Online retailers interested in being featured on Google Commerce Search are looking at prices beginning at $50 000 a year-- a cost which Google is targeting at the top 1000 online retailers in each country where Google operates.
How does it work? Retailers will have access to Google Merchant Center, where catalog data can be submitted and where it will be crawled by Google. Products will then appear on the Google Product search site: Google Product is similar to sites such as ShopZilla.com.
For shoppers, finding the specific products will be easy: data can be sorted by category, price, brand or any other attribute. Marketing and advertising is also easier for retailers as special attention can be drawn to specific products to draw consumers.
With the holiday season fast approaching, I can see shoppers taking advantage of this tool to find the right gifts... and I can see online retailers making a fortune as more shoppers see the benefit of shopping online. This tool definitely breaks down one of the daunting barriers for newbies to online shopping: the wide array of products out there certainly makes it difficult to find what you're looking for, unless you know the right search terms. Google seems to overcome this barrier by enabling a smarter and more intuitive search query so consumers can more easily find what they're looking for without having to think too hard about what they want.
And, oh, what a beautiful thing that is... the act of not having to think too hard.
Google: you rock.
