Shopify’s more than 1.7 million sellers can feature products across many of Google’s platforms.

The expanded relationship with Google means merchants can make their products discoverable to more consumers across Search, Shopping, Images, Maps and YouTube.

The news, announced at this year’s Google I/O developers conference, is part of the company’s plans to widen its grasp on ecommerce and compete with Amazon.

Google Ads contributes about 80% revenue to Alphabet, which generated $147 billion in revenue last year. Shopping is a growing piece.

After dipping to 54% in Q4 2020, Google share of Shopping retail clicks rebounded to its prior level of 60% in Q1, according to Merkle’s Digital Marketing Report Q1 2021. Users in Q1 migrated back to using mobile devices more frequently, which have a heavier focus on shopping ads than desktop. There were also fewer product-focused challenges with inventory and shipping in Q1 compared with Q4, according to the report.

Google Shopping saw an increase in year-over-year clicks, although to a lesser degree, at 12%. Strength in retail contributed to click growth for both formats as brands capitalized on increased general demand for ecommerce, as well as short-term demand from stimulus checks.

CPC for Shopping remained down YoY, according to Merkle.

There have been many changes around Shopping in the past year.

Showcase Shopping ads accounted for 7.1% of Google Shopping click traffic in Q1, marking a slight decrease from Q4.

In April 2021, Showcase began serving from Google Shopping campaigns. Format changes in Q4 2020 made the ad units look more like traditional product listing ads.

Google introduced free listings for Shopping in April 2020, which helped to build out the increase in merchants on its platform. This was something the company needed to do in order to gain the volume in searchable products.

Since Google set out to eliminate barriers such as fees and improve its technology, it has seen a 70% increase in the size of its product catalog and an 80% increase in merchants on the platform, Bill Ready, president of commerce and payments wrote in a post. 

Users are already engaging with Google’s shopping features more than 1 billion times per day, Ready told Forbes.

During I/O, Google told advertisers its Shopping Graph would now begin to pull information from websites, price reviews, videos and more to better inform online shoppers about where to find items, how well they were received, and which merchant has the best price.

When someone views screenshots of products in Google Photos, they will see a suggestion to search the photo using Google Lens to help find the item for sale.

Google is not the only ecommerce partner for Shopify. The company also has partnered with Facebook, Pinterest, Walmart and others.