It's been just 18 months since Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) released the first iteration of its Google Commerce Search. Last week it released version 3.0 with some significant enhancements including adding Google Instant-style search.

Hadley Reynolds, an IDC analyst who covers search thinks Google has done a good job with the upgrade and has been able to improve the product quickly. "With the 3.0 Release, Google has taken another large step up the feature food chain for eCommerce search. This is a typical pattern for Google in enterprise (as opposed to web) search offerings: Come out with a pretty basic first release and then add enhancements steadily to improve the quality and range of the search and broaden the market to more demanding customers."

Reynolds says this is a fairly significant upgrade with some nice enhancements for eCommerce sites. "Google did a good job moving the ball down field, both with core innovations and with some blocking and tackling on features where they were trailing other offerings," he said.

Among the new features are:

• A local inventory feature that lets site visitors locate brick and mortar stores that have inventory in stock. So if a person would rather get in the car and buy it, they can do so with relative confidence that the item will be available when they get there.
• An instant type search for Commerce Search. By entering just the first few letters of the item, you see a list of items that most likely match what you're looking for along with a picture and price. 
• The new recommendation feature that lets visitors recommend products to one another.

While Reynold's is impressed with the overall implementation, he points out that Google is still a new player in the space. "There a number of competitors in commerce site search who have been around a lot longer than Google's 18-month history in this space. Adobe's (NASDAQ: ADBE) offerings go back over a decade, as do Endeca's," he says.

There are other offerings as well including a bunch of free ones, but overall Google appears to have done well in a short period of time, adding a bunch of very useful functionality for companies wanting Commerce Search on an eCommerce website. The challenge will be to keep it going in future versions.

For more information:
- see the Google Commerce blog post

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