anyone had this? Looks like they are rolling out the end of free shopping results. Justified as "It will make it better for customers.
QuoteOn 15 November 2012, we announced the roll-out of a new commercial Google Shopping experience built on Product Listing Ads for Google Shopping in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Japan, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Brazil, Australia and Switzerland. We designed this initiative to help shoppers to better research purchases, compare different products and their features and prices, and then connect with merchants to make their purchases.
We believe that having a commercial relationship with merchants will encourage them to keep their product information fresh and up to date. Higher quality data – whether it's accurate prices, the latest offers or product availability – should mean better shopping results for users, which in turn should create higher quality traffic for merchants.
PROMOTIONAL CREDIT
We're giving merchants several months to transition to this new model. The first major changes will take place on 13 February and the transition to the commercial model will be complete by end of Q2 2013. To encourage merchants to make this transition on Google Shopping, we are offering some incentives:
* Existing Google Shopping merchants who sign up and create a Product Listing Ad campaign promoting all of their products in Merchant Centre by 12 April 2013 could qualify for promotional credit;
* Eligible merchants who create Product Listing Ads will automatically receive credit for 10% of their monthly Product Listing Ad spend from 15 February 2013 through 30 June 2013.
>>On 15 November 2012, we announced
I think there was a thread about it back then... not sure though
Yes here:
http://th3core.com/talk/traffic/google-product-search/
It was a US thing first I think.
Our turn now.
we're looking to shift one of our clients with a tiny feed onto it in the next couple of weeks, as we already run paid search on all products anyway. The thing that worries me most about being an 'early adopter' is whether once you connect the accounts anything you don't run a paid ad on is simply going to sink without trace.
If that happens then I'm holding out to the absolute last minute for all other clients, whatever the bribe!
Could this be a good thing for SEO's though? There will be basically no other options other than paying Google or paying an SEO for traffic..
Not like it's much different already...