A LEADING DIGITAL marketing agency has welcomed the announcement ‘Google shopping will be free’ and they are urging new and existing businesses to take advantage as retailers struggle in the wake of Covid 19.
CEEK Marketing, which has offices in London, Brighton, and New York and lots of clients in the North West, specialise in all aspects of digital marketing including social media and SEO, say existing businesses and those looking to diversify, in light of the restriction on which physical shops and restaurants can open – will benefit significantly from it.
Google has announced merchants will essentially be able to sell and advertise for free. Google shopping is a Google service which is integrated into the Google search engine platform. When Google first launched in 2002 it was called “Froogle” and was simply a service which indexed product data-based search terms.
Google shopping has now been around for nearly two decades and during that time has evolved into its own alternative to e-commerce platforms such as Amazon. Google Shopping allows customers to search for a product and compare different products from different brands at one time.
But CEEK highlights that since 2012 Google Shopping had become a more price focused platform and required companies and sellers to pay to have their products listed on the comparison platform and consequently, many companies opted instead to simply run Google Ads or list on Amazon.
Charlie Terry, CEO and founder of CEEK Marketing said: “Beginning next week, search results on the Google Shopping tab will consist primarily of free listings, helping merchants better connect with consumers, regardless of whether they advertise on Google or not.
“With hundreds of millions of shopping searches on Google each day, especially with people in lockdown, we know many retailers have the items people need in stock and ready to ship, but it is hard for people to find them online – and this can be even harder for a new business or one moving into online sales.”
New users can now apply to place free listings through Google’s Merchant which will automatically appear on users search engines when looking to purchase goods online. Existing customers will now be able to list their full inventories in the event they were only paying to promote some products on the platform.
These changes will take effect in the U.S. this week and will expand globally in the coming months – which should help businesses looking to diversify or change the way they sell.
Google has also launched a new partnership with PayPal to allow merchants to link their accounts to the platform. This will speed up our onboarding process for new merchants making it easier for existing businesses to sell their products online.
Charlie said: “Throughout the last few weeks we have heard of businesses who have had stock of items which are currently in high demand, both essential and otherwise, but who have not been discoverable online or had the means to easily distribute them to those that want them – this announcement should help to change that.”
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