• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer, May 11, 2020

As California and other states slowly reopen retail stores offering curbside pickup in an effort to restart the economy, Google’s option to help retailers highlight safer, contactless fulfillment announced Monday is a big deal. It means advertisers can indicate whether they offer curbside pickup for specific products. The curbside pickup badge is on local inventory ads.

Online searches for “in-stock” items grew more than 70% globally from the week of March 28 through April 4, as consumers sought to avoid ecommerce shipping delays, according to Google.

Brick-and-mortar locations in California have been temporarily closed since mid-March, when Governor Gavin Newsom implemented a statewide stay-at-home order closing all except those deemed essential.

Knowing the status of stock would have been helpful to me when ordering patio shades from Lowe's this past week. I’m still waiting to learn whether the merchandise I ordered is in stock.

Google says local inventory ads lets retailers show consumers if the products are available for nearby store pickup, which now includes pickup curbside.

The feature is available in the countries where local inventory ads have launched such as Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK and the U.S.

Petco uses the curbside pickup badge to highlight contactless pickup availability on essential products such as pet food and supplies. The curbside pickup is available at most stores in the U.S., explains Jay Altschuler, Petco VP of Media Transformation.

Implementing the store pickup feature requires the merchant to run live local inventory ads. For each product that is opted-in to store pickup, the merchant must offer same-day or next-day pickup from the time the order is placed.

Some merchants, who have enabled store pickup can improve their local inventory ads by adding a “curbside pickup” badge. This places an emblem at the top of the ads, letting shoppers know they can take advantage of curbside or contactless pickup.

Eligibility means enabling store pickup -- requiring curbside or contactless pickup without requiring shoppers to use an app, and providing curbside or contactless pickup option to shoppers who purchase products on the merchant’s website and prefer to pick up at the store.