The holiday season is upon us, at least as far as retailers are concerned, and everyone is gearing up for the sales bonanza that precedes it. Google is launching an improved Product Search for the very same reason, it wants to be ready for the holiday shopping.
"The line between online and offline shopping is starting to blur: According to a study by Forrester while 93 percent of retail purchases today happen in a store, more than 46 percent of those in-store purchases are influenced by online research," Sameer Samat, Director of Product Management at Google, wrote.
"All of this got our team thinking about how we could help further bridge the gap between online and offline shopping. This week, we’re introducing several new features to Product Search that start doing just that," he announced.
One very interesting new feature is local availability information in Product Search. Essentially, it enables would-be shoppers to see if the products they're looking for are available at any of the local stores.
Google has partnered with over 70 retailers in the US for this. Doing a search for any product will provide information about where you can get it online, but also where it's available nearby, based on your location.
A couple of other new features allow users to hone in on the product they want even if they're not exactly sure which model to buy. Popular Products, as the name implies, displays models that others are interested in at that time.
"Aisles" on the other hand groups similar products to make it easier to compare them. You can also narrow the selection to include the models that have a certain characteristic.
Google has also introduced an update to its mobile shopping app, Shopper 1.3. The new version comes with a couple of new filter to narrow down your searches and also integrates the 'local availability' feature.
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