What is one of the most effective and most profitable online marketing channels for retailers? If you’re an online retailer and you do not know the answer to that question then this article is a must read. If you answered syndicating your products to “Google Product Search” then you are correct. Google Product Search is the number one online product comparison search engine (based on July 2010 rankings by CPC Strategy) and it does not charge any fees whatsoever. Most if not all serious online merchants are already taking advantage of this excellent sales channel. GoECart developed its Product Data Feeds Manager so you too can take full advantage of it, simply and easily.

So how can you easily syndicate your product listings to Google Product Search and other popular comparison shopping engines like Shopzilla, Shopping.com, Yahoo Shopping, etc.? GoECart automatically generates an optimized preformatted product data feed which can be immediately uploaded to Google Product Search and other CSEs. There is no longer the need to manipulate any data in Excel or Notepad; all data is compliant with engine specific guidelines and is correctly formatted with rich attributes like Price, Rating, Title, Description, etc to help you earn high rankings!

Now let’s say you offer a number of very popular and competitive product lines and you want to ensure that your products rank high in the comparison engines. GoECart allows you to optimize all the product attributes uniquely for each shopping channel without affecting the content on your storefront. GoECart even allows you to add custom fields to your product feeds. You can use the simple web interface in the product editor to add engine specific custom fields of your choice to the feed. For example, for a book, you can specify ISBN and Author as custom fields. These features allow merchants to differentiate themselves further on the comparison shopping engines and rank higher. Creative use of copy can be very effective in attracting bargain shoppers from comparison engines to your site without cannibalizing your storefront sales.

GoECart makes it easy for you to quickly and effectively market your products online through leading comparison shopping channels. Learn more about how to rank higher in Google Product Search.

Google Product Search, formerly known as Froogle and Google Base, is the leading comparison shopping engine for retail products launched by Google Inc. in 2002. Since then, Google Product Search has evolved into a highly competitive, free product search engine that allows ecommerce website owners to list their products so online shoppers can find them quickly and easily. And in some cases, products appear even within Google.com organic search results for highly competitive search terms.

With a tremendous potential for increasing website traffic and improving conversion rates by up to 30%, Google Product Search is one of the most effective and profitable ways to promote your products and brands in front of millions of consumers. If you are a retailer and you’re still in the dark about Google Product Search, it’s time you realized how important Google Product Search is and start listing your products there before your competitors do. Otherwise, you will lose opportunities for additional sales.

Use Google Product Search to get in front of your prospects

One of the best things about Google Product Search is that it allows you to list an unlimited number of items for FREE. Google makes no commission on the sale of the products and it does not accept payment for products to show up first. As an online retailer, you can submit product listings directly to Google Base either by API, FTP, XML data feed, or by typing product information individually in form fields on the Google Product Search user interface.

Google Product Search has its own portal and snippets of its product listings are regularly displayed in searches on Google.com as part of its universal search. With Google’s new search interface, online consumers can search for products with just one click on the word ‘Shopping’ on the left navigation of the Google search screen. The search results include images, prices and links to the retailers’ ecommerce websites.

Boost your Product Search rankings by using proper optimization techniques

There are now two different ways that Google displays product listings. If your product is unique or there are only a few competitors selling them online, then they create a dedicated listing that links directly to your product page. If you sell a popular product, then Google creates a dedicated page for the product and adds you as a retailer to that page.

Let’s examine both of these listing types and what you can do as an online retailer to rank higher and get more exposure on Google Product Search.

Dedicated listings:

In order to rank high in Google Product Search there are a number of optimization points:

• Pricing.By offering the lowest total price, you’ll appear higher, appeal to more consumers and ultimately gain more exposure.
• Seller Rating. Ratings and Reviews are an important determinant of your success as an online retailer. So make sure you maintain a stellar online reputation.
• Title tag. Similar to generic organic results, having the key phrases for each product placed strategically in your title tag can help you rank high within Google Product Search. Most important keywords should be included first in the title. E,g, product name, brand, model and then product type. Review your web analytics account to see which keywords are being used to find your products and use them in the title and description fields.




• Description. Make sure the most important and highly searched keywords are included in your description. Also, don’t neglect the long tail keywords.
• Data Freshness. One of the methods Google recommends to get higher rankings is to make sure that you are regularly adding your new products and updating existing data when necessary.
• Data Quality. It’s important that your data is error free, well formatted and meets all of the required quality standards.
• Additional Parameters. Google points out several times in their guidelines that using additional fields isn’t going to improve your positioning in search results. However, optimizing these fields can help increase your exposure and make your site look more professional.

Dedicated pages:

The factors discussed above for dedicated listings will help you with your ranking on dedicated pages as well. For merchants with brick-and-mortar presence, make sure you have store location entered into your Google Product Account. Also you can gain additional exposure if you use the Google Checkout payment option and offer free shipping.

Dedicated pages tend to also include Ads from Google Adwords, Editorial reviews, Youtube Videos, Similar items and Accessories listings. These are examples of additional areas you can optimize to get further exposure.

If you participate in both Google Adwords and Google Product Search, you should consider linking these two accounts together so your products appear in Google Adwords.

Finally, make sure you are tracking your Google Product Search results using tracking software. If you are using Google Analytics you can either tag each URL with campaign tracking tags or set up a filter in Google Analytics. Visit http://www.lunametrics.com/blog/2009/07/16/tracking-google-product-search-traffic/ for more information.

Important notice from Google:

Product offers in the Electronics, Books, and Media categories that are submitted without Unique Product Identifiers may not be listed or may appear in a lower position in the results. We recommend checking the Data Quality tab in your Merchant Center account to see examples of products that may have missing or incorrect identifiers.

And as always, you can refer to GoECart Knowledge Base for more information.

How can merchants benefit from being listed in Google Product Search?

Increased traffic and sales - Google Product Search brings merchants together with an enormous number of online shoppers. By listing your products on Google Product Search you are helping customers find your site quickly and easily, thus, generating more traffic and sales.

Greater product exposure - Submitting your products to Google Product Search is one of the best ways to generate exposure for your brand and your products, and that too for free.

Increased conversions - Listing your products on Product Search will help you reach buyers precisely when they are searching for items to buy. Google Product Search has proven itself to be one of the most effective search engines in terms of delivering shoppers who are ready to buy.

List your products through an approved Google Product Search Partner

GoECart is a worldwide leader in on-demand ecommerce applications. GoECart’s innovative technology solutions help retailers of all sizes maintain a competitive edge in today’s marketplace with added support for Google Product Search. Through GoECart’s reliable, scalable, and secure ecommerce engine, we can help merchants seamlessly integrate their product data feeds directly into Google’s Product Search engine.

As a Google Product Search Partner, GoECart is here to help you achieve increased traffic, greater product exposure and higher conversion rates!

Visit www.GoECart.com today and join hundreds of retailers that rely on GoECart every day to help them rank higher in Google Product Search and enjoy more traffic and sustainable sales growth.

In early May, Google™ made a major algorithm update to its search engine with the goal of making ‘long-tailed’ results—phrases that contain three or more keywords—more useful. For example, a Google search for ‘Widget Model 554’ is a long-tailed search. Unfortunately, the change has adversely impacted online retailer’s standings in the search giant’s results pages. Consequently, there has been a great deal of outrage over this algorithmic update particularly from online retailers that have seen their traffic and online revenues drop sharply.

Vanessa Fox, a former Google employee, had this to say: “This change seems to have primarily impacted very large sites with “item” pages that don’t have many individual links into them. These pages might be several clicks from the home page and may not have substantial unique and value-added content on them.” Many ecommerce sites have this structure.

Matt Cutts, ofGoogle’s Web Spam team, said that site owners who saw their traffic drop need to keep adding great content and make sure people see your site as an authority.

With thousands of online retailers seeing fewer search engine rankings for their product pages, many retailers are wondering what can be done to regain these positions and recapture lost revenues.

Optimize Product Pages

Online retailers often face common problems when trying to get their product pages to rank well in the search engines. One key challenge is with images and content that are exactly like those provided by the manufacturer. One of the core reasons Google made this algorithmic update is to prevent this type of duplicate content from being indexed. For example, when you search for ‘Widget Model 554’ and every search result yields the exact same content from multiple retail sites, there is little value to the online shopper. Since using manufacturer-supplied catalog content is a standard practice amongst merchants for many reasons; it could take months to manually rewrite each product description for potentially thousands of catalog pages. However, by not taking the time to add value to the content, your search results will suffer. So how can these challenges be addressed? Start with proper page optimization:

• Write unique keyword-rich TITLE tags for every product.
• Ensure your product page URLs are search engine friendly and contain the product name.
• Rewrite the product information provided to you by the manufacturer; for example, further expand on the products features and/benefits.
• Allow your customers to write reviews on the products they purchase from you. Let your customers create unique content for you on each product page!
• Add a unique and detailed expert reviews to each of your popular products.

Adding value to your product pages can be a very time consuming task; however, taking the time to do it right will result in higher search engine rankings and more satisfied customers.

Employ an Effective Link Building Strategy

Google stated that they will factor in links from other sites even more heavily as a key area in the algorithm update. Since product pages, due to their nature, generally don’t have many links from other sites to them, online retailers need to build back links to these pages This involves developing new content containing the embedded links to your pages making sure the content gets posted to other sites across the web. For example, you can create the following types of content containing the links back to your site:

• Regularly scheduled press releases and announcements about new products
• Articles about your products, such as what differentiates them from competing products or general overview articles
• Squidoo™, Google Knol™, or a HubPages™ pages about each of the brands or products you carry.

You can then send this content to bloggers, article distribution sites, trade associations or post them on your company blog. You can also try some of these additional link building strategies:

• If you have a large customer base, consider developing a widget or badge customers can put on their blog or site which features a product wish list or registry. Go to your most popular competitor sites and see where they are acquiring their back links from. There may be specialty sites in your niche you can leverage.

There are many more ways you can generate quality links to your site’s category and product pages, just spend some time going over the sites within your vertical, and you will begin generating lists of potential sources.

Indeed, keeping up with Google’s latest algorithmic updates can be overwhelming for many online merchants. To help avoid your online store dropping off in the search results, the general rule of thumb is to develop unique, valuable site content. In doing so, we can stop chasing every algorithmic update and begin focusing on our core business and its customers. But first you must make sure both visitors and the search engines see your site as an authority within your vertical.