free Google Shopping results.
If you’re located in the US, then you can submit your products today.
If you’re located outside the US, then Google has said free product listings will roll out
globally by the end of the year.
So if you’re not currently listing your products in the paid Google Shopping results,
it’s a good idea to get ready for when Google makes free listing available for your location.
So what do you have to do to get your products listed?
If you’re already listing your products with a Shopping campaign in Google Ads, then
you don’t need to do anything.
If you aren’t listing your products with Google Ads, then you’ll need to sign up
for Google Merchant Center.
Let’s head there now...
Merchant Center is where you will send all the details about your products.
If you only sell a few items, then you can enter them manually, or if you have lots of
items you can create a product feed.
Creating a feed lets you automate the submission of your products to Merchant Center.
If you’re setting up Google Merchant Center for the first time, then when you create your
account you’ll see a step that looks like this…
There are options for selling products on your website and in physical stores.
And under both of these, you can choose to show your products using ‘Surfaces’ which
are for the free or organic shopping results…
And you have the option of showing your products as ads…
Let's say we only sell products on our website and we only want to show our products in the
free results.
In this case, we only need to select ‘Surfaces across Google’.
Once you’ve finished creating your Google Merchant Center account, you will then need
to add all of your products, either manually or using a product feed.
Today, I’m going to show you the option to manually add products, but you can find
additional details about creating a product feed in the description below this video.
We need to enter details for our product.
This includes where we’re selling our product…
We also need a unique product identifier…
Details about our product, including it’s title, description, the URL for the product
page on our website and an image.
We also need to enter the price, availability and a few other details...
Once you’ve provided all of the details for the product, you can click ‘Save’.
You can then preview your product and as long as everything is entered correctly and you’ve
met Google’s requirements, your product will be eligible to show in the free Shopping
results.
That’s it!
So that’s how you can get up and running with Google Merchant Center to show your products
on Google Shopping.
Remember, you will need to opt-in to ‘surfaces across Google’ in order for your items to
be displayed…
And you will also need to setup your product feed or manually add your products in Google
Merchant Center so that Google understands the products that you have available.
Are you ready for your items to be listed on Google Shopping?
I’d love to know!
Let me know in the comments below.
And if you found this video helpful please subscribe, share it with your friends, and
hit the like button so I know to make more videos like this.
See you next time!