What affects the Google Merchant listing position under the Relevance Filter?

[simonphumphries]

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

[simonphumphries]

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.

[kadesmith]

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.

[simonphumphries]

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

[kadesmith]

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.

[simonphumphries]

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.