Google launches the free Google Shopping service in Italy. Already in April of this year it was announced by Bill Ready on the official Google blog. Now comes the confirmation and the launch date of the service: from mid-October 2020 Google Shopping ads will become free for all sellers who want to benefit from them.

Matt Brittin reports it on the blog Google Italy Blog, explaining that too often online supply and demand fail to meet, creating dissatisfaction in users and lost revenue for merchants.

Formerly known as Google Product Search, Google Shopping allows you to search, compare and finally buy items on the web at the best price. It allows you to appear in the Google search results of potential customers, offering excellent visibility.

In this historical period, online commerce represents an important slice of turnover for many small and medium-sized enterprises, and with this free service Google wants to give more space to commercial realities that cannot invest on a large scale in online sponsorship.

Soon we will find a Google Shopping showcase much richer in free listings, which will allow users to have more choice for purchases and retailers to obtain greater visibility without costly investments in advertising. Google chooses a strategic period to kick off the new service, taking advantage of the upcoming holidays and the substantial increase in online purchases.

Benefits for sellers

All sellers will be able to obtain benefits from the Google Shopping window, even those who are already using the service with Google Ads, as users, finding more products, will be more inclined to use the "Shopping" tab. Google wants to use with Google Shopping the same strategy already used with traditional search: to be an impartial tool, and to this add (in all transparency) the display of sponsored products.

The results obtained in the United States bode well: in fact, we are talking about sellers who have doubled their ad views and site visits. In fact, it seems that for users who already used the service in combination with Google Ads, they obtained really satisfying results, based on the analysis presented by Matt Brittin himself in his post.

Google is able to recognize when a user's search is directed to the purchase of a product. Taking advantage of this capability, the search engine shows bundles directly among the search results, which can be found at the top or right of the page, with a series of articles related to research that can be purchased from various platforms on the web.

Ads consist of photos, product title, e-commerce name and price. Google Shopping therefore allows you to check the prices on the web for the same item, and to buy it at the most convenient price. You can easily filter the results by price, new or used item and by resellers. By going into the details of each item, you have access to a detailed sheet, with the comparison of prices for each retailer.

Retailers who do not use Google Ads will only have to sign up for the Google Merchant Center, a free platform that allows you to create a web-optimized product feed. Brittin's post, however, specifies that Google will continue to roll out the free service, making joining even easier and more immediate.

By registering with the Merchant Center, you will also have access to a series of ad performance reports.

Consumers will therefore have a potentially infinite series of advertisements from different shops, all with a single search. This will give users more freedom of choice, as well as a better shopping experience.

Google Shopping integration with bindCommerce

With version 2.2 bindCommerce inaugurated the integration with Google Shopping. The integration allows you to generate a product feed and send it to the Google Shopping platform in a simple and fast way, increasing the visibility of your store and generating more visits and views.

The brand new integration with Google Shopping will therefore allow all bindCommerce customers who wish to take advantage of the free listings on the search engine, integrating their catalog or part of it, thanks to a simple configuration.

The Google Shopping integration is included in the "price comparators" option, which can be activated as an additional option on any bindCommerce subscription, and allows the generation of feeds to any price comparator of interest to the seller.

Comparators already available can be used immediately, while those not yet available will be activated (included in the option price) following an explicit written request.

For more information on activating the service, contact the bindCommerce team.