What affects the Google Merchant listing position under the Relevance Filter?
-
Hi,
I set-up a UK Google Merchant feed about 8months ago now which is automated for around 25K products. I am trying to work out why some other sites still rank better than mine in the Shopping listing under the default 'Relevancy' filter.
I have both a greater number and better reviews than the competitors and am showing a better price.
I wonder whether anyone has any information on whether the following factors affect the listing position under the 'Relevance' filter:
1 - Age of the listing or domain
2 - Historic 'Click-Rate' for domain in Shopping listing
2 - Overall quality of the data feed i.e. do errors or warnings for other products in the feed affect the positions of all items in the feed?
3 - Bounce rate or on-page time of clicks to target site
4 - Diversity of review sources
5 - Google Checkout reviews
6 - Company location in Google Local
For an ecommerce site this positioning can make a big-time difference to sales, so I'm hoping someone has run some tests on this they can share, and if not then why not?
Hoping someone can throw some light on this, as I can't find a great deal out there on this fundamental revenue stream for me.
Simon
-
After further investigation I think in my particular case the first company to add a specific EAN code for a product appears to gain the upper hand.
Some of the top ranking sites have no reviews and are not the best price by some degree. Since they also don't have Google Checkout and can't really have more fields entered for each product in their feeds, or be refreshing it more frequently, this would seem to be the likely answer.
-
1. I wouldn't remove the ones that have errors and warnings. I would fix them. Removing them isn't going to help your other products rank better. When I mentioned quality of your feed, I just meant don't have a product that is called Blue Mug and then the description says, "Blue Mug" Title would be Blue Mug, but then describe the mug fully. This blue mug is 4 inches tall by 2 inches wide and features an ergonomic handle. It's perfect for the chronic coffee drinker who is afraid of developing carpal tunnel..." Pretty awesome mug huh? More descriptive information that is accurate is what I mean by quality.
2. 250 reviews from the 3 different sources from what I can tell is better than all from the same. The reason I think this is because sometimes it's easy to manipulate one site, but to manipulate 3-4 is more difficult.
3. From what I've seen Checkout reviews are THE BEST reviews to have, so enabling Google Checkout is important. They are often times the hardest reviews to get, but the payoff is seen in product listings.
-
Hi Kadesmith,
Thanks very much for your input. So to clarify a few points.
1 - If I remove products from my feeds that have warnings or errors associated with them then my remaining listings will improve in Google Merchant Ranking in your opinion?
2 - If I had say 250 reviews from say 3 different review sources (say TrustPilot, Shopzilla and Pricegrabber) my rankings would likely be better than if I had the same 250 reviews from just 1 of these sources?
3 - How much of an influence does Google Checkout have on the rankings would you say? I did enable it in the past, but with a Magento site the complex shipping costs I use do not integrate with Google Checkout correctly and the access to necessary accounting information is frankly useless for UK purposes.
Thanks, Simon
-
From the testing I have done here are my findings specific to your questions:
1. Age - Not much of a factor. In fact, I have found that product listings seem to like fresh content.
2. Click Rate - Haven't seen much affect over the 3 sites I run.
3. Overall Quality - BINGO. The quality and quantity of data in your feed is the number 1 thing that I have found truly affects.
4. Bounce Rate - My bounce rate is pretty low when getting people from product feeds for all my sites, so I can't give feedback if a high bounce rate affects. I will say that product feed listings is one of the best sources of converting traffic for me though.
5. Diversity of review sources - This is probably the second biggest factor I have seen combined with #6 Google Checkout reviews. The more good reviews you have the better your product listings seem to do.
6. Company location in Google Local - Sorry can't give feedback here. Location doesn't matter in my niches.
Lastly, I just want to add that you want to make sure that you have data in every field possible. SKU and other product numbers are very big ones as they help you to rank with the big box boys on products that have several sellers. Provide something to your customers that they can't, and you'll find it helps a lot.
-
Just to add - I have as many possible fields (both required and optional) as anyone could reasonably have and probably a lot more than most.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Google Analytics During Rebranding
Our organization is rebranding, should I start a new analytics property or change the domain in the old one?
Branding | | sdaily0 -
Inclusion in the Google Knowledge Graph, Positive Benefits and Outcomes
Mozzers, Google has recently begun to include some of our blog content within its knowledge graph, Not our company data for the branded searches, but within the results for general FAQ style questions and queries common to our industry. In a couple of cases using our content over Wikipedia which was really pleasing 🙂 My thinking is that this is not just general luck but that google likes our technical blog content and even as far as to promote it themselves and sees us as authoritative in this industry/field ? I see this as an opportunity to continue publishing if anything increase the frequency for this style of content to build up authority in this sector in the hope that google will look at our brand and maybe even our search positioning favorably. (Similar to the idea behind author rank possibly?) Just wanted some general opinions from some knowledgeable Mozzers on this or if maybe i am thinking too far into it? Maybe there is something i should be looking at to further improve how favorably google looks at our content for inclusion in its knowledge graph? Thanks James
Branding | | Antony_Towle0 -
Getting Google Plus Page to Appear
I've recently been making changes and updates to my company's verified local Google + page--my question is when and/or how do I configure it to appear in the search results? When I type my business into Google (Exchange Capital Management), it's not even within the results displayed. The page isn't accessible unless someone were to Google "Exchange Capital Management Google Plus." As mentioned, the page has been verified, updated, and has about 8,000+ views. Any advice or feedback is appreciated! All best, Lauren McLaughlin
Branding | | LMcLaughlin0 -
Do you think its ethical to use your personal google authorship for outsourced content?
I routinely outsource nicely written content but never use my google authorship for those articles. Should I be adding my google authorship to those articles? Or would that be unethical and violate googles TOS?
Branding | | TShak0 -
Best Practices for Google+
I have a client that has a decent following on Google+ on his personal account but his business profile doesn't have many people going to it. The law firm he owns has roughly 14 attorneys and all of them write for their blog. Since they are all new to Google+ except for him, I'm wondering what everyone things that the best practice is to get the information shared. When we post the information on his personal personal profile, he generally gets between 50 - 75 +1s and a dozen or so shares. If we put it on the business profile we don't get more than 10. The issue is when one of the attorney's that is new to G+ posts on their timeline and then we share it via the business, we then have to share it via the owners timeline to get any traction. We need to build followers for each of the attorneys new to G+, that's obvious, but what do we do in the mean time? Since the owner is also the brand, what is your suggestion of the best strategy?
Branding | | DarinPirkey1 -
How to Merge Existing Google Local and Google Business pages?
Hey everyone, I'm getting a wee bit frustrated. I have looked at every blog post I can about merging Google Local and Google Business Pages and I can't figure it out. I already have a verified Google Local page here https://plus.google.com/107404063103285095864/about?gl=CA&hl=en-CA and a Google Business Page here https://plus.google.com/b/100116630212547145177/100116630212547145177/posts . Both are already verified. How do I merge these existing profiles which are already verified?
Branding | | jhinchcliffe0