At its Search On event this afternoon, Google announced a number of shopping-related changes and new features across areas that include visual shopping, personalization and buying with the help of trusted reviews. The additions aim to help the company better attract online consumers to shop on Google, instead of starting their searches directly on Amazon — as has become the norm for many online shoppers today.
Of significant concern, Amazon has been steadily eating into Google’s core search advertising business over the years and is projected to capture 14.6% of the U.S. digital ad revenue market share by 2023, data from Insider Intelligence indicates. Google’s share meanwhile, is expected to drop to 24.1% by that time, down from the 31.6% share it had in 2019, the report said.
To combat this threat, Google has been investing heavily into its Google Shopping services, including by making listings free for merchants then integrating those free listings into Google Search results. Now, the search and ads giant has grown its shopping graph to 35 billion product listings — a figure that’s increased by nearly 10 billion over the past year, the company notes.
Source: Tech Crunch