Google Base (Google Product Search) Ranking Factors

As universal search becomes more and more part of the main Google web search results, it is becoming more important for businesses to understand how they can leverage universal search results to gain more traffic and revenue for their website.

A few examples of Google universal search (aka blended results) are -

• Google Shopping Results
• Google Maps
• Google Local Results
• Google News Results
• Google Blog Results

The point of this article is to discuss the possible factors that influence where a website shows for searches on Google Product search – previously know as Froogle.

Google Product Search Ranking Factors

The following factors are in no particular order and I can’t back any of them up with solid data – they are formed purely from my own experience of Google Base optimisation for clients and my own opinion.

Data Freshness or Upload Frequency

Your products will expire after 30 days so this is the bare minimum length of time that you need to upload your data feed.  However I’d try to upload the feed as often as possible – even every day in ultra competitive markets where product prices and details will fluctuate.

Google don’t say that uploading your feed more regularly will help your position in search results.  However uploading as often as possible indicates that the data is more up to date and accurate for their users.  I’ve often come across products on Google product search that have a price displayed, then when I click through it is a different price.  This isn’t what Google want.

Therefore it does make sense for Google to look at the freshness of the data and the age of the feed in determining placement.

Image Quality

I’ve always believed that the quality of the images in your data feed is important.  After all one of the main factors in a persons decision to buy is the image of the product.  I think this is even more important now that Google have started to show product images in their universal search results for products as well.

Data Quality

The quality of the data you provide as well is also important.  This gets displayed in the title and description of your listing almost like the META data of organic results.  Accuracy, spelling and relevance of this data is very important as well as there not being any unusual or non-standard characters in the text.  Suffice to say, keyword stuffing is also a big no no!

Feed Age

Not to be confused with data freshness, feed age is what I call the overall age of the feed in terms of how long you’ve been providing data feeds to Google base.  Almost like authority or trust rank in the organic results.  If you’ve been using Google base for a long time and consistently getting clicks, providing good data and good user experience, then chances are Google can measure this and give you a little more preference over brand new advertisers.

Website Reviews

Again I believe this to be very important to your placement in the search results.  A seller who has a history of positive reviews should be placed above a seller with the opposite – common sense right?!

Google pull their reviews from a number of sources, differing on whether you are based in the US or the UK.  To save replicating them here, take a look at this article by Tom Critchlow where he provided a good list of these sites on his post over at SEOmoz.

Keyword Usage

I used to believe that this was a major factor, in particular use of a keyword in the first few words of a product title.  However I’m seeing more results now where the exact keyword I used is no where to be seen in the product title.  So whereas I’d still recommend using a popular keyword in the product title where possible, I wouldn’t obsess over it nor would I compromise an accurate product title for keyword stuffing.

Additional Fields

Google point out several times in their guidelines that using additional fields isn’t going to improve your positioning in search results.  Whilst I’d agree that stuffing loads of additional fields won’t always help, I’d say that carefully selecting relevant fields and including those would help.  In particular fields that include data that might be searched for as an attribute of that product.  So if you were selling garden sheds, you may include measurements such as 7×5 or 8×6 which are searched for.  Or if you selling clothing, you may want to include standard sizes such as small, medium or large.

These additional fields could certainly help you rank better and you are doing exactly what Google wants – helping them better understand the product you are listing.

Site Security

I’ve never seen this one mentioned online but to me this is important.  No matter what you are buying online, you need to feel comfortable that the site you are ordering from is secure and reliable.  Google will not want its users to be scammed, have their credit card details stolen or anything else like this.  I’m not quite sure how Google will determine this, you are not required to provide secure certificates directly to them but its perfectly possible for them to check a websites certificate if they wanted.

Using their very own Google Checkout is another signal of a sites security if they’ve been approved to use it .

Google Checkout

The official stance from Google is that the use of Google Checkout does not effect anything, similar to their stand on it affecting Adwords positioning.  So this one is a little more far fetched really.  However if having the Google Checkout logo present on your shopping results increases your click through rate, this in turn could improve your ranking.

Additional Resources

Google Product Search for Webmasters

A video from Maile Ohye of Google on some basic guidelines on how to use product search.

Google Base Blog – Official Google Base Blog

How to Rank in Google Product Search – Post on SEOmoz by Tom Critchlow