Mountain View, California — Whether on your computers or playing with your iPhone, Palm WebOS phone or Android smartphones, finding nearby products to buy and automating actions in Google Apps just got easier. Google on Thursday introduced a novel “Product Search” feature that allows you to check-out the product’s availability at a nearby store by clicking on the “blue dot” from select retailers in the US. These retailers include: Best Buy, Sears, Williams-Sonoma, Pottery Barn, and West Elm.
“We are glad to introduce a novel service that as of today, if you are looking for a product that is sold by listed retailers, including Best Buy, Sears, Williams-Sonoma, Pottery Barn, or West Elm, you can just look for the blue dots in the search results to see if it is available in a local store,” said Google product managers Paul Lee and Yury Pinsky in a blog post.
Inventory checking option is currently available in the U.S., for users of iPhone, Palm WebOS phones, or Android instruments by visiting Google.com through a mobile browser, choosing the “more” link and then selecting the “Shopping” menu tab or find the “Shopping results” section in Google’s Universal Search results when searching from Google.com.
Within the shopping search results from these retailers, you will also see a blue dot next to the item if it is available. By selecting the “In stock nearby” link displayed alongside these blue dots, mobile device users will be directed to a list of nearby sellers that have the desired item, provided the user has enabled access to his or her location through My Location or has specified it manually.
This is especially useful if you are on the move and saw something which you might want to buy. You can quickly perform search for the item on your mobile phones, and if Google mobile search returns a search result with a blue dot, you can check it out to find out where you can buy the product. You can also see the distance of the nearest store from your current location.
Moreover, these pages will show you how far away the store is from your location, for this to work, you will need to activate the location feature on Google and you have to be in the U.S.
A group of popular merchants are already participating in the said feature, but Google is inviting other retailers who wish to take part in this program to contact the company.