After testing around the world since 2018, the new Google Shopping homepage is live in the U.S.
The new shopping experience launched by Alphabet’s Google focuses on personalization and browsing, 9to5 Google reports. The revamped experience was unveiled in India before rolling out to France in March.
Users are greeted with “Let’s go shopping” with a price tag logo and a search field that asks, “What are you looking for?” Search sorts and filters pricing, brand, and deals. Google plans to integrate its Express delivery service into the new page, the report said.
The decision to launch a standalone shopping page came about in September 2017 as an effort to appease European antitrust regulators and to avoid paying more fines. In June 2017, Google was slapped with a record $2.7 billion in fines over antitrust practices with its comparison Google Shopping unit. While that unit will still be part of Google, it won’t be able to integrate with the company’s new search business. The way shopping advertisements show up online could also be redesigned.
The new shopping experience was designed to make shopping easier and more accessible, enabling consumers to more seamlessly find, research and compare goods. The aim is to make it easier to buy those goods, however and wherever they want.
The new shopping push is also geared toward driving more foot traffic to merchant locations. Google has over two billion store offers mapped to physical store locations globally, discoverable by current local ad formats.
Aside from avoiding fines, the new shopping page is intended to take on Amazon, which was starting to take a noticeable bite out of Google’s advertising revenue. The new shopping destination expands shopping capacity to Search, Google Images, Maps and YouTube.