Google Product Search for Mobile Showing When Items are in Stock

Users of the mobile version of Google Product Search can now see if items are in stock at a local store from select retailers. These retailers include: Best Buy, Sears, Williams-Sonoma, Pottery Barn, and West Elm.

Product listings from these retailers will have blue dots that can be tapped to see an "in stock nearby" link, which takes you to a seller's page where it will either say "in stock" or "limited availability". In addition, these pages will show you how far away the store is from your location (assuming you have My Location enabled or have manually specified your location).

The feature is available for iPhone, Palm WebOS, and Android users in the U.S. Users can hit the "more" link, and select "Shopping" or find the "Shopping results" section in Google's Universal Search results when searching from Google.com.

Google offers a form for retailers who are interested in participating in this program. Google says to make sure you have your Local Business Center data up to date and to ensure your Product Search data is in "great shape."

Critical: Improve Your Mobile Search and Advertising Strategy

A Google exec recently said, "In three years' time, desktops will be irrelevant." That's debatable, but there's no question that mobile use will have grown much more than it already has. Based on comments in a recent keynote, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer doesn't seem to think PC use is going to drop too much, but he did say, "Mobile queries are just going to keep going up and up and up."

Do you think desktops will be irrelevant in 3 years? Share your thoughts here.

A study released last month found that the number of mobile phone subscribers is on track to increase from 4.6 billion to 5 billion globally by the end of 2010. Another study found that consumers are getting more comfortable with mobile shopping.

Mobile Search

Google has dominated the search market for a long time, and while this still continues to be the case, it's important to note that search in general changes with mobile. People are searching in different ways than just using their favorite search engines. They're using different apps. They're using their voices. They're scanning barcodes for instant access to product information. The number of ways people are finding information with their phones is only going to keep increasing. On mobile, it's not just about Google, Yahoo, and Bing.

That's not to say these three aren't still incredibly important to mobile. In fact, the search share among these top search engines may even become more greatly divided as time goes on. We're seeing different mobile carriers and manufacturers making deals with these companies, which affect the default search options for various devices. As we discussed before, mobile search engine use may be largely dictated by device popularity, which is (in my opinion) one of the biggest things Bing will have going in its favor in terms of market share - Microsoft's new Windows Phone 7 phones will come with Bing hardware keys, meaning the most convenient way to search on these devices will likely be to hit a single button taking the user to Bing. If these devices become popular, it could be huge for Microsoft in search.

As far as Google indexing and mobile sites goes, Google's Matt Cutts says, "If you can find a way where your existing site will work well in mobile browsers, we're not worrying about supporting two completely different sites."

To learn about this subject in more detail, read the Google Webmaster Central Blog posts: Help Google Index Your Mobile Site, and Running Desktop and Mobile Versions of Your Site.

Mobile Search Advertising

When it comes to AdWords, Google says to create separate, mobile-focused campaigns so you can optimize keywords, ad text, and landing pages for people using mobile devices. Google shared an interesting case study this week looking at Razorfish's mobile AdWords approach. They shared the following details:

- The Razorfish team started by duplicating the existing desktop campaigns and switching the settings to target mobile devices with full internet browsers.

- Since their client had a well-known brand name, they focused on branded keyword terms with enough traffic to help them learn quickly about what was working best for their campaigns.

- To measure performance, they tracked several conversion metrics including whether a mobile user looked up the brick and mortar store location or downloaded a coupon from the website. Right away, they saw a 7.5% lower cost per conversion on mobile devices, encouraging them to test ways to optimize their mobile campaigns.

- Razorfish tested whether variations in the campaign's landing page would affect conversion rates. The team hypothesized that mobile users might be looking to take a specific action, and by starting the user's experience closer to that action, the client would see better results. As it turned out, for this client, they saw much higher conversion rates when the user was directed to a landing page that showed nearby store locations.

- Finally, they tested variations in the ad text. Four versions of ad text were tested, including the original copy used in desktop campaigns. Each of the three new versions provided over 9.3% lift in conversion rate over the strongest performing copy in their desktop campaigns.

When it comes to Yahoo and Microsoft search advertising, things are about to get more appealing here in general, and presumably, that includes mobile. Microsoft and Yahoo advertisers will have the audiences of both search engines to view ads once Yahoo and Bing get their integration done.

Wrapping Up

One of the most important things any search marketer can do with regards to a mobile strategy, is to simply keep up with the latest mobile trends and innovations. This space is rapidly evolving, and new apps are released frequently. Pay attention to hot apps, and how your target audience is engaging with them. What devices, operating systems, and browsers are hot? Monitor studies and surveys that delve into demographics. Try to stay ahead of the curve.

Do you have a mobile search strategy? What suggestions do you have for improving in this area? Comment.

Google’s Matt Cutts Talks Caffeine, PageRank, PuSH, Buzz, and Much More

In case you missed it, WebProNews streamed a live interview with Google's Matt Cutts today from SMX West in Santa Clara. It's hard to narrow down the discussion to a singular topic, but here are some of the things touched upon in the video:

- The status of Google's Caffeine update (nothing's wrong, they're just being careful.)

- Site Speed as a ranking factor - settle down, it's not replacing relevance (and it's independent from Caffeine)

- PageRank - Google's probably not going to rename it, but people do obsess too much over it.

- PuSH - indexing much of the web in real-time

- Coming up with metrics for authority in real-time search

- Google Buzz - Why Matt Cutts likes it, but still uses Twitter as well

- Why does every product that comes out have to be the killer of an existing product?

- SEO vs. social media marketing

- NCAA Basketball and the Kentucky Wildcats

After discussing the above topics, Matt and interviewer Mike McDonald turn to Twitter for audience questions for Matt to answer.

Check out our new live video site at live.webpronews.com for coverage of SMX West, and future events (as well as whatever else we may end up broadcasting). You can also find archived videos there in case you missed any.  

Google Pesonalizes Search Results More with Star Feature

Google today introduced yet another way it is personalizing search results (we talked about social search with the company at SMX). Now Google is letting users "star" search results that they like, just like the star feature in other Google products like Gmail, Reader, and Google News.

This almost seems like an obvious move for SERPs now that it is there, but it has not been present until now. Essentially, when you star results you like, you will get them at the top of your results the next time you search a query relevant to them. 

"With stars, you can simply click the star marker on any search result or map and the next time you perform a search, that item will appear in a special list right at the top of your results when relevant," the company explains. "That means if you star the official websites for your favorite football teams, you might see those results right at the top of your next search for [nfl]."

"The great thing about stars is that you don't have to keep track of them," the company continues. "You don't even have to remember whether or not you starred something. Simply perform a search and you'll rediscover your starred items right when you need them. Stars sync with your Google Bookmarks and the Google Toolbar, so you can always see your list of starred items in one place and easily organize them. Even beyond the results page, while browsing the web you can quickly click the star icon in Toolbar to create a bookmark, and those pages will start showing up in the new stars feature."

Interestingly, the feature replaces Google's existing SearchWiki feature, which apparently didn't catch on too much. According to Google, people don't much care for rearranging the order of search results. I can't say I blame them. The annotation feature that came along with that is pretty much what you get from Google's other product - SideWiki, anyway, and Google suggests using that if you want to leave a comment on a particular result.

The new star interface will be rolling out over the next couple days. It will only work if you are signed in of course. Do you like the result starring concept? Share your thoughts.

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