4 Reasons Why Google Shopping Dominates Comparison Shopping

Google Shopping is providing merchants with new record sales and a great ROI. Google moved from free Product Search to a cost-per-click model last year, like most Comparison Shopping Engines (CSEs) did long before. Why is Google Shopping getting merchants more bang for their buck? There are 4 reasons why web shop owners are often better off with Google Shopping than with other Comparison Shopping Engines:

1. Better Results

Google Shopping gets better CTRs and Conversion rates, lower CPCs and subsequently a much better ROI. Various research documents (e.g., from Marin, RKG or CPC Strategy) consistently show that Google’s Product Listing Ads not only outperform Google’s text ads, but also have a better ROI than all other Comparison Shopping channels.

2. Product Ads on Google’s Result Page

When you advertise on Google Shopping, your Product Listing Ads (PLAs) will also show on Google’s Search Engine Result Page (SERP). This is immensely powerful. Most people start their search for a product on Google; if they see a picture of the product that they are looking for, they are very likely to click the ad and buy the product. Ironically, other Comparison Shopping channels will have to advertise on Google to get their share of traffic.

3. Sophisticated bidding tools

AdWords offers almost unlimited possibilities to refine your bids. You can bid on product types or brands, but you can also take a more granular approach, where you add more conditions for each bid. AdWords Labels enables you to make separate bids for certain sub-types or colors or sizes or anything that is in your product feed.

With AdWords Grouping you can create price-categories to your product targets so that your bids are always in line with your price: you don’t want to bid $0.25 for a $2 product and you may want to bid more for the products that are over $100. You an even make a different bid for each product. So if you are determined to optimize your campaign on Google Shopping, all the tools are there.

4. Abundant Performance Data

You need to know how your products are performing. You need to know which products are getting traffic, which are actually being sold and what your cost per sale is. Then you can really optimize your campaign: exclude the bad performers (products that get clicks but no sales, products where the cpa exceeds the gross margin, etc.) and raise the bids for your winners. Google offers a lot of data in AdWords and in Analytics. If you add the e-Commerce module in Google Analytics and a little tracking code to your product URLs, you have the best possible dashboard to maximize your profits.

Is Google Shopping always the best channel? No. It is different for each merchant. Some products do better on Google while others perform well on certain Comparison Shopping Engines. Most merchants have a limited budget, so it is best to calculate ROI per product (-type) per channel and compile an intelligent multi-channel mix. Google Shopping is likely to play a big role in that mix.