Happy 1st birthday Google Commerce Search!

It’s Google Commerce Search’s first birthday and we are celebrating it with Jack Kiefer, CEO of BabyAge.com, one of the top 500 online retailers in North America. Since implementing Google Commerce Search, BabyAge.com has seen searches rise 58% and search page views grow 64%, contributing to a 34% increase in sales conversions. You can read about Jack’s experience in this case study or watch this video to hear more:



Google Commerce Search (GCS) is Google’s core search technology tailored for retailers. It’s an e-commerce search solution that’s hosted in the cloud, meaning you don’t need to install any hardware or software. It also uses the exact same product feed that many retailers already submit to Google Products – so most of the work associated with the typical e-commerce search implementation is already complete. Finally, GCS provides extensive administrative controls to customize search results and navigation so that they are just right for your website.

Since our debut last November we’ve expanded geographically – we now offer GCS in the United Kingdom, Australia, France, Germany and Japan – and have added many new features like query auto-completions and a merchandising dashboard. Needless to say we’ve grown quite a bit in a year!

Just as we’ve progressed in our first year, the Google Commerce Search team strives to continue to improve online shopping and we need your help! Share your best and worst experiences from Cyber Monday, and we’ll publish select submissions in a few weeks. If you’re one of the first 50 respondents we’ll send you a Google sticker as a “thank you” gift.

Posted by Guillaume De Zwirek, Associate Product Marketing Manager, Google Enterprise Search

Google Site Search is polishing its pricing structure

A good product is like your favorite pair of shoes – it sees quite a bit of use, takes a few scuffs, and sooner or later is due for a shine. Google Site Search is used by thousands of companies across the globe, and based on product use, customer feedback, and a general desire to make things easier, we recently decided that we’re due for our polishing. So we’re shining Site Search up by simplifying the way we charge for our service.

To date, we’ve charged for Google Site Search based on both the number of submitted search queries and the number of pages indexed. We noticed that many of our users had a difficult time estimating the number of pages included in the scope of their search engine, so we are introducing a new pricing system that factors only the quantity of submitted queries your Google Site Search engine receives each year. Now our pricing is much simpler and scales to accommodate the size of your business. The vast majority of our users will be unaffected and many will even begin paying less when the new prices take effect upon their annual renewal.

Please note: This pricing change applies to all new
subscriptions and renewals as of November 12, 2010.

And to give your website a little extra shine, we are now doubling our on-demand indexing quota for all subscription plans, so new web pages added to your site will be quickly indexed and made searchable. So get out that elbow grease and join us in improving search on your website!

For more information on pricing, please visit the Google Site Search website and Help Center articles.

Posted by Guillaume De Zwirek and Clay Maffett, Google Site Search team

Treat your site search to some customization this Halloween

If you’ve been to a grocery store or even switched on your television this week, you may have noticed that Halloween is here – a telltale sign that the holiday season is approaching. And since holidays mean more shopping, here at Google our Commerce Search team has been working very hard to help get your retail websites ready for the business boom.

For most retail businesses the holiday season can be the busiest time of the year, and we want to help you get excited about it. We’ve been listening to your feedback and noticed that many of you desire a greater ability to customize your site search so that it’s exactly the way you want it. Today we are pleased announce that we are giving you your holiday gift early, and in the form of three new customization features.

1. Control over auto-completions. Query auto-completion leverages the machine learning of Google to automatically provide a relevant list of suggestions every time a user types a search query on your site. While this eliminates the need for manual entry of query suggestions, many of you still wanted administrative control.

With this feature, users can now control their auto-completions. Let’s say you are an online candy reseller and typing “ch” triggers “cherry cough drops” and not “chocolate covered almonds,” your most popular treat.


You can add “cherry cough drops” to your list of exclusions and “chocolate covered almonds” to your list of inclusions to display the auto-completions you prefer. For more extensive customization, you can even upload inclusions and exclusions in bulk, so you don’t have to enter the query customizations line by line.


2. Easier Facets. We have made it easier to build navigation features by auto-populating the options based on what we know about your specified attribute. So, if you want to build a facet around “shirts,” options for price, color, size, and any of your own particulars will be listed automatically. This makes it simple to customize search results.

3. Improved Documentation. Now you can find information about how to customize your search with improved documentation and code samples. These can be found at the GCS code page.

These new features can be activated today by visiting your GCS control panel, and we hope that while you’re eating Halloween treats you’ll utilize them to prepare your e-commerce site for the holiday rush. If you are new to Google Commerce Search, visit google.com/commercesearch for more information or to sign-up now.

Posted by Andy Herrman, Software Engineer and Salmaan Rashid, Senior Technical Solutions Engineer

Speed check: Visit us at Shop.org to test your e-commerce site

Did you know that a user spends an average of just eight seconds on a website before deciding whether to stick around (Marketing Sherpa)? If you’re an e-commerce site, this means you have to be faster than Usain Bolt - the world record-holder for the 100m dash.

Next week, find out how Google can help you capitalize on those eight seconds and improve your online shopping experience. Visit the Google Commerce Search team at Shop.org’s Annual Summit, held in Dallas, Texas from September 27 - 29.

If your organization plans to attend the show, be sure to visit Google in Booth #120 and attend the Big Ideas session Wednesday at 12:45 PM featuring Nitin Mangtani of Google Enterprise, who will be speaking about search insights for today’s e-commerce technology.

The Google Commerce Search team will be joined by Product Search, AdWords, and the Google Affiliate Network. We can’t wait to show you the many different ways we can help your business.

Posted by Guillaume De Zwirek, Google Commerce Search team

DLT Solutions practices what they preach by installing the Google Search Appliance in minutes

Editor's Note: We're pleased to welcome Jim Helou, Vice President of the Google division at DLT Solutions, a Google Enterprise Partner. Jim and his team provide leading enterprise solutions, such as the Google Search Appliance, to the Public Sector.

The DLT team understands the principle of service and works with their Public Sector customers to determine the best product fit, necessary services & training, post-implementation support and procurement options to fulfill their mission.

"Practice what you preach." We’ve all heard that saying, right? At DLT Solutions, we’re a modern day example of the age-old adage. DLT Solutions, a value-added reseller of information technology products to federal, state and local government, recently partnered with Google to bring their innovative products to the public sector marketplace. Among Google’s business solutions is the Google Search Appliance 6.0. We at DLT figured what better way to preach the gospel of Google than to be users ourselves.

DLT Solutions recently installed the Google Search Appliance (GSA) for searching the DLT intranet. We chronicled the installation of the Search Appliance 6.0 by two DLT Web developers at our headquarters outside of Washington D.C in a two-part real time video, now available to view at www.DLT.com/GSA.

(That's Part One, above; you can also view the Part Two on the DLT YouTube channel.)

The video is a timed demonstration of how fast and easy Google’s latest version of the Search Appliance is to install. In less than 20 minutes we had taken the Google Search Appliance out of the box, installed, and configured the Search Appliance for our intranet file search. Your own deployment time may take longer depending on how many data sources you're searching and how many files you need to crawl. The point, however, is just how easy it is – one server, two network cables, and a power cord. No army of consultants necessary.

Looking back, search results in the pre-GSA days were…sloppy. Nowadays, with the GSA, the customizable search criteria makes for a more personal internal search experience. Employees can find the information they need faster allowing them to focus on more mission-critical tasks.

DLT uses Google’s search solution for not only our intranet, but also our public website. The Search Appliance’s relevant search results in the recognizable Google format has allowed our government users to get the information they need while increasing the number of qualified prospects for DLT.

We confidently tell our customers how easy the Google Search Appliance is to install and use. We know. We’ve done it.

Posted by Dan Israel, Product Marketing Manager, Google Enterprise