Google Shopping will let everyone to list their products for free
Google is making a significant change to its Google Shopping platform by allowing any business owner selling products online to list their inventory for free. Normally, an e-commerce business has to pay to place ads on Google Shopping. But the company says it will now allow anyone who runs a website or manages a business on a marketplace platform to list their products without paying. Google still plans to pay businesses for top placement in the form of Promoted Listings.
"We are finding that there are many, many retailers and small businesses that are ready to serve customers but do not yet have a way to engage with them digitally," Bill Ready, Google's president of commerce, told The Verge. "We believe this will not only help more customers find what they are looking for, but also provide much-needed relief to retailers and small businesses.
GOOGLE SHOPPING HAS NOT LET YOU LIST FOR FREE SINCE 2012
Ready says Google has been working on these changes for some time, but the ongoing coronavirus pandemic is pushing the company to accelerate those plans. The new free option for Google Shopping goes into effect in the U.S. on April 27 and will be rolled out to Google Shopping worldwide over the next few months, according to Ready.
Existing customers will now be able to list their entire inventory if they previously only paid to advertise some products on the platform. New users can now sign up for free through Google Merchant Center to place listings.
As part of this effort, Google is working with PayPal to get more merchants on the platform faster by allowing them to link their existing accounts to accept online payments. Google is also working with e-commerce inventory management companies like Shopify to ensure that businesses that operate primarily through their own websites can quickly move to selling on Google Shopping.
Google Shopping is an integrated part of the company's search engine and has been around for nearly two decades. In that time, it has become an alternative to the usual e-commerce giants like Amazon and the websites of traditional retailers like Best Buy and Walmart, allowing retailers to list their direct website links and let customers search for individual products and compare prices.
But since 2012, retailers have had to pay to list products on Google Shopping, which has led to fewer businesses opting for the platform instead of simply running standard ads on Google Search or using other third-party seller services such as Amazon Marketplace and eBay. The Google Shopping platform was also at the center of a historic €2.4 billion fine imposed by the European Union in 2017 for favoring Google Shopping links in search results over competing price comparison services.
Today's announcement, however, should make Google Shopping more accessible at a time when businesses around the world are being forced to close their brick-and-mortar stores and do everything online. According to the Commerce Department, total U.S. sales, which include online and offline retail and food and beverage spending, fell 8.7 percent in March. That's the steepest decline in the nearly 30 years the federal government has tracked the metric, The New York Times reported last week.
Much of that is due to store closures mandated by local governments that limit personal shopping and spending. But it's also because some retailers have not yet been able to fully transition to online sales, while crucial shortages in certain product categories mean certain items are constantly out of stock at major retailers.
Ready says the Google Shopping switch will not help with product shortages and systemic supply and demand issues. But it could mean that smaller businesses with inventory that was previously unavailable could soon show up in search results, and it could be a lifeline for small businesses struggling to stay afloat while protective orders remain in effect.
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