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To see Google Shopper in action, watch this video:

In late 2009, the Enterprise team here at Google launched a new tool, Google Commerce Search, to help online retailers improve site usability and raise conversions. We're excited to see results and metrics coming in that show the impact this new product is having. One company, DiscountOfficeItems.com, decided to switch to Google Commerce Search from a sluggish homegrown solution and almost immediately saw sizable lifts in revenue, traffic, transactions, and average order size.

Tim Horton, CEO, will join Nitin Mangtani, Senior Product Manager at Google Enterprise on a live webcast Thursday, March 4 at 10:00 a.m. PST / 1:00 p.m. EST to share his experience and answer questions about their decision to switch to Google Commerce Search.

You can read more from Tim Horton on the Google Enterprise blog. Event details:

How Discount Office Items Increased Revenue 6% by Switching to Google Commerce Search
Thursday, March 4, 2010
10:00 a.m. PST / 1:00 p.m. EST

We hope you'll join us for this live event!

Posted by Anna Bishop, Enterprise Search team

Today we’re introducing a change to Google Merchant Center requirements to help ensure that you’re the only one submitting product listings for your site.

You will now need to verify yourself as the owner of the site and then claim the URL in order to submit product listings for that site. This requires two separate steps:

The web has made it easy to make decisions: when I’m going out to eat, I can easily check to see what people thought of that hot new restaurant, and when I’m about to buy a new digital camera for my upcoming trip to Portugal, I can read through dozens of reviews to help me make the best choice.

User reviews and ratings give ordinary consumers a voice, and are particularly important when a prospective customer can’t go into a physical store to ask questions or play with the product. That’s why, at today’s Bazaarvoice Social Commerce Summit, Product Director Sameer Samat announced the Google Product Reviews Program. Through the program, we will begin featuring full-length product reviews and user ratings from participating retailers and manufacturers wherever it will help users with their shopping, including in our search results and advertising programs. On Google Product Search, for example, we’ll feature your logo alongside representative reviews from your site, increasing brand exposure for your web store at a key point in the conversion process.

To kick off this program, we’ll be working with Bazaarvoice, a leader in the user reviews space. If you’re a Bazaarvoice client, all you need to do to participate is to let Bazaarvoice know you’re interested in submitting your reviews to Google, and to make sure you’ve specified your canonical URLs for products in your web store. If you’re not a Bazaarvoice client, hold tight - we hope to add additional partners, as well as a self-submission model, soon. For more information about the program, please go here.

Posted by Kinnari Jhaveri, Strategic Partnerships

It’s that time of year again. Brick-and-mortar stores are clearing out the sweaters and snow-mobiles and revamping window displays with sandals and scuba gear. We know that online retailers are painstakingly updating their virtual window space as well and (perhaps even more importantly) are thinking hard about how new technologies can bring a fresh edge to their website – and the bottom line.

To kick off the season, we’re extending an invitation to a live webcast on Friday, May 14 presented by Nitin Mangtani, Senior Product Manager for Google Commerce Search. We’ll cover all the basics of what makes good search on e-commerce sites, how improving search speed and usability can help improve customer satisfaction and increase sales, and how top online retailers have made the switch.

Join us to learn more – and bring your questions!

Google Commerce Search – Basics & Beyond
Friday, May 14, 2010
10:00 a.m. PDT / 1:00 p.m. EDT / GMT 06:00
Register here.

Posted by Anna Bishop, Enterprise Search Marketing Team

Tomorrow, May 18th, is the deadline for US-based merchants to verify & claim their URLs for the Google Merchant Center. After May 18th, data feeds uploaded for URLs that have not been verified and claimed will be disapproved.

There are two steps to verify and claim your URL:

1). First, you will first need to verify your Google Merchant Center login email as a site owner by following the instructions at the Google Webmaster Tools Help Center. If you or someone else from your company has already verified your site using a different email address, you can add your Google Merchant Center login as a site owner by following these directions.

2). Once your Google Merchant Center login is listed as a site owner for your domain in Webmaster Tools, sign in to the Google Merchant Center and click the “Claim this URL” link on your General Settings page. When the URL status says "claimed," you have completed the process successfully.

Today, we're rolling out a few changes that will make the Google Merchant Center easier to use. We've simplified navigation between sections and we've merged the "Active" and "Inactive" product pages into one "Products" page. Additionally, we've added the ability to search for a specific product by product ID on this "Products" page, making it easy to zero in on any of your products. Lastly, we've made some minor stylistic and textual changes, like changing the term "Published" to the more descriptive "Searchable." Log in to your account to check out these changes, and ask any questions you have in the help forum.

Posted by Claudia Ciorascu, Software Engineer, Google Merchant Center

As we announced last month, we are now requiring all merchants to have both verified and claimed their URLs in order to submit a product feed to Google. If you haven't yet completed this process, we urge you to do so as soon as possible. If you have, please make sure not to remove the file or metatag you added to your website as part of the verification process. If that file is removed, you will lose your "verified" status and will need to go through the verification and claiming process again.

Posted by Sagar Kamdar, Product Manager, Google Product Search

How can we improve your Merchant Center experience? What features would you like to see added, and how could we make it easier to manage your product data? Starting this week, we'll be kicking off a discussion thread on our help forum in the "Tips and Suggestions" category. Each week's thread will focus on a different part of the Merchant Center, and one of our team members will post a response to your comments at the end of the week. We'll use your feedback to help guide our product development.

Thanks for participating in Google Product Search, and we look forward to getting your feedback.

Posted by Rakesh Gurbani, Google Merchant Center Team

Launched earlier today in the US and UK, Google Commerce Search 2.0 is now available for online retailers looking to optimize their website search experience and overall site usability. With new features including a full merchandising dashboard, simple ranking rules, time-based promotions, and query autocompletion, Google Commerce Search is even more powerful and easy to deploy than before.



To learn more about how improving the website search tool can increase conversions and sales for your retail clients, be sure to sign up for an upcoming webinar on June 23rd. If you're unable to make it, you can learn more and request a demo at google.com/commercesearch.

Posted by Eric Larson and Salmaan Rashid, Enterprise team