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Find Holiday Profits with Revamped Google Product Search By Jennifer Schiff October 20, 2008 Using the service is easy, said Broussard, whose company currently lists over 20,000 items on Product Search. "We just downloaded the feed schematic, built a feed and there it goes." Asked if there was a downside to listing products on Google Product Search, Broussard couldn't think of one. "A, it's free; B, it's Google; and C, it's free," he said. "So any conversion that you may get is going to be a positive ROI (return on your investment), because it's not costing you anything, with the exception of [the time spent on creating] the feed itself. So I can't really think of a downside. The only thing I can say is why haven't you done it already?" Despite the glowing reviews, there are a few things to be mindful of when using Google Product Search. If you are unfamiliar with data feeds, it may take you a little while to get going on Google Product Search. You can't add your own product reviews. Most listings expire within 30 days. And Product Search heavily promotes merchants who use Google Checkout, though it still gives high rankings to plenty of merchants who don't use it. For more information on Google Product Search, how it works and how to submit products, go to this page with information on selling on Google. Google's Tips on Product Search Here are five tips on how to drive more traffic to your site using Product Search. Submit your product data using alternative feed formats. If you've never submitted feeds to Google Product Search, you can start submitting your products by using existing feeds you've prepared for other shopping engines, saving you time and effort. You can take advantage of this option when you register a data feed in your account, when you'll have the opportunity to chose from a drop-down list of feed formats. Include unique product identifiers. Be sure to use product identifiers like MPN, UPC or ISBN in your data feeds to describe your products. Valid product identifiers go a long way in describing the products you're selling — and help shoppers find them more easily. By including product identifiers, you're also providing more information to help Google include your products on Google Product Search product pages (Google's merchant comparison pages) when multiple merchants are selling the same product. Use effective titles. Titles are extremely important in telling shoppers, at a glance, what product you're selling, so be sure to use detailed and descriptive titles for your products. However, don't use really long titles, since Product Search truncates titles to under 70 characters. So keep your titles succinct, descriptive and under 70 characters long. Use the "condition" attribute. Remember to include the "condition" attribute, which allows you to include one of three values to describe your product: new, used or refurbished. Submit your feeds frequently. Keep your feeds and product information current by submitting more frequently to Product Search, up to once per day, to ensure that your items are accurate and relevant to what shoppers are looking for. Jennifer Lonoff Schiff is a regular contributor to Ecommerce-Guide.com and runs a blog for and about small businesses. Do you have a comment or question about this article or other e-commerce topics in general? Speak out in the SmallBusinessComputing.com E-Commerce Forum. Join the discussion today!

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