In amongst all the kerfuffle of the searchology news I’ve noticed something else new being tested on adwords. I’m not sure if this is a permanent change for a select number of sites or if it’s the start of a new change but when I search for ‘small dog‘ in the US I see the following adwords result:
Expanding that plusbox shows me this:
Interesting huh! I wonder where Google is pulling those extra products from? They have long descriptions, price tags and nice images. Is this actually something that’s been out for a while and I’ve just not seen it before? I’d love to know your thoughts.
Update: Turns out this isn’t that new after all. It’s a test which has been ongoing for some time. The products are pulled from Google Base apparently. Check out the full Searchengineland story for more info.
Update 2: Thanks to tomsmith1984 who spotted this happening in the UK which I think might be a first: searching for littlewoods shows a plusbox for them in the UK.
Tom Critchlow Tom Critchlow is VP Operations for the NYC office, living in Brooklyn and working in Manhattan. Fiercely curious about most things and passionate about everything.
This is sweet! We are in the beta but have not yet fully deployed. We cannot wait to see what the results are!
I think this is a very negative feature from the Adwords advertiser’s perspective. Now, it is much more likely for someone to check out the products on Google Base than to actually click on your ad. I am not sure how this feature serves Google’s interests either…
I take back what I said! I realize now that Google is not taking you to other people’s products on Ebay or Google Base but to the product page of the ad. This makes a lot more sense. Essentially, Google is giving you another way for people to look at your products if they are unsure where the ad might take them. Google is providing its surfers with landing pages that they might be more familiar with-an interesting development.