Digital Marketing – Google’s Shopping Timeline

Google has been continuously working to improve its shopping capability. Below is a short timeline of the developments made by Google over the years:

• Froogle: It all began in 2002, when Google launched Froogle. In 2004, Froogle was added as one of the five links, on Google’s home page. Even eight years ago, Google was sure that product search and online shopping would be a crucial part of digital marketing.

• Shopping: In late 2006, the Froogle link on the home page was removed. Froogle was re-branded as Google Product Search in 2007. Towards the end of the year, a ‘shopping’ link appeared on Google’s home page, just above the search box. As the term ‘shopping’ is more easily understood by customers than ‘froogle’, digital marketing experts consider it to be a great change.

• Doubleclick: In 2007, Google established an affiliate advertising network after acquiring DoubleClick. This acquisition gave Google more digital marketing data about the online shopping behaviour of customers. If you look at the search results page for a portable DVD player (a must-buy item in 2008), you’ll see that sponsored links (SEM) are displayed on the top and right-hand rail, with organic search listings in the middle. Below the first organic listing is a list of direct links to the product pages of different digital marketing retailers. However, these merchants are Macy’s, Home Depot and PC Connection; obviously not the first choices of people wanting to purchase a DVD player.

• Product photos on SERPs: As users are visually influenced, Google introduced its Shopping OneBox and Product Listing Ads with photos in 2008. This digital marketing product provided more real estate to sponsored links and less space for organic search results, on Google’s first page. The use of product photos improved user experience, and pleased the digital marketing advertiser enormously. However, all links in product search results connected directly to Google shopping, instead of the landing pages of the brand/retailer. Also, Google did not display product reviews, which are used by 80 percent customers for making a purchase decision.

• Customer reviews: In April 2010, this social tool was included in different places, like Google shopping, Google OneBox on the SERP, Google product ads, and through Rich Snippets in organic search. Google also launched left-hand navigation, with a link to its shopping section. Search results became more local, and leading digital marketing brands began to be displayed for product-specific searches.

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