Google AdWords Improves Shopping Ads

AdWords customers who run eCommerce sites will soon be able to benefit from Google’s latest update to its AdWords service. If you display shopping adverts, especially product listings, you will be able to enhance your Google PPC ads to help entice more searchers to your site. Let’s take a quick look at what is coming.

Showcase Your Shopping Ads

The new feature allows you to showcase your shopping adverts in a carousel at the top of Google mobile search. This is similar to Google’s Rich Cards update. As far as we know, these ads will only appear on mobile devices and are specifically for websites that provide a flawless mobile experience, so if your website is not currently equipped for mobile sales, you will probably need to update it first.

Currently the new carousel will only be available in the UK, US and Australia. Google has provided an example of how the new feature will look:

New Adwords shopping results

Why The Change?

Google reported that over 40% of all shopping searches are for general and broad terms, such as “women’s athletic clothing” or “living room furniture.” In the past, businesses would usually just create an advert for their homepage or a category page, but soon it will be possible to display a range of  “women’s athletic clothing”, such as trainers, jogging pants, cycle shorts and sports underwear.

This will increase the likelihood of a searcher finding what they want within the Google search results, which means when they do click through to a website, they should be far more interested in the product. This should actually help to increase the number of click-throughs and conversions, which has the potential to greatly increase sales for companies that are quick to implement the required changes to get this service running. It should also reduce advertising spend.

Related:   Google Rolls Out Panda 4.0 Algorithm Update

While it does seem like Google is trying to keep searchers on its own site for longer, this is certainly a positive move, and one that should benefit many eCommerce companies. However, it may be difficult for smaller retailers to compete with large online stores such as Asos, Amazon and Argos, who will all no doubt be building their new AdWords carousel as we speak.

If you are interested in implementing the new shopping carousel, call our Essex PPC managers today.

Read more: Our Top 10 PPC Tips »