Google noted that, while the last 15 years have seen advances in e-commerce, the search methods used for e-commerce have been a barrier to growth. "The average online retailer conversion rate is just three percent," the company said, "but could potentially be five to 10 times higher" by improving the shopping experience for consumers and the conversion rate for retailers.

Real-Time Marketing

Commerce Search uses proprietary ranking technology to analyze products and provide "the most relevant match" in what the company said would be subsecond response times to customer searches. The idea is that faster and more accurate searches increase conversions, since customers are less inclined to leave the site or use complex navigation.

In addition to speed and accuracy, the new search product offers aids, such as sorting, spell checker, and synonym suggestions. Results can be filtered by category, price, brand or other parameters. In addition, administrators can update marketing approaches in real time to create product promotions that follow search trends. Retailers can also customize web-site searches through an API.

The product can be implemented and scaled up very quickly, since it is cloud -based. Scaling can be an issue for retailers, particularly with the huge bump of the Christmas holiday season, where spikes in traffic are hard to predict. David Girouard, president of Google Enterprise, told news media that the company is "excited" to bring the product to market in time for the holidays.

As might be expected, Commerce Search also integrates with such Google tools as Google Analytics and Google Product Search, its consumer-facing product-search engine that is currently in beta.

'A New Level'

Laura DiDio, an analyst for industry research firm Information Technology Intelligence Corp., said Google is taking retail-site searches "to a new level." For instance, she said, by using Commerce Search, a retailer's product inventory gets submitted to Product Search -- a big value-add to the enterprise search product.

DiDio also noted that, while increased speed and accuracy are big competitive advantages for a retailer, Google is also promoting the idea that it is a better search experience. She said that, among other things, the API for adapting the search experience to a site's overall user interface and interaction, the spell checker, and the synonym finder all help to "make things more elegant."

Looking at competitive strategy, DiDio pointed out that the new product offering is "Google's move against Microsoft 's SharePoint," which the software giant offers with its Commerce Server.