Google recently announced a new set of tools for its data scraping machine search engine to provide you with everything you need so you never have to leave its platform. The new tools are also meant to give you more accurate search results for your shopping queries, but that’s probably just a happy coincidence.
Your one-stop Google shop
The first thing to change is the shopping tab. Say your goodbyes now because Google is doing away with that and instead will include shopping results in the main search bar. Start your search with “shop” followed by what you’re looking for and you’ll (eventually) see results from nearby stores, including availability. This will first appear on mobile devices followed by desktop and other platforms “soon”.
Next up, is a way to save your shopping preferences and filters. Finally. Sometimes you aren’t just looking for a shirt, you want a ‘medium-sized green and red shirt for women within 10km’. Currently, if you filter your results by colour or size, that info is lost when you close the page. Well, not lost, Google remembers everything. But you’ll have to enter the filters again if you go back to the same page and want the same results.
Google always remembers…
When the new shopping features roll out later in the year, Google will apply filters you’ve used before to new searches. You’ll still have the ability to change the filters if your tastes change. But you won’t have to redo them every time.
Google is also borrowing a page from eBay. Specifically, its interactive 3D sneaker viewer. Google already does this for home goods, so sneakers are the logical next step, we guess.
Other additions include a way to see lists of trending products so you can follow the herd like a good sheep and the inclusion of complimentary things Google thinks will go well with what you’re googling.
Read More: Sneakerheads will soon get fully 3D previews of prospective kicks on eBay
There’s also the addition of buying guides for specific items from “trusted sources” to give more information related to a specific product that first-time buyers might not be aware of.
Page Insights will do what it says on the tin, providing the pros and cons of your potential next purchase along with a star rating. That might not be all that exciting but the ability to opt-in for price drop notifications within Google has caught our attention.
Launch dates and global availability of these new shopping features is still unclear at this point. Some, like the buying guides and Page Insights, are already available to shoppers in the US. Others will launch later this year. Whether or not they will make their way to the rest of the world remains to be seen. But it wouldn’t be very world-dominating of Google to keep the good stuff in the US only.
