Google announces new deals sections, promotional tools and expanded reporting ahead of the holiday shopping season

Promotions uploaded via Google Merchant Center are automatically surfaced to shoppers, regardless of whether the merchant advertises on Google.

As retailers prepare for the holiday shopping season, Google is launching new sections in its search results to showcase deals, rolling out tools to highlight promotions and expanding reporting capabilities in Google Merchant Center, the company announced Wednesday.

The new deals sections. The new “Deals related to your search” section shows discounted or competitively priced products from retailers across the web. This section is live now and can be found in the Shopping tab.

Additionally, when users search for deals during major retail sales events, such as Black Friday or Cyber Monday, Google will show a new carousel that highlights relevant deals, alongside other related sales information. This new SERP feature will be available in October — right in time for the aforementioned shopping holidays.

Promotions and deals uploaded via Google Merchant Center are automatically shown to users on the Shopping tab, even if the retailer or manufacturer isn’t running ads on Google. “Offers are shown based on factors such as the discount itself, how popular a product is, how popular the site it’s listed on is and more,” Google said in the announcement.

New promotions tools. Google is rolling out two new ways for merchants to attract new customers and highlight their promotions:

• Merchants can now indicate that a promotion is only available to first-time customers (for example, a “10% off for new customers” promotion). These promotions will still be shown to everyone, but only eligible shoppers will be able to access the promotional price.
• Promotions can now be highlighted on free listings in the Shopping tab. To do so, navigate to the promotions tab in Google Merchant Center and select which promotions you want to have appear in free listings (or, alternatively, supported by ad spend).

Expanded best sellers report. Historical best seller data and relative demand data are coming to the best seller report in Google Merchant Center.

The best seller report in Google Merchant Center. Image: Google.

This report can be accessed once a merchant opts into market insights in Merchant Center or Google BigQuery.

Why we care. The new deals sections may present retailers with opportunities to showcase their competitively priced products. This may also help retailers attract new customers during their most important times of the year, major shopping holidays. Additionally, the deals carousel will appear on the main results page, so users are more likely to see those deals since they don’t have to move over to the Shopping tab first.

The new promotional tools can help merchants draw attention to their sales and attract first-time customers.

Historical best seller data can be used to inform decisions ahead of upcoming shopping holidays. And, relative demand data can help merchants compare demand between products in the same category and country, which may help them stock the right products.

Via searchengineland.com