Can you manage your inventory with Google Shopping?

A warehouse working carrying a stack of cardboard boxes inside a warehouse.

We are often asked by our clients if we can use Google Shopping or paid search to push particular products or product groups.

There are a number of reasons why they might want to do this. They might have high stock levels of a particular product; some ranges might be out of date, and they wish to sell off remaining stock; or perhaps a product is not selling as well as they had hoped, and they wish to boost the sales.

On the face of it, Google Shopping seems like a good platform for this task. Advertisers can pay more to increase the exposure of a particular product, rather than bid on keywords alone (as is the case with standard text ads). Hence, advertisers often believe Google Shopping is the ideal means to proactively manage inventory and stock levels.

However, behind this approach is the assumption that there is a direct relationship between what consumers search for and what they end up buying.

So let’s take a closer look at the data to see how consumers actually behave.

Do consumers always buy what they search for?

For a deeper insight into what is actually going on in Google Shopping, we analyzed a dataset of more than 15K Google Shopping conversions across the German, UK and US markets covering several international retailers from the fashion, sports, outdoor and luxury sectors. We looked at search queries, clicked product ads and products purchased.

Surprisingly, the vast proportion of consumers don’t buy the products they search for (and click on).

[Read the full article on Search Engine Land.]