Google Once more Says Product Costs Not A Rating Issue

Back in 2016, we covered how Google’s John Mueller said product pricing is not a web search ranking factor. Well, the same is true in 2022, six years later. But this time, Danny Sullivan of Google explained why it is not a ranking factor.

Danny Sullivan said on Twitter “prices change all the time, so it wouldn’t be that useful of a ranking signal.” So one day a product price might be $5, but the next day, maybe you discount it to $4.80.

Many well run e-commerce sites change pricing on their products often based on many factors. Amazon is constantly changing the prices of their products, there are even websites devoted to tracking prices across these sites and Google Search features to highlight pricing drops in search.

But would Google rank an iPhone case that sells for $5 in one store lower than a store that sells the same case for $4.80 – just based on the price change? The answer is no.

Danny did however say “you can, of course, sort by price if you choose or make use of some price filtering.”

Here are some of those tweets, but click through to see the full thread:

I’ll add that prices change all the time, so it wouldn’t be that useful of a ranking signal — which I don’t believe it is. You can, of course, sort by price if you choose or make use of some price filtering.

— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) March 21, 2022

Forum discussion at Twitter.