Google Commerce Search

Google Commerce Search

Power your online store with Google search Key Features

• Google-quality search including automatic spellcheck and stemming and advanced synonym options • Sub-second response time and effortless scaling • Robust refinement options including parametric search, product promotions, and product boost – all from a simple administrative interface • Support for full customization, including a powerful XML API • Hosted, cloud-based search installs quickly and delivers the latest results, with instant, downtime-free updates

Bring the power, speed, and flexibility of Google’s search technology to your online store to increase sales and usability. Customize, scale, measure, and streamline the best search experience for your site. Deploy quickly and easily and get support as needed from Google’s enterprise support specialists.

Search speed and accuracy that your users have come to expect on the web Each year, consumers increasingly turn to online stores to research and purchase retail goods. Most of these consumers rely on search to find the products they’re looking for and to guide purchase decisions. In fact, 71% of online shoppers report that keyword searches are “very helpful” in shaping purchase decisions while shopping online1. Related studies report that 43% of online shoppers say that the first thing they do when they visit a retail website is search by the product name or category. (MarketingSherpa).

While most top retailers provide search capabilities on their websites, the speed and accuracy of search can very widely. Studies show that visitors spend an average of just eight seconds before deciding whether or not to remain on a site – so the quality of search can make a measurable business difference.

Google Commerce Search gives online retailers the ability to satisfy visitor needs with accurate, fast search tailored specifically to the online shopping experience. By enabling a direct connection between online product data and fast, familiar Google search, Google Commerce Search helps visitors find the specific information they need to make purchase decisions – with sub-second response times and unparalleled accuracy.

1. eTailing Group, “The Multi-Channel Shopping Transformation Study,” 2006

Now, with Google Commerce Search, shoppers can sort search results by product attributes (see left navigation) and retailers can create and manage targeted promotions (“new items”)

This new Google search solution brings relevance, speed, and ease of use to your website, without requiring users to pre-configure their search or sort through irrelevant results. Visitors to your website can now easily find the products they are looking for simply by typing into a familiar search box. By enhancing the visitor experience, you can increase website conversions, sales, and customer retention.

Increase website sales – and keep customers coming back Many retailers invest heavily in advertising to drive visitors to their websites. The challenge is to ensure that these visitors stay, find the right products, and complete their purchases. With shopping cart abandonment rates often in the 55-60% range (eMarketer, 2008), and average conversion rates tracking at barely 3% (Forrester Research, 2008), retailers have an opportunity to make site visits more productive by ensuring that visitors find what they want.

By implementing Google Commerce Search, you can enhance visitors’ shopping experience and directly impact the visitor-to-buyer conversion rate. Even improving the conversion rate from 3% to 4% translates to a boost in online sales of 33%.

Although top online retailers depend on – and optimize their site experience around – achieving double-digit conversion rates, the vast majority of sites convert at below 5%. For an online retailer, there is no single bigger influence on website ROI than visitor-to-buyer conversion. Improving the user experience – and delivering effective product search – can have a significant impact on conversion and customer satisfaction. This can lead to repeat business (the source of 47% of online retailer revenue2), time spent on site, and customer lifetime value.

Deploy quickly and scale effortlessly Google Commerce Search is a hosted, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offering that operates “in the cloud,” giving you fast, advanced commerce search functionality without the need to deploy or manage on-premise hardware, software, servers, operating systems, cables, or other equipment. You simply upload product information to your secure Google Merchant Center, and Google Commerce Search intelligently leverages the product feed and provides your website with search capabilities.

Google Commerce Search frees you from the costs of on-premise solutions and maintenance. You pay only an annual license fee, based on the number of products and queries served on your site. Scale effortlessly as business grows – without adding any servers or other infrastructure. Your search relevance benefits from Google’s continuous innovation, leveraging billions of search inquiries each day and applying that learning to your online store – without deployment, downtime, or upgrades on your end.

Customize, measure, streamline – and maximize ROI While Google Commerce Search is easy to deploy, it has powerful customization features to enable you to configure search to your exact specifications. Features like Product Boost and Product Promotions let you fine-tune the placement of desired products in the result set to match your needs. Additionally, you can integrate the look and feel directly into your website, showcasing your brand or referencing the Google name, as you wish. Regardless of how you customize, the search results will always be ad-free.

2. Forrester Research, “The Big, Ugly Obstacle Holding Back eCommerce,” April, 2007 3. Jupiter Research, “Metrics Driven Retail,” 2006

Google Commerce Search provides advanced reporting tools that let you precisely measure user behavior and search performance. Further, integrating with Google Analytics lets you comprehensively track page views, search queries, and conversions on your website. Research shows that retailers who learn from usage metrics consistently have higher-performing sites. In fact, retailers who excel at understanding and responding to usage metrics are able to improve conversion rates by as much as 24%, while less responsive companies’ conversions tend to stay flat3.

Google-quality search for your commerce site With Google Commerce Search, you can now bring Google’s proven reliability, relevance, and innovation to each and every search done on your website.

Proven speed Regardless of how many pages or products your online commerce search engine includes, your end users will instantly find what they’re looking for thanks to sub-second response times.

Google quality and ranking Find the highest quality and most relevant product match. Google analyzes every indexed item using many proprietary signals in order to determine its optimal placement in the result set.

Scale your store Google Commerce Search responds to changes in inventory, product selection, and pricing in real-time, with no complex updates or compromises in search performance.

Eliminate seasonal slow-downs Most retailers experience peaks and valleys in online traffic as shopping seasons begin and end. Google Commerce Search removes the need to plan for variable capacity around increases in traffic. Google Commerce Search responds in real time, scaling from thousands of queries – to millions – with the same sub-second delivery time. There is no need to bolster your infrastructure for seasonal variances, risk being caught “off guard” if unexpected traffic spikes come your way, or have site performance degrade during peak usage.

Automatic spellcheck Avoid gaps in search results caused by typos or misspellings.

Google Commerce Search automatically suggests corrections on product words and phrases.

Automatic stemming Built-in stemming ensures that visitors find the right products – without typing in multiple near-identical queries. If a shopper types in [running shoes], Google Commerce Search automatically returns relevant results on [runners shoes], [running shoe], etc.

Advanced synonym options Enable visitors to find products with related terms without having to issue multiple queries. For example, a search for [digital video disk] will include [dvd] in the results. Easily add and manage synonyms that don’t appear in Google’s default directory.

Customization options Google Commerce Search provides highly relevant results from the moment it’s deployed, without the complexity and expense of custom-configuring hardware and operating systems. Or, to fully customize search, use Google’s full array of targeting and boosting features. In addition, Google Commerce Search allows you to easily customize the look and feel of your search engine through a simple web admin interface.

Parametric search Enable search refinement by product category, price, price range, brand, or any other product attribute you choose. Automatically generate groupings based on the user’s query and matching items.

Product promotions Give marketers and site administrators complete control with guaranteed top search result promotions for custom search keywords you choose.

Product Boost Lift selected products according to business needs with intelligent boosting. With targeted product biasing, you can promote specific products, vendors, or categories at the top of your search results. For example, you can ensure that new products appear higher than refurbished ones or give higher priority to primary products as opposed to accessories.

User interface customization Customize the look and feel of your search results page using the robust API included with Google Commerce Search. Multiple refinements allow you to choose whether to display product images, descriptions, etc. It’s simple to adjust the look and feel of your search engine by uploading your company logo and changing text colors on your search results pages.

About Google Commerce Search

Google Commerce Search is a hosted search service for your online store that brings the power and scale of Google’s cloud computing platform to online retailers. Drawing on the speed and relevance of Google’s search technology, Google Commerce Search (GCS) increases online sales and usability by allowing customers to quickly, easily find exactly what they’re looking for. Robust features including synonyms, advanced spelling, targeted promotions, multiple customization options make for a streamlined yet powerful online retail experience. Simple deployment and scaling, user-friendly analytic and tracking components, and enterprise-class support mean you can optimize your online product search experience, giving customers the information they need.

Contact Us

For more information, visit www.google.com/commercesearch For pricing details, contact us at commercesearch@google.com

XML API You can customize search results further, and integrate results into other applications, by using the XML API. The XML API enables you to access the raw search results for your query in XML format, including the URL and description text.

Customized branding and ad-free results Choose whether or not to brand your search engine as powered by Google. The choice is yours and does not affect pricing. In either case, users never see ads displayed alongside your search results unless you put them there.

Simple deployment and administration Web-based, fully hosted, and backed by enterprise-quality customer support, Google Commerce Search saves time and money by minimizing complexity and on-premise maintenance – while providing easy deployment and effortless scaling.

Sub-second, accurate search results Because Google Commerce Search is a hosted platform, your site will benefit from Google’s latest search engineering and innovation. Leading search logic and algorithms are delivered in the cloud, without downtime or the need for on-site patches or updates.

Fast, secure, simple set-up Low deployment costs translate into faster time to market and lower total cost of ownership for your business.

Simple, intuitive administrative interface Admins can use Google Commerce Search in its standard configuration, or optimize results on-demand through an easy-to-use administrative console. Deployment, customization, promotion set-up and refinement, and more are literally just a click away for your webmaster or admin.

Advanced reporting View, manage, and export daily or hourly result sets, top queries, special feature usage and more. Easily run and view reports for every query, including reports on which queries receive no clicks and how often users are clicking on product promotions or boosts.

Integration with Google Analytics Easily integrate Google Commerce Search with Google Analytics to obtain comprehensive tracking of website pageviews, search queries, and conversions.

Enterprise-level service and support Google provides high uptime guarantees and Service Level Agreements. Users gain access to Google Commerce Search support experts for specialized assistance with set-up, customization, and analysis.

Google Analytics gives timely insight into how shoppers are interacting with your online store - including search query metrics, cart abandoment rates, and ecommerce revenues. © 2009 Google Inc. All rights reserved. Google and the Google logo are trademarks of Google Inc. All other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated. DS98-0910