Google Aims to Make Holiday Shopping Easier With Chrome The shopping features expand Google's reach in product search and commerce.
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Google announced a series of new shopping-focused search features and updates to its Chrome browser aimed at helping holiday gift-givers find the best deals.
The new features tap into Google's Shopping Graph, a dataset of product information scraped from retailers across the web.
A new "Shop Deals" destination on Google Search aggregates discounted items across ten shopping categories like electronics, apparel, and toys. Shoppers can scroll through carousels of deals from major retailers categorized by product type.
"You can scroll through carousels of deals by category, which takes into account what you usually like to shop for when you're signed into Google, and see popular stores that have deals on what you're looking for," Google wrote in a statement.
Chrome's New Tab page may now show recent deals on items users have browsed
An icon in Chrome's address bar indicates available coupon codes on e-commerce sites. Google also added its Shopping Insights price tracking feature to Chrome's desktop version.
Shopping Insights shows typical price ranges for a product over the past 90 days to help shoppers determine if they're getting a good deal. A new Shopping Bell in Chrome for Android can alert users about price drops on recently viewed items.
According to a Google survey, 80% of shoppers are worried about finding the best gift price. Features like Shopping Insights aim to provide more transparency around pricing.
But the convenience may come at the cost of steering shoppers away from merchants' own sites. Google's aggregated deals point users to the lowest available prices across retailers.
Merchants retain some control over which deals appear through settings in Google's Merchant Center. Building customer loyalty through trust and service remains imperative.
The shopping features expand Google's reach in product search and commerce, areas where rival Amazon also offers extensive price tracking resources and discounts.
