Google Cloud announces general availability of Retail Search

Google Cloud’s Retail Search aims at providing retailers with Google-quality search capabilities on their own sites as part of the Google Cloud Discovery Solutions for Retail suite of products. Search abandonment is seen as major problem for retailers and Retail Search will offer an understanding of shopper intent and context based on established Google search technologies.

Why we care. Don’t confront the shopper with friction before they’ve even found the product and service they’re looking for. A survey commissioned by Google Cloud and conducted by The Harris Poll found that search abandonment could cost retailers $300 billion per year in the U.S. alone.

Traditional search based on keywords and Boolean logic may just not cut it when customers have become accustomed to high performance websites being able to understand and respond to more complex requests. Digital shopping creates great opportunities for brands — it also creates a high-risk environment when competitors offering more seamless experiences are just a click away and not, for example, in the next town.

Retail search capabilities. The specific capabilities of the offering include the following:

• Semantic search, looking beyond keywords to the context of the shopper’s query.
• Advanced query understanding, responsive to very broadly worded queries.
• Optimized results that match business goals such as the introduction of new products and promotions with the shopper’s intent.

Dig deeper: How to build a search-first marketing strategy

Early adoption sees success. Retailers in a number of countries, including Lowe’s in the U.S., Fnac in France and Pernambucanas in Brazil have report early success. “We have been partnering with Google Cloud to give our customers relevant results for long-tail searches,” said Neelima Sharma, SVP, technology, ecommerce, marketing and merchandising at Lowe’s, “and have seen an increase in click-through and search conversion and a drop in our ‘No Results Found’ rate since we launched.”