ABA, Above the Treeline and Google have partnered to facilitate the participation of independent bookstores in the Google Local Shopping initiative.
About Google Local Shopping
With Google Local Shopping, you can connect with customers when they're shopping for their next read on Google. Whether they're on their mobile phone or their computer, customers who search for a book can see that you carry it in your store—and they can easily click through to get details and directions for your store.
Google already has several chain stores, including booksellers, sharing their location-specific availability so that can appear online in Google search results. Our new partnership gives them availability from independent bookstores in Google Local Shopping. This means that you as an indie bookseller can have the kind of prominence as chains already have in the search results when people search Google for specific books! It is tied to the locality of the searcher, so if your store is the closest, it will appear first. See below for an example of a search result now for a current hot title. Click on the image to get a closer look. Note that the shopping results only show your price, and that you have the item in stock, and not the actual quantity.
All ABA Members Qualify for an Incentive Payment
Google is interested in making their search as comprehensive as possible, and so they are keen to have as many outlets as possible incorporated into shopping search results, so have partnered with the ABA to offer incentives. ABA members qualify for incentive of $250 per account if you are either a current Treeline Analytics, or an IndieCommerce subscriber. There is a $100 for any other ABA member stores. The incentives disbursed by the ABA once regular data uploads begin.
How to Get Started
There are three things you need to have or do to get going. This doesn’t take long, really!
1. Sign up for a Google Places account, if you don’t already have one. Your Places account will need to be linked to your data.
2. Click through this agreement giving Above the Treeline permission to share your store data with Google.
3. To start the uploads, Above the Treeline will need to get or verify a few things about the store locations, your Places account, store website, and store description. Please complete this form to give us this information.
Once we have all the information we need, we will configure things at our end to begin sending the Google-specific data feeds about your store inventory and prices within a few business days. During that process, you will also receive an email from Google at your Google Places email address asking permission to link your Places account to Treeline.
The data transmissions will be generated and sent daily, as long as your Treeline data is also being updated daily. The length of time it will take between the first data feed being sent to Google, and your store appearing in search results will vary from about three to six weeks.
Questions?
Please contact ABA Marketing Manager Paige Poe (paige@bookweb.org, 800-637-0037 ext. 6668)