Comments

1. Glenn Edelman, October 27, 2008:

   Matthew,
   Just curious, but why do you consider it a step backwards? I can only assume that a short-tail term like diamonds is challenging for a jewelry retailer to convert. If Google can provide 3 deeper links into the site to potentially top-selling diamond SKU’s, a Blue Nile might be more likely to convert and will continue to bid on what I can image is an expensive broad term like ‘diamonds’. I don’t know, maybe Google is doing the retailer a service by advertising their 3 top-selling SKU’s in the diamonds category? Just my two cents.

   The questions are:

   - Is that click on the SKU counted as a free Google product search link or a paid CPC link? And if it is paid, does the advertiser have an option to turn on/off the SKU links?

   - What should retailers be doing differently on their product detail pages when Google has effectively turned those pages into entry/landing pages for more broader terms. I.e, “Every page is an entry page.”

2. Josh Winkler, October 28, 2008:

   While a search for “stationery” should not necessarily bring up three random SKUs from a Google Base feed or three generic SKUs that span every imaginable search term, I can pick 3 products off the top of my head that I wouldn’t mind having under our paid ad for that term.

   On the flip side, I also agree with Matthew, that the results shown for Blue Nile may not be the best of what Blue Nile has to offer based on that search term, which means the saavy marketers at Blue Nile likely did not pick them. In that scenario, the searcher could actually draw a negative opinion of the company based solely on poor product selections from Google.

   As much as Google knows about search behavior, trends and global domination, I would argue that they might not know each and every industry with the same level of expertise as they know their own…and should probably leave the product selections to the companies who care about them, or leave them off entirely.

   I mean…come on…they don’t rank our site #1 for everything under the sun…how much can they really know about our industry? ;)

3. Matthew Mierzejewski, October 28, 2008:

   Thanks Glenn, Josh

   The beauty of choosing paid search landing pages is bringing the searcher to the depth on your site that matches their query. If the user queries ‘canon cameras’, it is improper to land them on a SKU page, with only one product choice, or to show them too broad of a selection, say the electronics’ category page. Therefore, the PlusBox makes the most sense for keywords already centered on SKU level landing pages. For non-SKU focused keywords, it’s proper to let the site convert buyers, not the PlusBox. Therefore, I don’t think there should necessarily be any changes to SKU landing pages thinking of them as entry level pages for broad searches.

   The clicks from the expanded PlusBox section are not free, and all details are not yet public. I’ll follow-up with more details on the product then, but for now, I appreciate your comments!

4. George Michie, October 28, 2008:

   Hi Glenn and Josh,

   We think that as a rule folks type in general terms precisely because they don’t know exactly what they want and the wider selection they’re presented with that is targeted to their search the more likely they are to close.

   This scheme also presents some real tracking issues. The cost of the click on a Google Base Feed link is borne by the PPC ad, but the sale would be “credited” to the base feed. There is no way to know which PPC ad a given feed item would be served for, indeed, the same items would likely be shown for many different keywords, making it impossible to conclusively tie the sales to the costs. This will raise some real challenges for bidding systems if it “works”.

   George

5. Christian Little, October 28, 2008:

   Is there some setting I have to change to see these plus boxes? I’m using Firefox 2 and I don’t see them appearing for diamonds, so I tried other big competition phrases like “hosting”, “vegas travel”, and “buy computer” and I’m not seeing it :(

6. Bryan Galipeau, October 28, 2008:

   100% agreed on the challenges of tracking these plus box ads. Tough nut to crack when going cross-channel like this.

   Looks like the link element properties for both the AdWords ad and the top engagement ring sku in the example above contain the same ggladgrp and gglcreat numbers, suggesting there is a way to match them up. And Bluenile has Urchin tags on their pages. If there is automated bidding here, I’m betting Google is mashing up the numbers on the backend and they’re running the “conversion optimizer”…

   Also, despite the issues with landing page relevance, IF (big IF) these ads increase user interaction (CTR), the opportunity for increased volume at unchanged cpc’s is not something I’d write off without vetting. Who among us clicked the 1st position ad?

7. George Michie, October 29, 2008:

   Bryan,

   You’re right, of course. Google profits by increased CTR and increasing the amount of time people spend on Google.com. Having people do more product shopping on Google may accomplish both.

   Using the Google click id as the link up is the right way to have at it.

   I’ll be interested to see the extent to which people click on more than one product link from the same ad (rather than surfing on your site, surfing your site on Google) and whether Google plans to charge the advertiser for both clicks.

   George

8. L Sharper, May 5, 2009:

   It would interesting to see some follow-up on this. How have retailers dealt with this and have people found this feature helpful or misleading.

9. Matthew, May 12, 2009:

   @L Sharper

   As some comments have stated above, tracking complexities pose a small problem. As far as performance, please see my most recent post here:

   http://www.rimmkaufman.com/rkgblog/2009/05/12/google-plusbox-results/

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