Google Announces New Shopping And Hotel Search Tools

There’s a company, which, besides providing all the necessary travel and tourism information, helps you to search for the best hotel and flight deals. Shopping is a sweet addition to this facility.

Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL) owned search giant Google on Tuesday unveiled some cool new features to boost the travel and shopping search experience.

On the travel front, Google search will now deliver exact results no matter how granular your hotel search terms are. Thus, travelers will have no issues finding a pet-friendly hotel in San Francisco for under $200, thanks to the new “Hotel smart filters” tool.

On top of this, the “Deal” label will showcase lower-than-average price deals for users while the “Tips” feature will suggest travel dates so that one can grab those deals.

In addition, the “Flights price tracking” option will provide information about major flight fare changes.

On the shopping front, the company is adding a “Showcase Ads” format to allow retailers to advertise a range of related products along with the searched item.

In addition, the "TrueView for shopping" feature will enable users to buy products advertised on YouTube. A companion banner below YouTube searched videos will showcase a range of products on top of the specific search. A product picker will allow users to select a product from those featured.

Google also said that it is trying to boost cross border search experience through tools that could convert prices of foreign products to local currencies.

Google’s own research has indicated that travel and shopping related searches on mobile have increased by 30% over the past year. So, it appears that with new features, the company is set to join the smartphone revolution leveraging its core capability – search.

At present, Google has a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell). Some better-ranked stocks worth considering are Blue Calypso, Inc. (OTC:BCYP) , Blucora, Inc. (NASDAQ:BCOR) and Shopify Inc. (NYSE:SHOP) , each carrying a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).