According to news on June 1, Beijing time, Google will convert its free product search service into a paid service, a move aimed at further leveraging its online search engine to increase revenue.
From now on, online retailers will have to bid to have their products displayed on the Google Shopping website. For now, online retailers can display products for free by providing Google with specific data about the products; Google then ranks those products based on criteria such as popularity and price.
Google Vice President Sameer Samat said in a statement: "Google Shopping will allow businesses of all sizes to compete effectively and will help shoppers quickly turn their purchase intentions into action."
Eric Best, CEO of Mercent, a company that helps retailers sell and promote products through Google, said the move "represents a fundamental shift in how Google participates in the e-commerce market." ". Best estimates that Google currently generates about $800 million in annual revenue from "product listings" ads that appear along with search results on Google Shopping. He predicted that this number will increase by $1 billion after the changes announced by Google on Thursday are completed in the U.S. market this fall.
A Google spokesman declined to comment on Best's estimate.
The move will also affect how search results from Google's shopping sites appear on Google's main search engine. For example, before Google made this change, when users searched for the word "camera," the five most popular cameras from shopping pages would appear under some search results links; after the change, these Links will appear above the main search page, and images of related products will become larger, meaning web traffic to the Google Shopping site could see a significant increase.
Although Google is the number one online search engine, its performance is far behind eBay and Amazon in terms of the number of shopping-related searches. According to data released by market research company comScore, U.S. Internet users conducted approximately 80 million searches using the Google shopping search website in April this year, while eBay and Amazon conducted approximately 900 million and 335 million searches respectively.
An Amazon spokesman declined to comment, while eBay spokesman Robert Chatwani issued a statement saying the company already pays for display ads on Google Shopping and plans to "fully participate in Google Shopping." new services while continuing to leverage the power of Google’s advertising services on behalf of sellers and merchants."
Google has previously tried to upgrade its shopping site to catch up with eBay and Amazon, but comScore data shows that the service's search traffic has remained basically unchanged while its competitors have grown significantly. In addition, Google has been taking other steps to compete with Amazon. Sources familiar with the situation have previously revealed that Google has jointly developed a service with retailers that allows consumers to shop online and receive orders within one day, but requires paying a certain fee.
The change announced by Google is one of several steps the company is taking to boost revenue from its core search engine. Google recently launched specialized search services, such as mortgage and loan search service Google Advisor as well as Google Hotel Finder and Google Flight Search. For these services, financial services companies, hotels and airline operators may pay Google to showcase products and services.
Danny Sullivan, editor of the American technology blog website SearchEngineLand.com, wrote on Thursday that this change represents “the first time that Google has retired a previously free search product” and that the move “is likely to trigger There are new concerns that Google may further reduce other free services." A Google spokesman declined to comment.
In addition, Google's move also worries some smaller online retailers. Jeffrey Gornstein, president of online home products retailer Comfort House, said he believes the change will make it more difficult for his company to compete with larger online retailers that have More funding. He added that Comfort House had been using Google Shopping's free service for the past decade, but spent $10,000 in the past year after Google asked specific retailers to provide new types of data.