What you need to know
- Google today announced new features for Shopping in the lead up to the holiday season.
- Shopping will let you compare prices across online and local retailers.
- It'll also let you easily keep track of pricing changes for devices you're interested in.
Google is rolling out a couple of new features to the Google Shopping service today, aimed at helping users make better decisions in the lead up to big shopping events like Black Friday and Christmas.
First, Google will make it easier to compare product prices when you search through shopping. For any selected product, it will show you local pricing, show you online pricing, and add tags for little niceties like curbside pick-up.
Google will also tattle tale on "pseudo-deals." You know the one, the "70% off deal that goes down to $200 except it routinely sells at $150 all year round" type of thing. Now, Google Shopping will let you know the average real price of a product, allowing you to ignore deceptive deals that seem too good to be true.
There are extensions and price trackers that keep a tab on this for you, but if you're not a "hardcore shopper", this could work for you.
Speaking of which, Google also highlighted a change it was making to its pre-existing price tracking feature where it would notify you of product pricing changes. Now you'll be able to select which products you want to keep an eye on pricing yourself, previously it would surface those notifications proactively. you'll find those notifications in your Gmail or Google Search app.
Google is rolling these to the U.S. It has not shared availability for other countries at time of writing,
