Happy 1st birthday Google Commerce Search!

It’s Google Commerce Search’s first birthday and we are celebrating it with Jack Kiefer, CEO of BabyAge.com, one of the top 500 online retailers in North America. Since implementing Google Commerce Search, BabyAge.com has seen searches rise 58% and search page views grow 64%, contributing to a 34% increase in sales conversions. You can read about Jack’s experience in this case study or watch this video to hear more:



Google Commerce Search (GCS) is Google’s core search technology tailored for retailers. It’s an e-commerce search solution that’s hosted in the cloud, meaning you don’t need to install any hardware or software. It also uses the exact same product feed that many retailers already submit to Google Products – so most of the work associated with the typical e-commerce search implementation is already complete. Finally, GCS provides extensive administrative controls to customize search results and navigation so that they are just right for your website.

Since our debut last November we’ve expanded geographically – we now offer GCS in the United Kingdom, Australia, France, Germany and Japan – and have added many new features like query auto-completions and a merchandising dashboard. Needless to say we’ve grown quite a bit in a year!

Just as we’ve progressed in our first year, the Google Commerce Search team strives to continue to improve online shopping and we need your help! Share your best and worst experiences from Cyber Monday, and we’ll publish select submissions in a few weeks. If you’re one of the first 50 respondents we’ll send you a Google sticker as a “thank you” gift.

Posted by Guillaume De Zwirek, Associate Product Marketing Manager, Google Enterprise Search

Google Site Search is polishing its pricing structure

A good product is like your favorite pair of shoes – it sees quite a bit of use, takes a few scuffs, and sooner or later is due for a shine. Google Site Search is used by thousands of companies across the globe, and based on product use, customer feedback, and a general desire to make things easier, we recently decided that we’re due for our polishing. So we’re shining Site Search up by simplifying the way we charge for our service.

To date, we’ve charged for Google Site Search based on both the number of submitted search queries and the number of pages indexed. We noticed that many of our users had a difficult time estimating the number of pages included in the scope of their search engine, so we are introducing a new pricing system that factors only the quantity of submitted queries your Google Site Search engine receives each year. Now our pricing is much simpler and scales to accommodate the size of your business. The vast majority of our users will be unaffected and many will even begin paying less when the new prices take effect upon their annual renewal.

Please note: This pricing change applies to all new
subscriptions and renewals as of November 12, 2010.

And to give your website a little extra shine, we are now doubling our on-demand indexing quota for all subscription plans, so new web pages added to your site will be quickly indexed and made searchable. So get out that elbow grease and join us in improving search on your website!

For more information on pricing, please visit the Google Site Search website and Help Center articles.

Posted by Guillaume De Zwirek and Clay Maffett, Google Site Search team

Treat your site search to some customization this Halloween

If you’ve been to a grocery store or even switched on your television this week, you may have noticed that Halloween is here – a telltale sign that the holiday season is approaching. And since holidays mean more shopping, here at Google our Commerce Search team has been working very hard to help get your retail websites ready for the business boom.

For most retail businesses the holiday season can be the busiest time of the year, and we want to help you get excited about it. We’ve been listening to your feedback and noticed that many of you desire a greater ability to customize your site search so that it’s exactly the way you want it. Today we are pleased announce that we are giving you your holiday gift early, and in the form of three new customization features.

1. Control over auto-completions. Query auto-completion leverages the machine learning of Google to automatically provide a relevant list of suggestions every time a user types a search query on your site. While this eliminates the need for manual entry of query suggestions, many of you still wanted administrative control.

With this feature, users can now control their auto-completions. Let’s say you are an online candy reseller and typing “ch” triggers “cherry cough drops” and not “chocolate covered almonds,” your most popular treat.


You can add “cherry cough drops” to your list of exclusions and “chocolate covered almonds” to your list of inclusions to display the auto-completions you prefer. For more extensive customization, you can even upload inclusions and exclusions in bulk, so you don’t have to enter the query customizations line by line.


2. Easier Facets. We have made it easier to build navigation features by auto-populating the options based on what we know about your specified attribute. So, if you want to build a facet around “shirts,” options for price, color, size, and any of your own particulars will be listed automatically. This makes it simple to customize search results.

3. Improved Documentation. Now you can find information about how to customize your search with improved documentation and code samples. These can be found at the GCS code page.

These new features can be activated today by visiting your GCS control panel, and we hope that while you’re eating Halloween treats you’ll utilize them to prepare your e-commerce site for the holiday rush. If you are new to Google Commerce Search, visit google.com/commercesearch for more information or to sign-up now.

Posted by Andy Herrman, Software Engineer and Salmaan Rashid, Senior Technical Solutions Engineer

Speed check: Visit us at Shop.org to test your e-commerce site

Did you know that a user spends an average of just eight seconds on a website before deciding whether to stick around (Marketing Sherpa)? If you’re an e-commerce site, this means you have to be faster than Usain Bolt - the world record-holder for the 100m dash.

Next week, find out how Google can help you capitalize on those eight seconds and improve your online shopping experience. Visit the Google Commerce Search team at Shop.org’s Annual Summit, held in Dallas, Texas from September 27 - 29.

If your organization plans to attend the show, be sure to visit Google in Booth #120 and attend the Big Ideas session Wednesday at 12:45 PM featuring Nitin Mangtani of Google Enterprise, who will be speaking about search insights for today’s e-commerce technology.

The Google Commerce Search team will be joined by Product Search, AdWords, and the Google Affiliate Network. We can’t wait to show you the many different ways we can help your business.

Posted by Guillaume De Zwirek, Google Commerce Search team

DLT Solutions practices what they preach by installing the Google Search Appliance in minutes

Editor's Note: We're pleased to welcome Jim Helou, Vice President of the Google division at DLT Solutions, a Google Enterprise Partner. Jim and his team provide leading enterprise solutions, such as the Google Search Appliance, to the Public Sector.

The DLT team understands the principle of service and works with their Public Sector customers to determine the best product fit, necessary services & training, post-implementation support and procurement options to fulfill their mission.

"Practice what you preach." We’ve all heard that saying, right? At DLT Solutions, we’re a modern day example of the age-old adage. DLT Solutions, a value-added reseller of information technology products to federal, state and local government, recently partnered with Google to bring their innovative products to the public sector marketplace. Among Google’s business solutions is the Google Search Appliance 6.0. We at DLT figured what better way to preach the gospel of Google than to be users ourselves.

DLT Solutions recently installed the Google Search Appliance (GSA) for searching the DLT intranet. We chronicled the installation of the Search Appliance 6.0 by two DLT Web developers at our headquarters outside of Washington D.C in a two-part real time video, now available to view at www.DLT.com/GSA.

(That's Part One, above; you can also view the Part Two on the DLT YouTube channel.)

The video is a timed demonstration of how fast and easy Google’s latest version of the Search Appliance is to install. In less than 20 minutes we had taken the Google Search Appliance out of the box, installed, and configured the Search Appliance for our intranet file search. Your own deployment time may take longer depending on how many data sources you're searching and how many files you need to crawl. The point, however, is just how easy it is – one server, two network cables, and a power cord. No army of consultants necessary.

Looking back, search results in the pre-GSA days were…sloppy. Nowadays, with the GSA, the customizable search criteria makes for a more personal internal search experience. Employees can find the information they need faster allowing them to focus on more mission-critical tasks.

DLT uses Google’s search solution for not only our intranet, but also our public website. The Search Appliance’s relevant search results in the recognizable Google format has allowed our government users to get the information they need while increasing the number of qualified prospects for DLT.

We confidently tell our customers how easy the Google Search Appliance is to install and use. We know. We’ve done it.

Posted by Dan Israel, Product Marketing Manager, Google Enterprise

Zero-result queries: finding them, fixing them

From building and improving search on Google.com, my fellow engineers and I have learned a lot about how people search and why factors such as stemming, spelling, and synonyms are so important, even in the context of our business tools.

One of our first and most important observations was that returning zero results for a search query is one of the fastest ways to frustrate visitors – and lose potential customers. Shoppers who have made it to your site and searched for a product or category have expressed clear interest in buying from you, and returning no results is akin to accidentally forgetting to turn around the "Closed" sign on your storefront door in the morning!

Fortunately, retailers do have tools available to avoid this pitfall: automatic stemming, spell-checker, and synonym dictionaries can help ensure that customers find related or similar products on your site, even if they don't type in the exact product name or description text.

Like Google.com, Google Commerce Search has always arrived "out of the box" with the best automatic stemming, spelling, and synonym technology available. Starting today, it's become even easier for retailers with unusual or distinct product catalogs to upload and manage custom synonym dictionaries.

Now retailers who choose to enable advanced synonym options can simply add sets of synonyms specific to their product lines and can also trigger search expansion, so that the query as typed automatically triggers results for synonymous products.

Google already has a large body of synonym data for general search terms, and since Google Commerce Search lets you harness many of the search features of Google.com, you shouldn't bother replicating the work. Instead, focus on adding synonyms for queries specific to your product line or online store.

It's easy for search engine administrators to add synonyms to their accounts. Simply log into the control panel and add or delete search terms you want to trigger the synonym expansion. Or, if you have a large number of terms to add, you can create an XML file and quickly upload that to your account.

We hope you'll join us on our quest to end unnecessary zero result queries!

Posted by Tianyu Wen, Software Engineer

"Search" for us at SES New York!

If your company runs a website, you already know the importance of search engine marketing and optimization. But are you confident that your website is providing the very best user experience possible? If you haven't added or improved your search function yet, you could be missing out on conversions, sales, and repeat visits.

Next week, we're hitting the road to help spread the message about Google Commerce Search and Google Site Search. Visit us at Search Engine Strategies New York, held March 22 to 26th at the Hilton New York. Stop by the Google booth (#1007) to ask questions and learn how to bring visitors to your site, optimize their experience, and convert them into loyal customers.

On Thursday, don't miss our lunch session on Increasing Conversions with Google Site Search Solutions. Nitin Mangtani, Senior Product Manager on Google Enterprise, will explain how improving your site's search engine – whether you run an e-commerce or any other type of site – is key to stretching your SEM dollars and converting each and every visitor.

We'll have a few fun Google schwag giveaways too, so we hope that you'll join us. All conference registrants are welcome and no additional sign-up is needed.

Hope to see you next week in the Big Apple!

Posted by Anna Bishop, Google Enterprise Search team

How search can add real ROI to eCommerce websites

Although it "makes sense" that good search can increase website ROI, especially for eCommerce websites, it's important to back that intuition with quantifiable data supporting the value of online research search. Thanks to recent research from Market Strategy Group, the evidence is in.

Market Strategy Group's new white paper, titled "Search for Revenue: Leveraging Powerful Search to Boost eTail Sales" shares a range of data indicating how adding or improving search capability on eTail sites can significantly raise revenues. The study covers why site search is more important today than ever before, and delves into the potential ROI companies can achieve by having advanced search on their eCommerce sites.

We're sharing firsthand perspecitves on that value in an upcoming webinar hosted by eCommerce specialists MultiChannel Merchant:

Search: adding real ROI to eCommerce websites
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
1:00 p.m. EST / 10:00 a.m. PST

During this hour-long webinar, you'll hear from:

• Leslie Bacon, Group Publisher at Penton Marketing Media Group, delivering insights on the online channel and how Multichannel Merchant is addressing the shift towards online sales
• Joyce Wu, Partner at Market Strategy Group, covering their recent white paper, Search for Revenue: Leveraging Powerful Search to Boost eTail Sales
• Vijay Koduri, Product Marketing Manager at Google Enterprise, discussing how Google Commerce Search addresses the problems of e-commerce site search speed and relevancy

All three speakers will answer audience questions as part of this event.

Register here. We hope you'll join us to get the facts on how effective search boosts results for online retailers.

Posted by Ashley Gorringe, Enterprise Search team

Looking "under the hood" of Google Commerce Search: a technical webinar for agencies and partners

How can e-retailers surface product information and a vast number of product attributes for shoppers without sacrificing speed or relevance? In November, Google's enterprise search team launched a new website search option designed specifically for online retailers: Google Commerce Search. Since then, we've heard from many agencies, partners, and solution providers who wanted to learn more about the development and technical features of the product, because website search can present unique issues for online retailers.

If you're looking to dive a bit deeper into the technical side of Google Commerce Search, join us for a behind-the-scenes look in an interactive webinar in which Google's search product managers and engineers will review how Google Commerce Search works, address implementation and administrative questions, and discuss key product capabilities.

Google Commerce Search "Under the Hood"
Monday, February 1, 2010
1:00 p.m. EST / 10:00 a.m. PST

This webinar will include a question and answer session. We hope you'll join us for this informative online event.

Posted by Anna Bishop, Google Enterprise Search team

"Check out" Google Commerce Search at NRF's BIG Show

The holidays may still be wrapping up, but retailers around the globe are already thinking about the coming year. While final numbers for the 2009 holiday season are being tallied, early estimates suggest growth in e-commerce sales, which grew 15.5% over the 2008 holiday season – quite a contrast compared to 3.6% growth for the overall retail industry (see MasterCard Advisors Spending Pulse, reported in Wall Street Journal, December 28, 2009).

Here at Google, we're looking closely at how Google Commerce Search, our recently-launched retail-specific website search service, can help online retailers use search to improve the online shopping experience.

Next week, visit Google Enterprise at the National Retail Federation's BIG Show, held in New York, New York from January 10 – 13. If your organization plans to attend the show, be sure to visit Google in Booth #365, and in the adjacent Cyber Lounge, to learn how tools such as Google Commerce Search, the Local Business Center, and the Google Maps API can help you build a strong 2010.

Posted by Anna Bishop, Google Enterprise Search team

Search Appliance gets real-time: Twitter feeds now available on the GSA

Real-time information is becoming an increasingly important part of searching online – both for business and consumer search users. Yesterday we announced the launch of real-time results on Google.com, and today we're announcing that the Google Search Appliance (GSA) can show users tweets from Twitter next to their internal Search Appliance results.

Social information is important for businesses: employees searching for information needed to do their jobs benefit from real-time news too. They might be developing a new breakfast cereal, or designing a marketing plan for a clothing line, or writing strategy report for a political campaign. In all of these cases, understanding what is being said just as Twitter users are saying it can be invaluable.

Google’s focus is to provide the most relevant search results to users. In the case of the GSA, this means accessing information from multiple sources, aka universal search. To this end, we already offer a feature called Related Web Results, which allows employees to view results from Google.com alongside corporate search results.

Customers have told us that placing web results next to intranet ones often allows employees to think differently about a particular topic and approach it in new ways. By integrating enterprise search with more of the information that exists in the cloud, like tweets, employees can more easily leverage the wisdom of the crowd.

To turn the Twitter box on in GSA results, follow the instructions provided here. It should take no more than 15 minutes to get up and running. It can be enabled for only some users, all users, or set up so users can choose themselves whether they want to see the Twitter results by using a keyword trigger (like 'twitter'). Integration info and how-tos for this feature can be found here, and happy realtime reading.

Posted by Cyrus Mistry, Product Manager, Google Enterprise Search

Search in Google Docs gets more personalized with new relevance, stemming, and synonyms

Finding your business information within Google Docs should be as easy as finding information on google.com. To meet that goal, over the next few days, we will be enabling new search features in Google Docs that provides better relevancy as well support for stemming and synonyms.

Sort by relevance. The first change is the addition of relevance ranking in Docs search results. Until now, when you searched for a document, spreadsheet, or presentation, results were sorted by "last modified" date.

Now, search in Google Docs will look at various "signals", including whether you've authored a document, whether they've been explicitly shared with you, and other factors to present the most relevant items at the top of your results list. This personalization improves search across shared files, and each user gets the results that are most relevant for them.

Adding to this personalized approach, we've also added a new menu on the right side of the toolbar to let you view, and fine-tune, your search results by "Relevance," "Starred," or "Last Modified" results.

Stemming and synonyms. Search in Google Docs now also includes automatic stemming and synonyms, so that your results are good even if your typing is off. If you search for "meeting note," results will include a few variations of those words, including "meeting notes" (which is what you probably meant to type).

Posted by Balazs Racz and Liviu Panait, Software Engineers, Google Apps Search