Shopping Blog

[Cross-posted from the Google Merchant Blog]

If you've ever spent your Saturday calling different stores or driving around town in search of one specific product, then it probably occurred to you that there must be a better way. Today we're announcing Local Product Availability on Google Place Pages - a new feature that automatically brings your offline catalog to the web, letting customers view your products and search your local inventory on your Place Page before visiting your store.

When you provide Google with local product availability data, your Google Place Page will now automatically include a new section, ‘Popular products available at this store’, featuring five popular products along with price and local availability. For shoppers unfamiliar with your business, this section shows the types of products available in your store.

If shoppers are looking for a specific item, they can click ‘Search within this store’ to search your product inventory to see if a particular item is in stock nearby.





Getting started
To automatically display local product availability on your Google Place page, you’ll need to first share local availability data with Google through a Merchant Center account and claim your a Google Place page. For instructions on sharing local product availability with Google, read this Help Center article. Learn how to claim your Google Place page here.


Posted by Paul Lee, Senior Product Manager, Google Product Search

While the 2011 economic forecast may be looking sunnier, mother nature must have missed the memo. So much of the country has been blanketed in snow and ice the last several weeks (and may be for weeks to come), and nasty weather can have an interesting effect on retailers big and small, online and brick & mortar.

While schools, offices and roads were closed, the web becomes one of the few outlets still available to people for communication, work, and entertainment, and retailers with a strong online presence are in luck.

The East Coast cannot catch a break this winter, with storm after storm keeping snow plows busy and travelers delayed at airports since before the holidays. Has it been bad for retailers though? Not necessarily. Apparel retailers in Philadelphia actually saw a mid-week search peak on the 27th when they were in the middle of one of the worst blizzards. In fact, most retailers still posted gains in the month of January.















In the Midwest, Chicago was one of the cities that really got the worst of it with 70 mph winds, around 20 inches of snow and temperatures in the double digits below zero. From our Insights for Search tool, however, it’s clear that product search interest in the shopping category has picked up significantly in this metro area over just the past couple weeks and is continuing an upward trend into early February. “Boots”, “shoes”, and “dresses” tops the search term list here.















In Dallas, TX this month, shopping was probably the least of everyone’s concerns with Super Bowl XLV taking place this weekend and preparations for that being hindered by the thick layer of ice covering everything from roads to the Cowboys Stadium. Still though, ticket sales are climbing and event shopping took place online.















It seems that despite Mother Nature’s best efforts, strengthening online retail sales have not been set back by the sleet and snow for the first several weeks of 2011, though certainly the effects must be varied across pure-play e-tailers, multi-channel retailers and pure brick & mortar stores. What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, right?


Posted by Tiffany Lin, The Google Retail Team