>> OHYE: Hi webmasters, my name is Maile Ohye, and today I'd like to talk to you about Product
Search. In today's agenda, we'll cover four main areas. First, we'll talk about the benefits
and background of product search. Next, we'll immediately get into the best practices when
submitting information. Third, I'll answer some of your frequently asked questions, and
last, the custom webmasters have discussed difficulty when creating or submitting feeds.
We'll talk about how to heal some of those pain points. First, let's talk about the benefits
of product search. Product search offers webmaster's free submission, so there's no cost to merchants
to submit your product, and have them eligible to be returned in product search result. Also,
product search has unbiased rankings, meaning that just because you're an AdWord customer
or a checkout customer, you won't have any additional ranking boost because of those
two factors. And third, product search is a comprehensive marketplace for users, so
users can come to product search, research items, get information like the description
and reviews, so that when they make a purchase, they become a very informed consumer of your
product. Product search results can show in universal search and this can happen for the
United States, the United Kingdom or Germany where product search is available. So in this
query, a user entered step pedometer, and you can see there are three results being
shown. To where it said shopping result for step pedometer, that shopping link will actually
bring the user to the product search information itself. So often, if you have a product, say
a step pedometer, it can now be featured in universal search. Once a user clicks on the
shopping link, they can be brought to a product search product page. And here is an aggregate
view of things like the seller, the item, specifications, as well as ratings. In this
example, you can also see there's tax and shipping information. So this is the great
place for users to be able to research their products more carefully. This is available
for things like electronics, videos, and books. Now that you've seen some of Google's product
search results, you might be asking, "How did Google get this information?" Well, let
me give you some background on product search. It's actually supported by Google Base and
its backend. Meaning, that Google Base which is a repository for structured information,
actually contains all of the items and then attributes about those items. So, consider
it like an XML database where you might see something like, item, and then attribute,
attribute, attribute. So, you might have a G1 phone as the item, and then something like,
price, $200, condition, new, and then the description. On the next row, would have something
like, Blackberry, price, $300, condition new and then the description. So, it's a list
of items and then all these attributes for those items. So now when there's a user on
Google, and they enter a query that has to do with the product's query, such as a mobile
phone prizes. We can then query off of our database--Google base, and then return to
the user some of those items so that they can make a better purchasing decision. Now
that you see how Google product search is supported by Google Base, it begs the question,
"How do I get my product into Google Base?" Well, there's four major ways that you can
submit your product to Google Base. The first is manual submission and this is actually
going to Google Base on the web, and then clicking through the screens individually
to submit each item and each item's attributes, so we'd only recommend that if you have say,
fewer than five items. If you have more than say, five products, the second way you can
submit your information is through a feed, and there's two types of feeds, one, is just
a text file, that's going to be tab-delimited with items and their attributes, and the other
feed would be an xml feed. Both of those are pretty much the same, although a text file
might be easier for you if you're not as tech-savvy. The third way you can submit information is
through store connector. So, if you already have an existing store, say, on yahoo or eBay,
you can use store connector to actually upload those items to also be available in Google
Base, and then eligible for product search. So, that's an immediate way if you already
have an existing store. The fourth way is actually using the Google Base API, and so,
through the API, you can programmatically update, modify, and delete items that you
have in Google Base. So those are the four ways to submit your information. Now that
you know a little bit more about feed submission, let's talk about some of the best practices
when submitting a feed. You want to strive for an accurate and descriptive representation
of your product, that's by far the most important thing. So product search gives you some recommended
attributes when submitting information, and you actually want to include as many of those
as possible because the more descriptive you make it, the better we can return it for users.
Also keep in mind that just including more attributes doesn't increase your rankings.
Again, you want to strive for the accurate representation. You don't really need to overload
it with unnecessary information. And the third part is really to gain positive reputation
as a merchant that will help you as well. All right, so what are some good things to
include in your feed? Well first, there's the UPC, which is the Universal Product Code,
next, MPN, next the brand, condition, and then of course an accurate and high-quality
description. And one more thing is the image. A quality image is always helpful to users,
so, important to include a quality image and no placeholder images. I know for myself,
I find it frustrating when I see a silhouette of a man, and then some italicized, no image
available. So really include quality images with your product. We have covered some of
the background on product search, how to submit information, and what good things to include
in your feed. But now let's cover some of your frequently asked questions. A lot of
webmasters ask, "How are different sites sorted when there are multiple results for the same
product?" That's a great question, and truly, the most important factor we have in ranking
is your feed topicality, or the relevance of the result. So, the more descriptive and
accurate you can make your feed, that each of the items can really match up with the
user's query well, and the better chance that has of ranking. And you can see this in our
earlier screen shot about step pedometer where, as the user enter the query, step pedometer,
all of those results look very relevant to that user's intent. Another frequently asked
question has to do with Checkout and PayPal. Webmasters might ask, "Why doesn't Google
badge PayPal merchants as well as Google Checkout merchant?" And first of all, keep in mind
that we will not boost in ranking a merchant, just because they used Google Checkout. But
the reason why we're able to badge Checkout merchants is because Google runs the product
search as well as Checkout, so because of this, we can actually verify Checkout merchants,
and we show that Checkout badge to help users to make a simpler purchase. We can't do the
same to verify PayPal unless we actually made an individual purchase from each merchant.
You might also be asking, "Does it help rankings to add custom attributes to my products?"
Keep in mind; it's most important to submit timely and accurate information. Of course
we welcome custom attribute when they're not covered in the spec, but just including them,
it just going to boost your rankings by itself. Our two last questions have to do with expiration
and frequency. So, if you're asking, "Is it true that listings expire after 30 days?"
The answer is yes and as well if you're asking, "How often should I submit information?" We
recommend that you submit information as often as possible. Many merchants that have evolving
inventory actually submit daily, if not, more often. My last objective is to help heal some
of your pain points. So, we've heard from merchants who say, "Hey, can Google help me
verify some of my data? I created this feed but I'm not sure if all the information is
correct." Well, yes we can. In the United States and now also the UK and Germany, we
have a data quality tab in product search. And if you click on data quality, you can
actually see information, or try to verify your UPCs, and if we find things like your
titles are too long of too short, we'll let you know about that as well. Now, if you also
have further questions like, "You know, I'm actually having problems creating," or maybe,
"I can't really submit my feed, I keep getting an error." Well, we also want to let you know
about the Google base help center and discussion group. So, if you're having problems creating
a feed, you can go to the help center to see some of the documented information, and you
can also go to discussion group, and there you can find other users who might have had
similar problems and can help you through yours. Thanks for watching this presentation
on product search. For more tips and discussion, please visit Google Webmaster Central at google.com/webmasters.