14 DAY TRIAL // Google has updated its Commerce Search tool, which enables online retailers to improve their site search, and has added quite a lot of new features and tools only available on its own site until now, like Instant Search and product availability.
Google is boasting the effectiveness of its product, most likely for good reason, and, with the new capabilities, Google Commerce Search 3.0 should be quite a useful tool, if you can afford it.
"Today we’re building on the capabilities that have proved useful to our retail partners with the third-generation Google Commerce Search (GCS)," Tianyu Wen, a Google Software Engineer working on Commerce Search, announced.
"With this new version, we hope to help create an even more interactive and engaging experience for shoppers and retailers," he added.
One of the most noticeable new feature in Commerce Search is support of Instant Search or as Google calls it here, Search as You Type. Essentially, it enables websites to serve results as soon as users start writing their query.
This should prove quite useful in product searches since users will be able to easily adjust their queries until they find what they want without having to do several queries or reload the search page.
Local Product Availability is one feature in Commerce Search 3.0 coming straight out of Google's Product Search. As the name implies, it enables users to check to see if a product they're looking for is available in a real world shop near them. Considering that there should be direct access to the store's inventory data, the feature should work a lot better with integrated search.
There are also better tools to customize the search and lead the users to sections of the site they may be interested in, based on their searches. Finally, there are now Product Recommendations, in Labs, which looks at what others bought to make suggestions.
The latest version of Commerce Search is now available to everyone, but you still have to be a rather large site for it to make sense. Prices start at $25,000 per year for 3 million searches and 50,000 items indexed.