Last week Google began rolling out the new price competitiveness report in the merchant centre for eligible sellers. The report allows you to see how competitive the prices of your products are in comparison to other merchants selling and promoting the same products in the auction.
Where to find the report
The report is currently still in beta, however you can find it located in the Google merchant centre under the growth section, labelled price competitiveness. Google states that you can access the report only in accordance with the Market Insights programme policy, meaning that you are not allowed to repackage, sell or embed the data elsewhere. You’ll also need administrator rights to the account to join the programme and view the report.
What does the report show
Within the report you are able to see how your prices stack up to the competition. You can also group these by either product, category, brand or product type. The report will show you what percentage of your products are above benchmark price, at benchmark price, and below benchmark price.
How to use the report
Rather than showing the number of products, the report reflects the number of shopping auctions in which there was, or wasn’t a benchmark price.
The example below shows a no benchmark price of 53%, meaning that 53% of the sellers shopping campaign auctions didn’t have enough data to provide benchmarks within the selected time frame.
The ‘above benchmark price’ details the percentage in which the products that appeared in the auction were more than 1% higher than the benchmark. ‘At benchmark price’ shows the percentage that were within 1% of the benchmark price, and the ‘below benchmark price’ shows the percentage that were at least 1% lower than the benchmark price.
You can then delve into the levels of reporting and are able to see the clicks, your price and the current benchmark price. It also gives you the percentage differences for both the current benchmark price and the historical benchmark price. There are various filters you can add to the report and you can also download the data too.
Why is this important
Google shopping campaigns are known to be very price competitive due to how they are shown within the SERPs, and Google have also announced that ‘price competitiveness’ and ‘seasonality’ will soon be factors taken into consideration for smart bidding.
Although you may not be in control of product pricing, the report provides another aspect for analysis and can inform strategic decision making for your shopping campaigns. You can also share this data with the teams that do control the pricing.
If you would like help getting the best return from your paid search campaigns then please get in touch with our team who will be happy to assist.