Google continues to build out its partner ecosystem with e-commerce platforms of record, announcing an expanded partnership with Shopify and a new integration with Square for seller discoverability.
Shopify, a leading e-commerce platform provider, announced that it has partnered with Google to make it easier for customers to find the products they want online.
With more than 500,000 businesses using their service and $50 billion in annual sales, Shopify is poised to take over as the leader in e-commerce platforms. By joining forces with Shopify, Google plans on making shopping easier by providing an easy way for consumers to find what they are looking for.
Both companies, Google and Shopify, announced that they are working together on a partnership that will enable Shopify merchants to feature their products across Google Search, Maps, Images, Lens, and YouTube. This initiative is aimed at helping merchants become more discoverable in the Google Shopping ecosystem among high-intent consumers.
In addition to this collaboration, Shopify has made the decision to leverage more of Google’s technology across a broader range of regions in order to provide merchants with access. In particular, Shopify plans to use Google Services to improve store speeds and performance while also reducing latency and giving shoppers more personalized experiences.
The Shopping Graph
The company didn’t offer extensive details about the integration when it was announced during Google’s I/O Developer. But they did announce of how its so-called “Shopping Graph” would now begin to pull together information from across websites, price reviews, videos and product data pulled directly from brands and retailers, to help better inform online shoppers about where to find items, how well they were received, which merchant has the best price, and more.
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The Shopping Graph would connect “people with over 24 billion listings from multiple merchants across the web,” Ready said in a blog post.
This Shopping Graph can span across Google’s platforms, whether someone is discovering products through Google Search or even watching videos on YouTube, among other things.
You have to take action too
But before any of this Shopping Graph functionality can really work, Google needs consumers to find shopping for products via Google actually useful. That’s why Google made it free for merchants to sell their products across Google this past year — a change that Google says drove an 80% increase in merchants on Google, with the “vast majority” being small to medium-sized businesses.
That’s where the partnership with Shopify comes in, too. This integration doesn’t mean that every Shopify storefront will be included on Google — the merchants and sellers have to take action to make that happen —, it would be almost a no-brainer for them (or you) not to take advantage of such a great opportunity.
Shortly after Google’s announcement, the stock popped 3.52%.
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