What Are Product Listing Ads In Google Adwords? The Benefits Of PLA's

Do you sell products on your website but are unsure how you get them onto Google and gain even more traffic? It can be very easy to get your products listed onto Google and the rewards can be massive.  Google Product Listing Ads allows you to get your products onto Google and it also allows you to show some key information about your product and your business.

When you do a specific search for a product, you will see that the first results to come up are some products and company names. In this example I have done a search for Google TV, as you can see the top results that come up are products and an indication of where you can buy the product from.  Now if you can create a product listing on Google you stand a great chance of your business showing at the top of Google for a product search.

You first need to make sure you have an Adwords account and a Google Merchant Center account. You can create both these accounts by searching Google for Google Adwords and then Google Merchant Center, you will also need a Google email address so you can register for the two accounts. You then need to link the two accounts together as you cannot have a Google Center Merchant account if you do not have a Google Adwords account setup. If you are unsure about how Google Adwords work here is a guide on how it works: https://www.jdrgroup.co.uk/blog/bid/350764/google-adwords-cost-a-quick-guide-to-how-it-works

The Benefits

There are many benefits of having a Google product listing Ad. The main benefit of having one is that it allows you to gain more traffic to your product page and your website. People are much more likely to click on an image of what they want than some text of the product name. This will improve the traffic to your website because more people will click into your product listing Ad than search Google and find some text they like the sound of. You can also guarantee that the people that click on the product and end up on your website will be the intended target market for your business and products.

This means that not only have you got a new potential customer looking at one product but they are more likely to click to other parts of your website and possibly purchase more from your business.

Another benefit of Google product listings Ad’s is that it offers you a wider variety of customers, as one of your product listing Ad’s can appear in a number of searches. This means that even though your product only has one title Google will then link this to other relevant searches. Here I typed in ‘Gold Watch’ as you can see the products, which come up, do not have the exact title of ‘Gold Watch’. Google has seen that all the below watches are relevant to the search Gold Watch so it then shows these in the results.

This means that for one of your Google Product listings it could show up in Google for a massive range of other relevant searches.

What does it cost?

Google Charges for clicks on your product listing Ad’s on a CPC basis (Cost Per Click). As you do not use keywords in product listings, you set a maximum CPC bid for your products. This means that you are trying to outbid other businesses to get to the top of the results for that product. You however will only pay the minimum amount needed to beat the below competitors. This may not sound as good to you now that you know you have to pay, but by doing this you can guarantee that the people who click onto your products are very likely to buy from you. They are very likely to buy from you because they will already be in buying mode, as what they searched for was a specific product. You are also very likely not to pay your maximum bid that you set up for a product listing.

Is it worth it?

You may think that your business doesn’t need a Google product listing, but having one set up can certainly gain more traffic to your website. The cost of having one set up may put some doubts in your mind but this method of adwords can help with selling products as that one product listing can get shown for a wide range of searches. That’s one of the best features, it will match your product listing with other terms related to it, and then pick that to get shown in the results of Google. If you are a business that sells hundreds of products you wouldn’t want to set up Google product listings for every single product but you certainly would want to use it for more of your main or luxury products.

Article by: Adam Jones

Resources:

https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2454022