Just in time for the holiday season, Google Search is getting three new shopping features to help you sniff out good deals on the internet.
The upcoming tools are all about making life easier for online shoppers, especially during these economically rocky times. Google states it expects to see a 43 percent jump in American shoppers looking for discounts or special deals compared to last year. To facilitate this, a new “Special Offer” tag will appear on product thumbnails on both mobile and desktop results that have a coupon available. These tags are meant to make promotions a lot more visible when browsing.
Selecting the item will give you a coupon code that you can enter at checkout. However, the coupon code won't say how much money you’ll be saving. Google states it has plans to add a new “coupon clipping feature,” which is basically the ability to copy and paste the code without having to type it in. “Special Offer” tags are slated to roll out within the coming weeks, but no hard date was given.
Price insights
Price insights from the Shopping tab are also set to make their way over to the main Search page, on both desktop and mobile. This means you can check prices from multiple stores and see how a product’s price tag fluctuates. It'll help you see when it was at its cheapest. This small but helpful change means you won’t have to hop back and forth between tabs. Everything is right in front of you. And launching by the end of November is a new, mobile exclusive side-by-side view for comparing deals. Instead of having full-priced and on-sale items jumbled together in a mess, Google will group products in a “Deals” category for quick browsing.
All the shopping features will be exclusive to US users “at present,” according to a company representative. So it’s possible other countries will see these features at a later date. The same goes for the side-by-side view, as it may see a desktop version in the future but not much is known beyond that.
Expanding tools
During the Search On 2022 event back in September, Google revealed a wave of features to make shopping more personable. Search results will show you complementary pieces and accessories to go with a potential new jacket, for example. Helpful buyer's guides have been added to more complex products such as mountain bikes. A guide will have an FAQ of sorts to answer common questions, such as what type of suspension or brakes should you get. Combined with the Search update and Chrome’s price tracker feature, you might be able to find exactly what you're looking for at a good price.
If Google’s discount-hunting tools weren’t enough, be sure to check out TechRadar’s Black Friday deals for 2022. You can read up on our predictions for this year’s event, where we expect to see steeper discounts than in previous years and sales starting earlier.
