Google Tests Out Shopping Discovery Elements, Including Generative AI for Product Search

Google’s testing out some new shopping elements to help refine your discovery process, including related style recommendations, body shape matching, and generative AI examples of what you’re after.

Which could impact how people find products in the app, and potentially, how retailers display their products.

First off, on style recommendations. Google’s adding a new gallery of images related to your product search, which will then enable you to refine the results that you’re shown by up or downvoting, or swiping right or left, on a series of related product images.

As you can see in this example, if you search for “men’s polo shirts”, you’ll be able to see visual examples of various styles, colors, models, etc. Tapping the thumbs up/down will help refine the products you’re shown based on your preferences.

As per Google:

“If you haven’t quite found what you want (or you just want to keep going), we’ll give you the option to rate more items and instantly see another set of results. We’ll remember your preferences for next time, too. So when you’re looking for, say, men’s polo shirts again, you’ll see personalized style recommendations based on what you liked in the past and products you interacted with.”

It’s a simple way to provide more customized product matches, which could improve your Google Shopping experience.

I mean, there’s probably not a heap of variation in polo shirts specifically, but for some products, color, style, and other factors will significantly change the images that you see.

Google says that it’s testing this new experience out with U.S. shoppers using mobile browsers and the Google app.

In addition to this, users will also be able to specify which brands they like.

“U.S. shoppers searching for apparel, shoes or accessories on mobile browsers, desktop or in the Google app can select brands they’d like to see more of while shopping with Google. Once you’ve selected them, you’ll see options from those brands right away.”

That’ll add another custom element to refine your Google Shopping experience.

Google’s also adding some more tech-facilitated shopping tools, with AI image generation for shopping and “virtual try on”. Which doesn’t digitally display a product on your image, as it sounds, but does provide another way to see how a product may look on you.

First off, on AI image generation, Google’s adding a new way to generate visual matches for the product that you’re seeking, in order to better align your search.

As you can see in this example sequence, shoppers will be able to tap on the “Generate Images” prompt from Google search to create product images that match what they’re after.

So you’re essentially using generative AI to power Google Image Searches, in order to then find products that best match what you have in mind.   

The option will be available to U.S. users that have opted into Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE).

Virtual Try-On, meanwhile, will show you how selected clothing products look on a diverse set of real models, who range in size from XXS-4XL.

Which is somewhat similar to Pinterest’s recently added a similar “body type search” functionality which enables users to refine their search based on more indicative models.

Google’s been testing out variations of both of these last two functions for some time, so they’re not entirely new, but now they’ll be available to more users in its experimental shopping experience.

Overall, these additions will take Google’s shopping discovery tools in a new direction, and could facilitate much better matches. Though they are limited at this time, and it’ll take a while for Google to build up their models, then roll them out to more users.

You can learn more about Google’s latest shopping discovery elements here.