Search by Algolia
Introducing new developer-friendly pricing
algolia

Introducing new developer-friendly pricing

Hey there, developers! At Algolia, we believe everyone should have the opportunity to bring a best-in-class search experience ...

Nick Vlku

VP of Product Growth

What is online visual merchandising?
e-commerce

What is online visual merchandising?

Eye-catching mannequins. Bright, colorful signage. Soothing interior design. Exquisite product displays. In short, amazing store merchandising. For shoppers in ...

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Search and Discovery writer

Introducing the new Algolia no-code data connector platform
engineering

Introducing the new Algolia no-code data connector platform

Ingesting data should be easy, but all too often, it can be anything but. Data can come in many different ...

Keshia Rose

Staff Product Manager, Data Connectivity

Customer-centric site search trends
e-commerce

Customer-centric site search trends

Everyday there are new messages in the market about what technology to buy, how to position your company against the ...

Piyush Patel

Chief Strategic Business Development Officer

What is online retail merchandising? An introduction
e-commerce

What is online retail merchandising? An introduction

Done any shopping on an ecommerce website lately? If so, you know a smooth online shopper experience is not optional ...

Vincent Caruana

Sr. SEO Web Digital Marketing Manager

5 considerations for Black Friday 2023 readiness
e-commerce

5 considerations for Black Friday 2023 readiness

It’s hard to imagine having to think about Black Friday less than 4 months out from the previous one ...

Piyush Patel

Chief Strategic Business Development Officer

How to increase your sales and ROI with optimized ecommerce merchandising
e-commerce

How to increase your sales and ROI with optimized ecommerce merchandising

What happens if an online shopper arrives on your ecommerce site and: Your navigation provides no obvious or helpful direction ...

Catherine Dee

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Mobile search UX best practices, part 3: Optimizing display of search results
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Mobile search UX best practices, part 3: Optimizing display of search results

In part 1 of this blog-post series, we looked at app interface design obstacles in the mobile search experience ...

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Mobile search UX best practices, part 2: Streamlining search functionality
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In part 1 of this series on mobile UX design, we talked about how designing a successful search user experience ...

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Mobile search UX best practices, part 1: Understanding the challenges
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Mobile search UX best practices, part 1: Understanding the challenges

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Teaching English with Zapier and Algolia
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Teaching English with Zapier and Algolia

National No Code Day falls on March 11th in the United States to encourage more people to build things online ...

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How AI search enables ecommerce companies to boost revenue and cut costs
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How AI search enables ecommerce companies to boost revenue and cut costs

Consulting powerhouse McKinsey is bullish on AI. Their forecasting estimates that AI could add around 16 percent to global GDP ...

Michelle Adams

Chief Revenue Officer at Algolia

What is digital product merchandising?
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What is digital product merchandising?

How do you sell a product when your customers can’t assess it in person: pick it up, feel what ...

Catherine Dee

Search and Discovery writer

Scaling marketplace search with AI
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Scaling marketplace search with AI

It is clear that for online businesses and especially for Marketplaces, content discovery can be especially challenging due to the ...

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Chief Product Officer

The changing face of digital merchandising
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The changing face of digital merchandising

This 2-part feature dives into the transformational journey made by digital merchandising to drive positive ecommerce experiences. Part 1 ...

Reshma Iyer

Director of Product Marketing, Ecommerce

What’s a convolutional neural network and how is it used for image recognition in search?
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What’s a convolutional neural network and how is it used for image recognition in search?

A social media user is shown snapshots of people he may know based on face-recognition technology and asked if ...

Catherine Dee

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What’s organizational knowledge and how can you make it accessible to the right people?
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What’s organizational knowledge and how can you make it accessible to the right people?

How’s your company’s organizational knowledge holding up? In other words, if an employee were to leave, would they ...

Catherine Dee

Search and Discovery writer

Adding trending recommendations to your existing e-commerce store
engineering

Adding trending recommendations to your existing e-commerce store

Recommendations can make or break an online shopping experience. In a world full of endless choices and infinite scrolling, recommendations ...

Ashley Huynh

Looking for something?

How to quickly evaluate Algolia with your Google Merchant Center data

Aug 12th 2020 ecommerce

How to quickly evaluate Algolia with your Google Merchant Center data
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Google Merchant Center has compiled your global product catalog and it is a part of your strategy for Google Ads or Google Shopping. Now that you’ve put in the hard work, did you know that it could help you evaluate another important aspect of your shopping experience: site search?

Evaluating a search solution often requires front-end and back-end developers, and a heavy investment of resources before ever seeing tangible results. In this post, we will review how you can use Google Merchant Center and the Algolia dashboard to build a POC in minutes – no coding skills required.

Algolia powers search and discovery over 9,000 customers – from Fortune 100 companies to small businesses and startups. It is our mission to make exceptional search and discovery experiences available to every company. Here is how to get started quickly.

Results in no time

The data from your Google Merchant Center product catalog can easily be exported, and then imported into Algolia with a user-friendly drag and drop interface that takes seconds. Once the data is loaded, the Algolia dashboard will let you search the data in a live UI.

1. Export the feed from the Merchant Center

  • After logging in to the Merchant Center, select ‘Products’ -> ‘Feeds’.

  • Click on the overflow menu (3 dots) in the feed pane (not the top right) -> ‘Download’.

  • Save the file as text.

  • Rename the file to TSV.

2. Load the data into Algolia

Go to https://www.algolia.com/users/sign_up and sign up for the completely free trial (no credit card required).

  • Select the nearest data center.

  • Press the ‘Create Index’ button. You will need to send the data to our servers so we can search into it, the data is put in an index which is a super fast data model optimized for search. You can name it anything you want.

  • Enter a name and press the ‘Create’ button

  • Select ‘Add records’ -> ‘Upload file’

  • Drag and drop the TSV file and press Upload

Congratulations, you have indexed your data in Algolia!

From here, you can test basic search queries in our dashboard.

What’s next?

If you want to take it a step further, you can:

  • Configure the search engine to improve the relevance or search results.
  • Add a business metric (like conversion, popularity, or profit margin). The Google product feed doesn’t include it, but this can be added as a custom field, or Algolia can be integrated to Google Analytics to get this information.

And, of course, we are happy to help! If you are interested in more information on the value Algolia can bring to your business please contact us and we can help you optimize your trial, view your data in a live online search, or assist with any other questions. Happy searching!

About the author
Micah Garside-White

Solutions Engineer @ Algolia

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