Google delivers search tool for online stores

Google has launched Commerce Search, a hosted search engine service for online retailers.

The service, announced in a Google blog on Wednesday, allows e-commerce sites to customise the look and feel of the search engine and includes features such as a built-in synonym and spell checker, so that it can suggest products even if a shopper does not type in exactly the right name.

In addition, it provides retailers with e-commerce specific features, such as the power to showcase product promotions and to control the order in which goods appear on the search results. It also offers a parametric search by product category, price, price range, brand, or any other attribute that the business chooses.

"Retailers don't want to focus on technology, they want to focus on their brand and their customer loyalty," Nitin Mangtani, lead product manager for Google Enterprise Search Products, said. "We felt at Google that we had an opportunity to provide the technology to the retailers to help them improve their ecommerce search experience."

Online stores can also link Google Commerce Search to Google Analytics to track the amount of sales and monitor user behaviour and site effectiveness.

The service is fully hosted in Google's datacentre and cloud. "Using a cloud search tool will also help site owners meet the rise in demand from the holiday rush without having to devote extra time or resources to worrying about their capacity or infrastructure," Google said in its blog.

Prices for Google Commerce Search will start from $50,000 (£30,000) per year, determined by the number of products in the retailer's database and the number of search queries entered on their site each year.