History and Introduction
The concept of Google Shopping was founded and introduced by Craig Nevill-Manning in 2002 as ‘Froogle’ that comprises a service which allows the Internet users to find products online and compare their prices. Google Shopping witnessed its journey by different names like Froogle, Google Product and Google Product Search respectively. Google Shopping exploits latest technologies to promote the business of merchants by finding the right audience for their products.
Getting Started with Google Shopping
You must have noticed that when you search for a certain product in Google, it displays some advertisements matching your search query in either the search engine result page or in a shopping tab.
For example, if a user types ‘buy red earrings’ in Google search bar, then some sponsored ads appear in the search results as shown below, this is nothing but a result of the Google Shopping campaign. As you can see here, each advertisement contains a relevant title, price and image which are exactly meeting the user requirement.
In this way, Google Shopping boosts the chances of visibility of your products among the online users. As nothing worth comes free, to avail this service i.e. to get your product ranked in search results, you have to pay to the Google. When a user clicks on your product he/she gets navigated to the relevant landing page of merchant website. In this way, a chance of getting sales through Google Shopping significantly increases.
Backbone of Google Shopping
Google Merchant Center and Google AdWords form the backbone of Google Shopping. Let’s discuss them in brief.
- Google Merchant Center – Google Merchant Center provides a platform where merchant feed their store details and SKU details (or in simple words – product details). It contains a list of all the products that an online store contains. The format of this list can be textual or in XML. Each product contains some values or attributes that describe how the product exactly is. Some of these values or attributes are size, color, available quantity, price, product identifiers (EAN/ISBN), etc. Some of these attributes are compulsory whereas some are optional. If the description doesn’t match the product or is irrelevant in any way, then the product may not locate in the Google search results, which is nothing but a loss for the business.
- Google AdWords
Google AdWords is an online advertisement service which allows merchants to create advertisement campaigns. Through advertisement campaigns, the merchants can choose their budget, bids, location, schedule, etc. It is mandatory to have a Google AdWords account to run a campaign for Google Shopping.
Steps to Create Google Shopping Campaign
Firstly, you need to have an online e-commerce website upon which your customer will be redirected once they click on the advertisement. Secondly, you have to set up a Google Merchant account as well as a Google AdWords account, and then you will be linking both of them with each other. Let’s take a closer look at the steps to do this.
- Go to google.com/merchants and create a Google Merchant Center account. If you already have a Google AdWords account then go to Tools section and select Merchant Center, and here you can create a Google Merchant Center account. During account creation you will be asked to fill in the required fields like business location, store name, website and contact details.
By default, Google follows one store – one merchant account format. However, if you want to add multiple merchant accounts to a single Google account, you need to contact Google and follow a customized procedure to do so. Each merchant account will be given a unique merchant identifier.
- Next, you have to upload the product list (also called as data feed) of all the products available in your online store. This list contains products and their respective attributes as discussed above.
- Now, it’s time to verify your website with Google Merchant Center. Once this account gets verified, just link this account to your Google AdWords account.
- Now, this is the time to setup Google Shopping campaign through Google Adwords. Sign in to your Google Adwords account and click on the campaign drop-down menu and choose Shopping from it. You will be asked to set up your campaign by entering the details like – a campaign name, merchant identifier ID, country of sale, and target locations.
- Now, create an Adgroup that will consist of all the products that you wish to display in advertisements. You can also setup different Adgroups for different product groups with variable bids depending on your business insights.
In this way, your Google Shopping campaign is all set. Moreover, you can edit, manage and measure your campaign’s performance using Google AdWords account.
Google Shopping has potential to significantly boost the CTRs as well as the sales. It allows your brand and products to grab focus of a wide set of audience, and consequently better business opportunities. For further assistance on Google AdWords, Google Merchant Center or Google Shopping, please feel free to contact us on info@bmconsulting.in. You may also visit our website www.bmconsulting.in for more information.