Google Product Listing Ads
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This past Wednesday Google announced Product Listing Ads. And rather tell you what they are, let me show you.
This first image is your typical search results page with the ads and organic listings highlighted. This search was for “snow boots”.
Google Product Ads Example 1
This second image is another search results page but this time, this one has the Google Product Listing ads included within it. This search was for “bed in a bag”.
Google Product Listing Ads Example 2
Notice the difference?
The new Google Product Listing ads now allow advertisers to show images next to their advertisements.
This new feature is open to those AdWords advertisers who have products in the Google Merchant Center (formerly Google Base) which was rolled out at the end of September 2009.
Unlike traditional AdWords advertisements where you pay every time someone clicks on one of your ads, you only pay whenever someone actually purchases a product from your site.
Additionally, again unlike AdWords, you don’t have to worry about keywords or any additional advertising text. If a user searches on a keyword phrase that is relevant to a product that you offer and that product is listed in the Google Merchant Center, Google will show the most relevant products for that user along with the image, price and the product name. As Google states:
“Product Listing Ads makes it easy for you to promote your entire product inventory on Google.com.”
It’s currently only available to certain advertisers and is still in beta.
What I find interesting is that not too long ago, some AdSense publishers realized that if you put images next to AdSense ads on your website those AdSense ads received more clicks. This seemed to work very well for a lot of publishers until Google caught onto what was happening and made it “illegal”.
Ironically enough, they’re doing the same exact thing on their search results pages; one can only assume that it actually worked very well and so much so that Google has decided to incorporate the same strategy into their own websites.
All that said, what does this mean to you?
- Once Google rolls this out to the public in general, it will be interesting to see if these images also show up in your AdSense ads on your website. If they do and your website refers to say, “bed in a bag”, and Google shows ads in AdSense that also advertise “beds in a bag”, you’ll have to make some decisions as to whether or not you want competitors ads showing up on your site for the same or similar products. I could see a lot of websites opting out of AdSense for this reason.
- If you do have products in the Google Merchant Center, because Google will know what converts to a sale and what doesn’t, they’ll now have access to your sales data.
- If these images begin to show at the top of the page where current AdWords text ads show, this will push down the organic search results; and in some cases “below the fold”. Which means that web searchers will have to scroll down to view the organic search results.
The bottom line is, if you have a product and it’s listed in the Merchant Center, this could mean higher profits for you.
On the flip side, if you’re simply trying to get your website seen in the organic search results for a product search, you might have to rethink your optimization strategy.
Related posts:
- Local Businesses Getting a Leg Up on Google
- The Google Popularity Contest Patent
- Give Your Business Credibility with Google Knol
- Google’s Link Operator – What’s it REALLY Holding Back?
- Google vs. Bing – SEO Style
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