In this final part of my look at Google’s results pages, I’d like to mention the Google shopping results, which currently tend to appear immediately above the natural search results (often pushing them off-screen completely) or as a large panel on the top right of the results page. Either way, they’re very prominent, and very effective.
Google used to run this feature for free, but nowadays the Google shopping results section is paid-for, with a similar justification to that which I discussed yesterday. The individual ads are called “Product Listing Ads” and are managed through Google AdWords. We have clients using this route to market, and they’re getting a fantastic return from it.
So, how do you get into Google shopping results? Firstly, you’ll need an online store, because that’s what it’s all about. Then you need to provide Google with constantly-updated data about the items in your store in a specific file format. This is known as setting up a Google Merchant Centre account, and will be fairly trivial to whoever created your online store (they’re probably the only people who can do this). Once the data feed is up and running, you shouldn’t ever need to touch it again.
Then just contact us, and we’ll get your “Product Listing Ads” running. It’s not as daunting as it sounds, and provides exceptional ROI in terms of sales from your online store.