Comparison Shopping Engine Strategies

Google Product Search Webinar Follow Up - Part 2

More Q&A:

Q5) Google suggests a 30 day expiration period for products. Is there value in optimizing this attribute? for example, does it help to set a 7 day period over a 14 day period?

A5) I haven't ever given this much thought. My first instinct is to maximize the time in case something goes wrong with feed processing on either your side or Google's. That being said, this does seem to tie on some level to their emphasis on data freshness, but it seems unlikely to me that this would be an algorithmic aspect. I see it more as a boolean, either expired or not expired.  Because of that, I don't think I'll be encouraging anyone to test shorter expiration dates as it seems like too much of a risk, but if you are feeling bold, there is always a chance it could pay off to give it a try.

Q6) Google only allows 70 characters in the short description.  Are only 70 characters actually used in the matching algorithm or is it just a display consideration.

A6) I've tested this many times and the data does not appear to be ignored by the algorithm, but it's possible that it could be treated as less important. One way to combat that possibility is to repeat the title at the beginning of the Google description. It's also possible it is already considered on par with the description. However, I see items with more than 70 characters in the title at or near the top of search results pretty often so there doesn't seem to be any harsh punishment in place. 70 is an arbitrary number so there is no reason to think the data less relevant because it sits at the 71st character.

Q7) a) You mentioned that dramatic changes can have a negative effect on your feed. would you say something like adding shipping to your entire file would fall within dramatic? And if so, do you think removing it would be just as dramatic of a change and instead best to just wait it out? b) Does the Amazon Product Ads require UPC code like Amazon Marketplace does?

A7) a) Anything that involves changing all line items in the feed definitely qualifies as dramatic, but for shipping specifically, I would suggest implementing it. This is especially true if you have free shipping on your items because I feel users are likely to use the "free shipping" filter. You could argue that since traffic is free, it makes sense to NOT display all information in order to give the user more incentive to click through, but I think shoppers are likely to gravitate to where shipping rates are easy to find. b) UPC is not required but it definitely helps Amazon in their matching and categorization process. If you have it, I suggest including it. If you don't include it and your product should be associated with a product page but does not get associated with it, you will probably miss out on exposure because that product page will get the majority of the traffic.

Q8) Any idea on how much is Bing's CPA rate?

A8) You set your own rate, but please note that the rate will impact rank on matched pages (via low to high price rank) and could be part of the results algorithm as well, so the more aggressive you are, the more likely you are to be found. We've seen some retailers experience a noticeable increase in sales when they increase the commission rate.

Google Product Search Webinar Follow Up - Part 1

Thanks to all those who joined us on Thursday! We got a lot of questions and though we answered quite a few at the time, there were many more we just couldn't get to. We want to answer them all but also want to make the answers visible to other attendees, so we'll be answering a few at a time via this blog. If you didn't get a chance to ask a question on Thursday or have thought of one since then, feel free to post as a comment or email to csestrategies at channeladvisor dot com.

Notes: You may see only part of your question appear on one of these posts. If some part of your question is very specific to your business, expect an answer via email to that part. If some part was already answered, we likely will not repeat it. Also, if you have an experience that differs from what you read here (which wouldn't surprise us considering the fluidity of the GPS system) please share!

First a few links.
Google Base help form: This will help guide you through some commonly encountered issues with Google Base/Product search.
Google Help Forums: Community driven forums but Google folks do participate.
Google Error form: Use this if you are getting an error and can't get it cleared up through help form or the forums.
Google Webmaster Video on GPS best practices: There are a few valuable nuggets of info in here.
List of Google Rating Sites: The most complete list I've seen and some good conversation about GPS in general, courtesy of SEOmoz. I can't say I agree with everything on this page but since the GPS algorithm is hard to pin down, different omerchants are likely to see different results.

Now on to questions:

Q1) Is GPS scraping the web reviews or in active feed partnerships with the review sites?

A1) I've never asked this directly but I read on the forums once that it is done every so often, i.e., not regularly, suggesting it is a scrape. I would say this is consistent with what we see. Sometimes a merchant's ratings are totally missed even though they are easy to find (via Google of course) and sometimes they lag behind significantly in terms of freshness. I just saw a merchant rating on PriceGrabber from the 18th that is not appearing on the merchant's GPS review page more than a week later.

Q2) I recently saw that the Google tag product_type is now being used in the Google product search as categories  in the filter options. Do you think it is important to map categories to google product_types, rather than use out current categories as custom product_types?

A2) My guess is that most users don’t use the filter options on GPS pages. For one thing, the GPS pages are probably not the main source of traffic for GPS listings. The “one-box” we talked about on Thursday, which appears on regular Google SERPs, likely comprises a much larger percentage of traffic and those pages don’t have such filters. Second, the Google user experience is all about searching, so I think users are more likely to alter their query than they are to look for/use filters. Finally, Google used to place such filters on the top of GPS pages but moved them to the bottom, probably because they were rarely used. That being said, Google definitely wants merchants to use the existing taxonomy. Consistent classification makes data much easier to organize and use. Google hinted a long time ago (before the new taxonomy rolled out) that creating your own product type was not a great idea but I'm not sure if this is still true. Doing so won't cause the item to fail but I would suggest not creating your own values if you can avoid it.

Q3) When Mark and Scot were talking about ways to structure variation relationships I didn’t quite under stand what they meant when talking about separated by comma.  Our data feeds are built and adjusted using excel, but saved as text files (tab delimited).  One of our big sellers is bedding, including sheets, would it make more sense to continue to have each color, each of which has a unique MPN, in a separate line or do something more connected?  And if it would improve our ranking to connect the different colors of each item, what would be the best way to do that? Finally, if the product type doesn’t exist in the GPS taxonomy, does it do any good to make your own?

A3) The reference to the use of a comma as a delimiter was not intended to refer to the delimiter of the entire feed. We just meant that submiting variant options in a comma separate list in an attribute and/or the description was a good idea if you choose to send parent SKUs in the feed. So if you had a sheet set in five sizes, instead of sending five line items, you could send one line item and include in the "size" attribute "king, queen, twin, full" or whatever sizes are actually available. If you did this, you could also include a comma separated list of MPNs in the mpn attribute (though you only want to send one ID value). The potential move from parents to children or vice versa is a significant change and shouldn't be taken lightly. I don't do a ton of shopping for bedding so I'm not sure how the typical bedding shopper searches.  However, when I search on "blue sheet set" in GPS, almost every item in the first ten results also has the size, even though I did not include the size in the query. This makes me think the size is primary for consumers. Try the same with "king sheet set" and see that most top results do not include color. Doing what competitors do isn't always the best answer but I think it's unlikely you'll rank well on queries with the size only if you also include the color in titles. If you have any data that suggests how bedding customers shop, I would consider that in your decision, but based on this quick test, I would say you definitely don't want to send separate colors with comma separated lists of sizes for sheets. With regard to the product_type attribute values, see question 2.

Q4) Strategy 5 talks about expanding into low risk CSE's and specifically talked about Bing.  Given that Bing shopping is buying a product feed from shopping.com (and we send product to shopping.com) I am wondering how helpful this would be? I would love to get some insight into: (a) how the purchased feed results would rank on Bing vs. a feed sent direct to Bing (if the feeds were basically the same) and if they might cancel each other out (duplicate listing are sometimes eliminated or punished in the rankings) And (b) the economics of the CPC shopping.com feed being sent to Bing vs. the CPA direct to Bing model (in your experience which is really more profitable)

A4) Bing is displaying your shopping.com data because the old MSN Shopping platform, which is no longer visible at shopping.msn.com, is still active behind the scenes. That platform has used data from shopping.com and pricegrabber for a long time and it continues to be used for any merchant not sending data directly to MSN/Bing. They aren’t allowing for duplication – Bing listings appear in lieu of anything coming through the old msn shopping platform (which as I said includes shopping.com and pricegrabber). In terms of rank, the answer can vary depending on whether or not there are other merchants selling the exact same item. If so, your listings sent directly to Bing would likely appear higher than your current shopping.com listings because the default sort on product pages on Bing is price low to high, but (here is the important part), the price displayed is NET of the cashback to the consumer. Look at this page and expand the little plus symbol. You’ll see the actual price is higher than what Bing is displaying, meaning the Bing advertiser is getting a boost by participating in the cashback program. In this case, it didn't have an impact on the rank of that item within the page, but if they increased their cashback offering from 8% to 15%, they would rank first.

For items where there is no direct competition on the product and therefore no matched page, I would guess Bing still gives weight to merchants in the cashback program, but the final ranking is likely heavily determined by the user’s query and some sort of popularity (historical traffic/CTR). This probably applies to how the product pages themselves are ranked in search results as well.

With regard to profitability, I would say the majority of the time, a CPA model is preferred. As mentioned in the webinar, it limits risk, but also because of the nature of the Bing model, it gives you a lever for testing the Bing market specifically. What I mean is, you can try increasing your cashback from 7% to 10% on Bing, effectively lowering the price just for Bing users, and seeing if that drives an increase in volume. Even at a lower margin, the higher volume may mean more total profit.

More to come!

Bing Doubles Cashback for Back to School Shopping

Bing sent notice to at least some merchants (probably all) today indicating that they will be matching all cashback discounts starting August 10. It doesn't specifically say that it ends Aug 31, but it says "during August" so I assume that means it ends on or before the 31st. They will also begin a broad marketing campaign designed to increase traffic to and awareness of Bing Shopping and the cashback program.

If you aren't live on Bing yet, now is a good time to get started.

Google Product Search Webinar next week - how to counter the severe drop in traffic to GPS

In mid-June, Google made some changes that have caused traffic from GPS to plummet 60%+ for merchants in the UK and around 30-40% for those in the USA. 

Due to the flood of inbound calls and queries we've received from retailers who saw their GPS traffic literally drop off a cliff, we've been doing some deep-dive analysis of what's going on and strategies to counter the drop.

We decided that this information is important enough that we wanted to open it up to all retailers so we're hosting a webinar next week - July 23rd @ 2pm ET.  In the webinar, we'll go over the detailed internal and external data of what's going on with GPS and offer 10 strategies to counter the changes Google is making.  Unfortunately, there are no silver bullets, but we hope to arm you with 'silver pellets' that used together can recover most if not all of the losses.

The details and sign-up for the webinar are located here.  There will be a recording for those unable to make it.

Condition Value Displaying on Google Product Search Result and Product Pages

Condition value is displaying both on results pages and product pages for some Google Product Search users. This is not too surprising considering Google recently made the condition attribute a required value.

The condition, or conditions in the case of product pages containing offers of more than one condition, appears next to the product price. In addition, a "New items" check box that filters out non-new products from the result set appears at the top of the results next to the checkout and free shipping check box filters.  On the product pages themselves, a condition column is visible as well as a similar check box filter for new items.

This is great news for consumers in terms of usability. It's frustrating as a consumer to see a great price on a laptop only to click through and find it is not the new computer you were hoping to buy. I think it is likely that older computer and consumer electronics products will start to fall out of high positions, rather than be artificially anchored to the top by traffic from users who don't realize they are clicking on offers are for non-new products.