In stock nearby? Look for the blue dots.
Posted:
Thursday, March 11, 2010
(Cross-posted with the Google Merchant Blog & Google Mobile Blog)
Vic Gundotra, VP of Engineering, demonstrated last December a preview version of Product Search for mobile with local inventory, which lets you see right in your search results whether items are in stock at nearby stores. We're happy to announce that as of today, if you're searching for a product that is sold by participating retailers, including Best Buy, Sears, Williams-Sonoma, Pottery Barn, or West Elm, you can just look for the blue dots in the search results to see if it's available in a local store. If you see a blue dot, you can tap on the adjacent "In stock nearby" link, and you'll be taken to the seller's page where you'll see whether the item is "In Stock" or has "Limited Availability" near you. You'll also see how far away the stores are from you -- as long as you've enabled My Location or manually specified your location.
If you have an iPhone, Palm WebOS phone, or any Android-powered device, and you're in the US, just go to Google.com in your mobile browser, tap on the "more" link, and then select "Shopping." Or look for the "Shopping results" section in Universal Search results when you search on Google.com.
Finally, if you're a retailer and you'd like to participate in this program, we want to hear from you. Please fill out this brief form to let us know that you'd like to be considered. In the meantime, you can get prepared by making sure your Local Business Center data is up to date, and ensuring that your Product Search data is in great shape.
Vic Gundotra, VP of Engineering, demonstrated last December a preview version of Product Search for mobile with local inventory, which lets you see right in your search results whether items are in stock at nearby stores. We're happy to announce that as of today, if you're searching for a product that is sold by participating retailers, including Best Buy, Sears, Williams-Sonoma, Pottery Barn, or West Elm, you can just look for the blue dots in the search results to see if it's available in a local store. If you see a blue dot, you can tap on the adjacent "In stock nearby" link, and you'll be taken to the seller's page where you'll see whether the item is "In Stock" or has "Limited Availability" near you. You'll also see how far away the stores are from you -- as long as you've enabled My Location or manually specified your location.
If you have an iPhone, Palm WebOS phone, or any Android-powered device, and you're in the US, just go to Google.com in your mobile browser, tap on the "more" link, and then select "Shopping." Or look for the "Shopping results" section in Universal Search results when you search on Google.com.
Finally, if you're a retailer and you'd like to participate in this program, we want to hear from you. Please fill out this brief form to let us know that you'd like to be considered. In the meantime, you can get prepared by making sure your Local Business Center data is up to date, and ensuring that your Product Search data is in great shape.
This is awesome! no more waiting for a clerk, to find out that the item is not there.
ReplyDeleteIt would be great if Google Product Search could add a barcode scanner for its iPhone-bearing visitors, like it did for Android.
ReplyDeleteThere is already a free iPhone app that allows it, called pic2shop. It reads UPCs quickly on all iPhone models (even without autofocus), and it can be made to search any web site.
See the live demo to search Google Products at: http://www.pic2shop.com/demo/scan.html
I'm not sure where to suggest this (and I know that it's be NO means trivial), but it would be amazing if you guys looked into making the benefits of product search available to offline stores. Often, consumers want to support local small businesses, but it's tough to justify hunting around by foot or phone when you know that you can visit a big box store and find exactly what you need. If there was an API for offline stores to connect their inventory software to google product search, then perhaps the little guys could more easily participate in this revolution of convenience as well
ReplyDeleteAs an amateur developer myself, I'm of the mentality that mobile tech is in the fantastic position to make the responsible choices as convenient as they ought to be. I get the impression that Google's mandate puts it on this same page, so I thought I'd toss it out there :)
Will our Google Base feed automatically link to our Local Business listings?
ReplyDelete