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.
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
-
Multiple Google+ pages when entering new foreign markets?
We are a medium size business on our way to expanding to new countries. Right now we have one Google+ account in Denmark. When expanding to more markets outside of Denmark, should we then set up a Google+ page for each country? Or is it better to stick with the one we have? Thanks in advance!
Branding | | miegt0 -
Google Contacting Clients in an Adwords MCC?!
I am curious if this has happened to others and if so if you were able to resolve it. Today a client forwarded an email that went to a client account and we were in no way copied on it. This is a client that spends in the 6 figures with us and I was shocked to read (Any bold or italics I have added): Hi *****, My name is Jimmy Morrow and I am an Account Strategist at Google on our Agency Team. Your account was recently selected for free dedicated support this quarter and I will be your new point of contact at Google for all things AdWords. We can go over a few housekeeping things I noticed, broader strategy, and some betas that would be a good fit. Please let me know when you have time for a 20-30 minute phone call when we can go over the accounts and make a plan for working together this quarter. Thanks and just let me know a time that works best for you! Best, Jimmy To me, they have essentially gone around us and with the "housekeeping" and "beta" comments sought to make us look either incapable and/or uninformed. We are Google Partners, etc. and we have clients in our MCC for Adwords. I have never seen an occasion where Google blatantly tried to steal the client as it appears is happening here. This is a client who heretofore had NEVER used Adwords and they have been in business since before there was a Google or an Internet. We brought them to Adwords about 6 - 8 months ago!!! They are spending 6 figures on Adwords and I am ready to pull them out and spend the money elsewhere. We sent emails from our UK and our Houston office and no response from lil ole Jimmy. Our UK team has tried calling Google and nothing and then Chatting with them and we can get nothing. This is a client who has a lot of faith in our abilities based on many things we have done for them that worked and they are the kind of client that let's us know when issues arise. So, they are not going to switch and that is not the issue. The issue is Google acted as if they wanted to embrace agencies and if that is so, why then try to back door them? I hope to hear from others who are handling PPC with Google. Thanks a ton. Robert
Branding | | RobertFisher1 -
Enigma of Google & China - Can you solve it?
In March, my team in Shanghai launched a site redesign of our English language website (targeted at expats in China) which: Changed the URL's to be more SEO friendly (keyword based, shorter, etc) Implemented endless scrolling to replace previous pagination Changed some front end layouts Changed page title and meta description tags to use keywords, be unique, use correct lengths Since then, we see in Google Analytics, traffic form Google organic branded search terms has been steadily dropping (between 5 - 20% depending on the term). Not provided is down 2%. We do not rank for many non-branded terms, so have no statistical significance there. However in Google Webmaster Tools, impressions of branded queries are also down, along with non-branded search terms (including those we tried to optimise for). We see similar traffic drops from other search engines as well (Bing, Baidu) but not at as high a level (only 3% or so). We have not changed any other marketing strategy online or offline. We have tested / done: 1. Changing title tags 2. Reverting to old pagination (as we say in GWT a drop in indexed pages) 3. Checked the tracking code is working 4. Checked our rankings (we still rank position 1 for our branded queries and even some non branded) 5. Submitted new XML site map The only large issue we could find is that from that day there were over 300,000 page not found 404 errors (which we are now redirecting by 301s as Google shows them to us, and have been doing so for 2 weeks). Nothing is helping us so far, organic traffic continues to drop week on week, so I am reaching out to the Moz community. Can anybody think of a reason for such a dramatic drop? Please help!
Branding | | RingierOneAfricaMedia0 -
How can I claim authorship for a doctor using their title "MD" on Google Plus?
Hi Everyone, I am wondering how to claim authorship for doctors while still using their title "MD." Adding MD to Google Plus profiles goes against Google name policy, but in order to comply with the FTC we need to include "MD" to our doctor's name in our article by-lines. I have sent in many appeals with evidence that they have a degree. I also considered creating a "Google Page," but had the impression that you cannot claim authorship with rel=author tags with a "Google Page," only rel=publish. Can anyone help me figure out how to claim authorship for a doctor using (first name last name), MD ?
Branding | | dirigodev0 -
Branding Association for SEO, and Google's understanding of a "brand Name"
Hey guys. so I currently run my own business here in Queens NY, for Web Design and online marketing, specifically SEO, SMM, SEM, and some inbound marketing that ties to SMM and SEO. When starting I was in a different business, and had kept my old business name. I plan on re-branding myself January 1st with a brand new name, the name i'm seriously considering is "Media Marketing USA". I was able to purchase MediaMarketingUSA.com. I feel this name is good and bad at the same time, and here are some of the reasons. The pro: Easy to remember, sounds big, and describes my business well. The con: Sounds generic, and I worry it will be hard to brand. I used the mentioning tool provided by Moz and see that nearly everyday 500-1,000 people are naturally mentioning Media Marketing USA, one of my biggest questions is will this give me a competitive advantage in SEO, or will it hurt me in SEO as Google may not see this or understand its a brand name? Do you personally think this is a good name to re-brand myself and use as my main website? The Website itself will be used as a corporate website, a method of inbound and outbound marketing through content creation, Social Media, and of course SEO, targeting specific locations, and specialty services and industries in the NYC area. Please share your thoughts with me, THANKS!!!
Branding | | tonyr71 -
Online retailer has old product listing
A large online retailer in Europe used to sell a product that we sell in the US. They have not sold the product for more than a year but have not removed the item from their product listings. The price is marked down and the description says the product has been discontinued. They sell a very large number of items and have a high DA and this product listing ranks high in Google SERP. As you can imagine, this causes significant problems for us. Potential customers are given the wrong price and are also being told that the product has been discontinued. I have sent numerous requests to the retailer asking them to delete the product from their database with no success. Is it possible to send a notice to Google requesting that this product page be de-indexed? Any other suggestions? Best,
Branding | | ChristopherGlaeser
Christopher0 -
Google Authorship
Hey Guys, For about a few days now, my google authorship photo no longer appears in search results. Also, I am unable to access my google places page, as every time I try I get an error from google (error #500). The places page still works, but I cannot log in as an administrator. I have no idea why this is happening, as the rich snippets tool indicates that everything is fine and dandy. I have also made no changes to the structure of the site. Can someone please explain why I am encountering these problems. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Branding | | dtlalaw0 -
What can i do to regain top 3 for local map listings if I already created a bunch of citation link to my site?
I got hit by a penguin refresh on Oct 5th and lost over 10 #1 rankings. I'm currently #4 on the places listing for my main keyword and really trying to regain top 3 position. I created a bunch of local citation with matching info and really piped out my map listing since it is 100% complete. I'm quite stumped on how to further optimize my map listing to where i can hit top 3 positions. Does anyone have any recommendations on this issue? Thanks Sam
Branding | | junkcars0