Google Moves Further Into Retail

Dave pointed out this article to me yesterday from Search Engine Watch, Google are acquiring a digital coupon platform called Zave Networks – it’s interesting that Google are moving in this direction. There are a number of things that Google are doing that can all combine very nicely:

• Google Offers
• Google Wallet
• Google Plus – Identity Verification
• Google Product Feed is tightening its specification
• Google Places (including checkins and coupons)
• The new version of Google Analytics has plenty of space and scope for improvement
• Google Shopper
• Google Checkout

Now all these things can be combined in many, many ways, but here are some of the key things that I think are really going to change Internet marketing:

1. People are going to be able to visit a Google Places page, grab a coupon, visit the place of business and then pay with their Google Wallet which will also use their coupon – Basically Google are going to be able to track offline retailer and offline conversions – again this will allow advertisers to spend more on AdWords.
2. Google are probably going to create the biggest ever reward scheme – rivalling Nectar and Tesco’s card. The reason being, their reward scheme will be easy for small businesses to join and they will be rewarded with lots of highly valuable business information.
3. Google might just make Google Product Search a paid service – they’ve already got people adding products to their specification – and all those who use it know how valuable it is. It drives a lot of conversions and it is worth paying for. On top of that Google have their own payment system.

So it looks like Google are about to shake up retail online and offline in a big way, I personally can’t wait.