Pay-to-Play: Google’s Free Ride is Over

Come Oct. 1, Google Product Search will officially become Google Shopping. And since Google Shopping is going to be a commercial shopping portal, based on its Google Product Listings platform, merchants are going to have to pay to be a part of it.

Why is Google doing this? It said in a company blog post that Google’s having a commercial relationship with merchants will encourage them to keep their product information fresh and up to date.

Whatever Google’s motivation, the fourth quarter is make-or-break for business-to-consumer merchants, so you’re going to have to get serious about Google Product Search and Product Listing Ads (PLAs).

What percentage of your traffic comes to your site by way of Google, either as the result of search engine optimization or search engine management?

Since Google is the search engine giant, chances are it is a very large driver of your traffic and sales. And that is not traffic you’d want to lose as you enter the holiday season.

Providing Google with quality data—accurate prices, the latest offers and product availability—will produce better shopping results for the end-users. And that result should create better traffic for you.

If you haven’t started your transition to Google Shopping yet, you need to get cracking. And even if you have gotten to work on Google Shopping, the following articles should help keep you moving in the right direction.

More on Google Shopping