Online shopping gets a bit easier with Google’s new feature

Instead of searching for, say, black combat boots for clown feet under $50 on multiple sites for months on end, what if Google organized all those results for you? On Wednesday, Google announced that it’s now easier than ever to shop from Shopping tab results on mobile. The results will pull popular products from different sites first instead of just surfacing a collection of links. Once something catches your eye, you can see reviews for the item and, if applicable, the price at all the retailers that carry it.

What to expect — This new Google Shopping feature is rolling out to mobile searches for clothing, shoes, and accessories, with more products to come. Though it feels like an intuitive update, it dramatically increases the value of these results by making it easy to shop from search.

You can check out aggregates of user reviews, filter results by department, size, or style, and view multiple images straight from the results. This way, you spend less time looking and when you click through to a site, you’re ready to buy. The feature runs on similar search indexing to Google and is free to use, so big retailers won’t necessarily get more shine than smaller companies.

Shopping wars — Amazon has dominated e-commerce for years, but the realm of fashion is usually outside of its scope. Google Shopping, especially with recent upgrades like price tracking, already helps users find what they need outside of Amazon, so fashion is an ideal entry point for this updated version. More people are becoming critical of Amazon, but finding products on an increasingly dense e-commerce space can be overwhelming. Streamlining shopping results while also democratizing them stirs up some much-needed, healthy competition.