Google creates Commerce Search for Web retail

New enterprise search tool set to spur holiday shopping in Google fashion

The holiday season is brewing and, poor economy or not, it'll soon be about time to start some serious shopping.

With online vendors in mind this winter season, Google introduced a new enterprise product Wednesday night called Google Commerce Search, a powerful search solution aimed specifically at Web commercial retailers.

Citing a statistic from MarketingSherpa that says Web surfers spend an average of eight seconds deciding whether or not to stay on a Web site, Google hammers the point home that having a clean interface for selling products is central to the success of any online retailer. Furthermore, having a solid search engine is vital, as eTailing Group says that 71% of Web shoppers use keywords to find just what they're looking for.

Interested enterprises will be happy to learn that Google Commerce Search is designed to carry over all the benefits of Google search to the online retail experience. Hosted in the cloud, the platform is fully customizable so that clients can tweak search options, the layout of searches, and other aesthetic attributes of the online store.

Since Google Commerce Search is a hosted, software-as-a-service product, Google boasts the whole service can be deployed in just two days. For retailers looking further down the road, Google promises easy scalability for growing companies and easy addition of new features.

Though the video demo on the site made no actual mention of Google Checkout integration, a splash image of the Checkout logo at the end of the video implies what most would expect anyway. After Amazon's unveiling of PayPhrase last week and eBay's launch of PayPal X as an open payments system this week, it looks like the e-commerce market is really starting to see multiple tiers and intensities of competition brewing.