Google Introduces Retail Search for Ecommerce Sites

A new solution for ecommerce sites provides Google-quality search and recommendations on retailers’ digital properties.

Google Cloud has announced the release of Retail Search, a tool designed to give retailers the capabilities of Google’s search engine on their own domains.

Built with Google’s technologies that understand context and user intent, it is intended to help businesses improve on-site search and overall shopping experience.

Poor User Experiences Cost Online Retailers

A survey conducted by The Harris Polls and Google Cloud found bad online experiences cost U.S. retailers $300 billion each year, with 76% percent of consumers reporting unsuccessful searches caused them to forgo purchases from retail websites.

Conversely, good search experiences have a demonstrated correlation with higher purchase conversion, larger orders and brand loyalty, with 69% of customers reporting purchasing additional items following a successful search experience.

Retail Search hopes to address both sides of this issue, minimize search abandonment, and encouraging sales by improving customer experiences.

Intent And Context Key to Successful Searches

In its ongoing mission of providing users with better search results, Google’s search algorithms are constantly updated to better understand user intent and return relevant results faster. Retail Search applies this principle to the shopping experience.

Google’s state-of-the-art artificial intelligence gives Retail Search advanced query understanding produces better product search results and recommendations, even from broad queries.

Creating Better Customer Experiences

Fully managed and customizable, Retail Search allows organizations to create shopper focused search experiences. Building upon the search engine’s indexing, retrieval and ranking, it seeks to make product discovery easier for shoppers, while optimizing business goals for retailers.

Merchants can apply business rules to fine-tune what customers see, diversify product displays, filter by availability and add custom tags, as they see fit. This allows them to drive desired outcomes for engagement, revenue or conversions.

Capabilities include:

• Advanced Query Understanding – A more accurate understanding of what searchers want produces better results.
• Semantic Search – Effectively matching product attributes with website content creates fast, relevant product discovery.
• Optimized Results – Results leverage user interaction and ranking models to meet specific business goals.
• Advanced Security and Privacy – Strong access controls protect retailer data and ensure it is only used to deliver relevant search results on their own properties.

Retail Search Joins Suite of Product Discovery Solutions

Retail Search is the latest addition to Google Cloud’s Product Discovery Solutions, a collection of tools designed to increase retail operational efficiency, streamline digital shopping experiences, and address shifting consumer preferences.

It is an outgrowth from Google’s internal media teams’ continuous analysis of the retail market and commitment to innovation, as they seek to find new way to help businesses maximize outcomes in a shifting digital landscape.

It joins current Google Cloud offerings Vision Product Search, which uses machine learning-powered object recognition and lookup to provide similar or complementary items from product catalogs and Recommendations AI, which delivers relevant product recommendations to drive engagement across channels.

The entire suite allows ecommerce property owners to integrate data, manage models and monitor performance through a graphical interface. It integrates into existing tools, including Google Analytics 360, Tag Manager and BigQuery.

Read Google Cloud’s blog on Retail Search here.

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