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Google Makes Push To Turn Product Searches Into Cash (reuters.com)
Reuters reports of how Google is working to turn product searches into cash by partnering with some of the largest retailers in the United States: Under a new program, retailers can list their products on Google Search, as well as on the Google Express shopping service, and Google Assistant on mobile phones and voice devices. In exchange for Google listings and linking to retailer loyalty programs, the retailers pay Google a piece of each purchase, which is different from payments that retailers make to place ads on Google platforms. The listings will appear under sponsored shopping results and will not affect regular search results on Google, the company said. Google's pitch to retailers is a better chance to influence shoppers' purchasing decisions, a move that is likely to help them compete with rival Amazon. Google hopes the program helps retailers capture more purchases on desktop, cell phones and smart home devices with voice search -- the next frontier for e-commerce. The previously unreported initiative sprang from Google's observation that tens of millions of consumers were sending image searches of products, asking "Where can I buy this?" "Where can I find it?" "How can I buy it?" "How do I transact?" Daniel Alegre, Google's president for retail and shopping, told Reuters exclusively.
Sponsored = spam
which means I ignore it and the company pushing it
I certainly never buy stuff based on the first advert I see, I search and see who has the best price, and I use Bing, DuckDuckGo to make sure I get the best price.
Amazon could be dominating (more than they already are), except their search sucks. It's a large part of the reason I still buy most of my computer components from Newegg. Newegg has really useful and easy to use topical include/exclude options for pretty much every search I do, and it's easy to narrow down the results list to a handful of products which are exactly what I want. Amazon's searches seem to be fuzzy - even the include/exclude options seem to be polluted by vendors misrepresenting their products. Their "best match" algorithm seems to work best, except you can't sort it by ratings. If you try, you end up with a bunch of products which are seemingly only vaguely related to your search at the top of the list, or only have 1-2 ratings which are probably paid for. You often have to drill down 3-5 pages before you find a highly-rated product that you're actually searching for.
A lot of times I actually find it quicker to search for a product on Google, then follow the Amazon link in the search results. I mean I do that too for other sites (e.g. Best Buy, Staples) because they're intolerably slow. But I do it for Amazon simply because their search engine plain sucks. I'm pretty sure it all stems from Amazon trying to satisfy both sides - buyers and sellers. Buyers want highly-rated products that lots of other users have bought and reviewed. Sellers want to be able to break into a market with a new product. So Amazon feels compelled to return search results with few reviews even if that's not what customers want - to encourage more customers to try out new products instead of sticking with the safe choice. The problem is, many product markets are flooded with hundreds of cheap Chinese knockoffs of dubious quality, and Amazon's search engine makes it nigh impossible to filter them out except via the "best match" algorithm which often doesn't return the highest-rated products.
If Google's offering concentrates on meeting the needs of the buyer, rather than the seller, I could see it becoming very successful.