Bangalore: Google has launched Commerce Search, a hosted enterprise
search product for the online retail stores and e-commerce websites,
reports TechCrunch.
The search giant offers a general hosted search product that is used by
organizations who want to add customized Google search function on
their websites. Google is now entering the vertical space, by the first
enterprise product with retail optimized space.
Among the key components, Google promises "ultra-fast speed and
accuracy" by putting Google's search technology to provide a fast
response time to customer searches on retail sites. Commerce Search
also uses a proprietary ranking technology to analyze the products in
each data feed and serve the most relevant match. According to Google,
the faster search speed will help increase conversions to buy products,
as customers can quickly find specific products without having to
navigate complex search interfaces.
The Google Commerce offers features such as parametric search, sorting
of results, spell checker, stemming, and synonym suggestion, which let
users to refine and target their searches.
The search uses several proprietary signals to determine the ranking of
search result. Commerce Search also offers a compelling product
promotions feature, which allows the retailers to fine-tune search
results to push promoted products to the top of results. The interface
allows for retailers to specifically label products as promoted.
Nitin Mangtani, Lead Product Manager, Google Enterprise Search said,
"Google Commerce Search API allows retailers to fully customize the
search experience on their website and add all the bells and whistles
they need to make the interface match the rest of their site. And,
retailers using Commerce Search don't need to show the Google logo on
the search site."
As the product is hosted by Google and based in the cloud, the company
says it's easily scalable to absorb additional traction on the site.
For example, during the holiday season, retailers will most probably
experience high traffic on search. Google will ensure that retailers
can manage the boost in traffic and scale the search application.
Google promises integration with other Google products such as Google
Analytics and Google Product Search. The retailers can measure clicks,
conversion rates, number of transactions, average order value and other
data through Google Analytics. The e-commerce vendors can provide a
single feed of products and catalogue items that will power Commerce
and indexing of products on Google Product Search.
The search giant did not provide any information on pricing, but a
spokeswoman stated that the product will start at $50,000 per year.
Beyond that, pricing will be based on the number of products in the
customer's database and the number of search queries made on their site
each year.
With the product, Google is making an aggressive move in the retail
space. Google Product has not really taken off, but Commerce is
expected to affect the use of Google Product.