What is CSS?

Created by Aneta Węglarz, Modified on Thu, 18 Apr at 11:18 AM by Aneta Węglarz

Comprison Shopping Service

CSS, or Comparison Shopping Service, is a product price comparison service that enables advertisers displaying product ads in the Google search engine. Previously, PLA ads were only available for via Google Shopping, but as a result of the penalty imposed by the EC, they can now also be displayed on others price comparison services. CSS works by collecting product offers from various e-sellers and users, who click on the ad are redirected to the seller's website. The main difference between Google Shopping vs other comparison engines is only that the name of the service through which the ad was displayed replaces the inscription "By Google".

How and why was Google CSS created?

The consequence of issuing the judgment by the European Commission was the establishment of the Comparison Shopping Service. She stayed on the European arena a new company was created within the Google group - Google Shopping Europe. The premise of GSE is to ensure competitive comparison and product search engines the same rules as in the case of Google Shopping.

A day before the 90-day decision period expires Tech pioneer informed the EC about the business division into Google Search and Google Shopping. From then on, Google Shopping operates as a separate entity. By doing so, GSE is forced to buy ad space from Google Search.

How to get a 20% discount from Goolge on Shopping Ads and ensure visibility of your own agency / comparision engine in the results?

To increase competitiveness, Google Shopping opened its auction on more comparison websites with approx. 20% discount. Why does it look like this? Because clicks on an ad from another comparison engine prices are not covered by an additional margin as in the case of Google Shopping. The only noticeable difference between Google Shopping and other price comparison websites is that instead of the inscription "By: Google" appears, for example information “By: Sembot.com”.

You can read more about this service in the official Google documentation: https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/7558973?hl=en