Google’s new search feature is all about making shopping safer and easier during the time of Covid19 when people are looking for minimum contacts and want to shop from places nearby that are safe and secured.
The new search feature of Google is meant only for those who want to explore online but shop offline. A user who is willing to make an informed decision and hits Google to find more information about the desired product see a list of suggested products on top of the search result page.
Going further users would be able to filter these results by “nearby”. This will allow shoppers, who are willing to pick the products from a nearby store, to know if the product is available in any of their neighbourhood stores and at what price.
These shoppers can view a pre-filtered listing of these products by adding words “near me” or “nearby” with their search key phrases.
Google will also show these shoppers more information about the product, price, retailer and a few other important information that will help them to decide which particular store you should actually visit. It will also show some more suggestions about the related products and which all stores have their products in stock. Besides, they can also plan their visit based on these stores opening and closing time which is displayed by Google.
Interestingly, the new Google search feature for shoppers is not just limited to supermarkets or big brick and mortar shops alone. Understanding the need of the hour, Google has also included curbside in their listing as well. Google has said that recent data show that more than ever before people are searching for curbside or in-store pickups to avoid contacts or keep the contacts as less as possible. By tracking such requirements, Google has decided to label the listed stores for shoppers to know before they plan their visit.
Google has started rolling out all these new changes to make the offline shopping experience much safer and secure. The new features will take the local shopping experience to a whole new level which offers a great degree of safety.
During these testing times when every person is hyper-conscious about their wellbeing such feature by Google adds a lot of value to offline shoppers.
These new changes, however, may not add much value to online shoppers experience. But for those who still are confined or are bound to stay at home for the next few months due to the pandemic these changes are much valuable.
As Google keeps tracking the user behaviour to measure popularity and acceptance of every feature, it would be interesting to see how many users find value in such small yet valuable new features in days to come.
Do you find Google’s new search feature valuable? Do let us know your views in the comment section below.
