When searching for products on the desktop, Google’s new format brings you “Shop on Google” in the results, where you can click on the item you want and find it at a retailer. Sometimes online, but also listed at local stores, Google’s shopping feature is designed to drive traffic to retailers, which in turn boosts ad revenue for the mothership. It’s a win-win.
Those results are now coming to mobile, with Google bringing it all to your search queries on your phone or tablet. In a random search for “tents”, the results were the same across desktop and mobile. Right down to clicking on the header for “Shop on Google”, what was returned was nearly identical — even the ads on top.
This is all housed in the Google Merchant Center, where retailers can alert Google of stock on hand and pricing in real-time. What was already a great feature about Google search has gone mobile, bringing an added layer of depth to mobile searches.
Oddly enough, this wasn’t available on a Nexus 7 2013, but a Nexus 4 returned the promised results just fine. It’s worth noting that mobile data was turned off on the phone, so perhaps this is a staged rollout. Either way, Google’s shopping programs are all rounding into shape.
US only