Google's Commerce Search offers enhanced tools for online retailers and shoppers
Google is beefing up a service that it's been offering for about seven months, adding new features that are intended to give online shoppers an enhanced search experience on retail sites.
Called Google Commerce Search, the 2.0 version is expected to give retailers more control over what's happening on their sites, allowing them to promote certain products or categorize them into different price ranges for refined searches, for example.
In a blog post, Google said the services include a new merchandising dashboard that gives retailers more customization options without needing to code a Web site and offers tools like query autocompletion, allowing potential to quickly find relevant products and hopefully make a sale.
And because the tools are tapping into Google's cloud, the spikes in traffic - say, for a retailer that's offering a big Labor Day sale - are handled by Google. That means not having to worry about additional equipment just to manage temporary traffic jumps.
The company is also adjusting the pricing for Commerce Search, dropping it from $50,000 per year for 100,000 items and 10 million queries to $25,000 for 50,000 items and up to 3 million queries.