Google and shopping: new solutions for local businesses and consumers

Shopping is still the topic at the center of Google’s operations: just a few days ago we announced the intervention on control options to customize the information on products shown in search results and product attributes, while today we look more closely at the work that the American company is doing to support local businesses to respond to consumer needs and shorten the distances between physical and digital at the time of the pandemic.

New structured data for resellers

Let’s start with the announcement coming through the Webmaster Central Blog: starting from September 22 (and currently available only in the United States, in English and on mobile devices), Google supports the shippingDetails schema.org markup as an alternative method to enable retailers to indicate shipping details in Google search results, marking important information on shipping policies and options associated with a product.

The adoption of this markup means that e-commerce sites are no longer obliged to subscribe to Google Merchant Center and only use its product feeds for sharing purchase details on Google Search, although the Google platform continues to be active and working for this purpose.

How works the new markup

The marking allows you to add various information to the item, such as details on the cost and delivery times provided for the shipping options based on the individual products.

When correctly added – and if Google decides to show them – these structured data appear in the general overview and in the shop tabs within the results section for a specific product, showing precisely costs and shipping options charged by the dealer.

This is a useful opportunity for sites that do not use (and do not want to) Google Merchant Center and represents a clear and specific way to communicate the shipping details of the products in the catalog. Using the markup scheme to manage and communicate your shipping options might be easier than using the Google Merchant Center feed: the two channels are alternative, and so you do not need to implement them both.

Which info can be communicated

According to the official documentation of Schema.org – as Matt Southern recalls on Searchenginejournal – there are various types of entities that can be used to represent the various possibilities of information on shipping costs and delivery times, including:

• Delivery Time. It indicates the expected delivery times, and therefore the days that pass from the completion of the order to the delivery of the goods to the final customer.
• Does Not Ship. Indicates the destinations to which the site/store does not ship.
• Shipping Destination. Report the shipping destination, a place where you can ship an item.
• Shipping Rate. To show shipping costs to the specified destination.
• Shipping Settings Link. It allows you to view a link to the shipping policy, a web page that contains all the details on rates and delivery times.

Google’s attention to shopping

The article signed by Kyle Kelly, Google’s Shopping Product Manager, explains that shipping details, including costs and expected delivery times, “are often a key consideration for users who make purchase decisions”.

Several studies, including in-house studies at Big G, show that users leave shopping carts due to unexpected or uncertain shipping costs, and this has prompted the company to show more frequently information on shipping costs in certain types of results, including free Google Shopping listings in Google Search and other ecosystem platforms.

Google supporting shops in reconnecting with local clients

In the last six months we have experienced 10 years of change, writes Reena Nadkarni (Group Product Manager, Local Ads) in presenting on the blog The Keyword the new product innovations introduced by Google to help shopkeepers to get in touch with buyers and increase local sales.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, he continues, people have built new habits and ways to manage their “new normality” and more and more “people and businesses have approached the digital world”. With these changes, Google has decided to commit “more than ever to helping companies reopen and recover“, while providing new tools that help “consumers know what to expect before entering the store, whether it is to offer opening hours, share what is in stock or notice whether outside pick-up or take-away service is available”.

Taking advantage of the tools to move the activities online

People in fact look for information and plan online their visits to local shops and restaurants before moving physically: according to Google, searches for “curbside pick up” have increased globally by more than 3,000 percent in a year and the search for “takeout restaurants” has increased globally by over 5,000 percent in the same period.

For Nadkarni, Google My Business is a “great way to keep customers up to date with the most accurate business information, especially as that information often varies by location”, and reminds you of the possibilities available.

For example, “you can add service attributes to your business, such as Store Pick-up and No-contact Delivery, which are displayed on Google and on the activity profile page, so that customers know how you behave when they plan their visit”.

Information on local ads campaigns, too

In addition to GMB, Google is now making this type of information increasingly available even for local campaigns, to help stores set up “in contact with customers nearby when they search or explore Google Maps, Google Search, Youtube and the Google Display Network”.

Now in fact it is possible to highlight the attributes of the catering service such as “Dine-in” and “Takeout”, and soon it will be possible to include attributes of the retail service, such as “In-store shopping” and “Curbside pickup”.

The new pickup later option

Reena Nadkarni points out that now “consumers are also looking for real-time information when it comes to the products they need”, and cites a few examples: searches that contain “available near me” have increased more than 2 times in regions and categories, and Google recently implemented the tag “Curbside pickup” for ads of products available locally (local inventory ads) to “help you connect local buyers with the products they need and promote safer spending options“.

Now the company is expanding this feature with the introduction of the indication “Pickup later” for the advertisements of locally available products: this “gives you the opportunity to promote products that may not be available in the store at the time, but that can be picked up within a few days“.

This feature can be managed via the rules set for local inventory feeds in the Google Merchant Center. It will be important (and potentially challenging) for retailers to exploit it with the right logic, so as to intercept the interest and needs of potential customers.

Smart Bidding for in-store sales

The news concerning Google does not stop here, because it is now available the Smart Bidding of Google Ads for in-store sales, which allows you to adapt in real time to the change in consumer behavior, by automatically optimising auctions on the basis of actual sales in the shop, and therefore not only on the basis of human traffic.

Smart Bidding for store visits has been around for a year, points out Greg Sterling on Searchengineland, and allows “to optimise offers for physical store visits, which Google measures by using Android device locations, consumer panels and modeling,” and adapt bid bids in auctions based on fluctuations in online conversions and visits, but it has a focus on major retailers and big restaurant chains.

Now Google is extending this idea to in-store or restaurant transactions with Smart Bidding for in-store sales, to enable campaigns so to react in real time to changes in consumer behavior, whether they buy online or physically.

How to activate Smart offers

To be eligible for the service, advertisers must meet certain volumes of in-store transactions and data thresholds, as well as configure the Google Ads account for conversions generated by in-store sales. The next step is to prepare the data for these sales and upload them to Google Ads.

As Google explains, you can manually upload proprietary and secure (first-party, privacy-safe) data to transactions to power the optimization process, but there are other ways to provide data on in-store sales such as the use of Google Ads Apis, or a dedicated partner.

Store visit data “is based on aggregated and anonymous statistics, which create values modeled using current and past data on the number of users who clicked on your ads and then visited the physical store”, explains the guide, and to protect privacy can not be associated with individual clicks on ads, visible impressions or users.

Here come the bidding offers in Local Services Ads

There is also another news that affects advertisers active on a local basis: after a test phase on a subset of professional service categories, successfully overcome, now Google has extended the Local Services Ads at auction-based prices.

In the standard version, Lsas have for simplicity a fixed cost for lead pricing; prices are set by Google and vary according to the vertical sector and geographical area. Leads can be delivered in the form of phone calls, appointment bookings or messages, depending on what the advertiser wants to receive. Now, instead, Google has also introduced in this sector the dynamic price based on the bidding system.

How works the system

To participate in the service, advertisers must be certified as “Google Guaranteed” or “Google Screened”, programs that provide licenses, insurance and background checks on the company history).

One of the main advantages of LSA is that they appear at the top of the search results, above the traditional ads and the Map Pack; at the moment, only three ads can be displayed on the page, while the rest is available in a list at the bottom of the page. In addition, they present in the foreground the reviews and the signal of trust of Google Guaranteed or Google Screened.

With the new auction-based pricing, advertisers can only set an offer regardless of the type of lead; bidding offers give advertisers more control and give them the opportunity to invest more for leads. In addition, by expanding the number of local advertisers entering the program and intensifying the competition, it also means more revenues for Google.

Google’s committment to connect physical and digital on local scale

These examples tell the effort and the great investments of Google in capabilities and functionalities from online to offline, especially in this post-pandemic world (or rather, in this phase of cohabitation). More than its rivals, the company is building tools for both advertisers and users who exploit the Internet for more common cases and purchase scenarios, such as online search, offline purchase and the increasingly exploited online purchase and in-store pick-up option.

Jason Spero, Google’s Vice President of Global Business, gave some thoughts on the reasons that drive the company towards these interventions: “Purchasing behavior has changed dramatically in the last six months and it is likely that many of these behaviors remain”, writes. “People are planning their visits to stores more carefully, leading to a peak of interest in real-time information; They worry about what is in stock and want to know if a store offers withdrawal outside and when its doors open and close”, because “everyone needs to be reassured that they will find what they are looking for before they leave the house”.

Difficulties and opportunities for physical shops

Right now, managing physical stores “is incredibly difficult”, admits the Googler, but “retailers of all sizes are finding that maximizing their online presence can help them reach potential customers who wish to buy in person”, and thus “connecting offline and online retail experiences has never been so important”.

Some examples help to understand this evolution: in Germany, the research interest for “opening hours today” has doubled compared to last year, the global research of “available” has increased by over 700 percent year on year and, for local shopping, searches that contain “available in the vicinity” are more than doubled globally.

A specific Google search shows that the pandemic has made people more flexible about the possibility of online or offline: 73 percent now describe themselves as channel-independent, compared to 65 percent prior to the global health crisis, and in general the pandemic has accelerated digital adoption and online sales are growing, but Euromonitor research predicts that by 2024, 78% of purchases will still be made in stores.

The Google Global Business team aims to “help businesses of all sizes drive their growth by meeting consumers where they are, online or in the store, and to put digital transformation within the reach of more advertisers”, through all the new tools that “have been developed with the aim of helping retailers and restaurants to maximize visits”.