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Google Improves Commerce Search for Retailers

Date: Jun 17 2010
Author: Jennifer LeClaire
Article ID: 1918

Google on Thursday rolled out the second iteration of its search solution for retailers. Google Commerce Search 2.0 overhauls the original product that aims to help e-commerce players in the United States and United Kingdom prepare for the summer shopping season.

Nitin Mangtani, a senior product manager at Google, promised a better experience for online shoppers and more control with "immediate ROI" for retailers. The pricing model for Google Commerce Search starts at $25,000 a year.

One of the questions that comes to analyst Greg Sterling's mind is how much of a revenue opportunity Google Commerce Search really is. Granted, e-commerce is a large market. But can Google win new customers and recognize any meaningful revenue with its custom retail search solution?

"It remains to be seen," said Sterling, principal analyst at Sterling Market Intelligence. "Google said they have 30,000 enterprise search customers. They wouldn't break out the retail numbers. They've dropped the price, which means they haven't gotten a lot of adoption and they are trying to drive more."

Remaking Commerce Search

Google rolled out the original version of Commerce Search a little more than six months ago without much fanfare. Google bills it as an enterprise-grade web-site search solution. It's hosted in Google's cloud. The second iteration of the product makes several improvements Google hopes will drive greater adoption.

One of the improvements is more merchant customization in the form of a merchandising dashboard. The dashboard gives merchants more control over promotions, ranking rules and filtering with no custom coding needed. Google also rolled out new retailer controls, like time-based promotions, a navigation bar with filters, and product ranking rules, that set the stage for on-the-fly seasonal optimizations.

"This is a strong product. Google is trying to be a little more aggressive with these improvements," Sterling said. "I don't know how it stacks up against...Read the entire article...

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