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Will the Google web search alter?

With the release of Froogle

         

mikeD

1:26 pm on Dec 16, 2002 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Does anyone feel that commercial queries on the Google web search will be changed with the release of Froogle.

vitaplease

2:00 pm on Dec 16, 2002 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Not unless Google pre-imposes something to the workings of what Giacomo proposed in this Froogle thread posting:

[webmasterworld.com...]

(nice idea by the way Giacomo)

psoares

2:48 pm on Dec 16, 2002 (gmt 0)



maybe it does not mean an immediate change of the google engine, at least i don't think google staff will be doing the change themselves, it'll be a consequence of froogle.

by creating froogle they automatically gather attention of those selling products directly, therefore freeing the regular google from these people. the ones left in regular google are likely affiliates and what google considers people duplicating product info just to sell, those without direct sales.

in froogle only people with real catalogs may join. so if you're not direct sales then you can't join. therefore affiliates are naturally flowing the direction of kaput. easy finding them now, anyone left selling in google is an affiliate, and regular searchers will immediately identify them as such and go directly amazon.com for example. real sales people with direct sales programs will be in froogle.

i think it'll be a natural genocide of affiliates. smart move by google too, no harsh moves, one great product engine and the end of the affiliate spam in sight.

"i am become froogle, destroyer of _________". <- fill your affiliate name on the blank.

europeforvisitors

3:35 pm on Dec 16, 2002 (gmt 0)



One thing Google could do (and I'm not saying it SHOULD do this) would be to tweak the algorithm so that pages selected for Froogle would receive slightly less weight in the main index. This would reinforce what we're already seeing for many product-related search terms: the tendency to push articles, manufacturers' data sheets, product reviews, and other information pages to the top of the search results. And it wouldn't really be unfair to those e-commerce pages, since they'd be getting additional exposure via Froogle.

I can see only one practical objection (as opposed to philosophical objections) to this: If pages selected for Froogle received less weight in the main index, affiliate pages (which aren't eligible for Froogle) might rank higher than the pages of merchants who actually stock and ship goods. And it's hard to imagine Google wanting an affiliate page for REI canoes at kens-discount-canoes-and-kayaks.com to rank higher for relevancy than REI's own canoes page in a search on "REI canoes."

MikeKay

3:38 pm on Dec 16, 2002 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I don't see Google removing commercial websites from their index. I think it would be a bad idea. If it's not broke, why fix it? Are there massive people complaining about the SERPs because they contain commercial listings? Does the average searcher really care? Now if Froogle allows you to sort by price then Froogle will seem more attractive to the average searcher. And I do beleive they will incorporate this in the future. Froogle should be another tool to find products with and compliment the normal Google searches. Isn't this similar to Yahoo shopping without having to pay for listings? Was Yahoo shopping so popular that people stopped using Google to find products? Did Yahoo remove commercial listings because their shopping portal was the way to go?

Froogle's in Beta and still has a way to go. In my industry Froogle's results are strange compared to the normal SERPs. Searching for my top keyword "widgets" brings back tons of toy widgets. Toy widgets don't show up in the top 100 results of Google's Serps but on Froogle there's tons of them. Also, I'm not seeing any of the top ecommerce sites in our industry on Froogle. Would change if they requested a data feed but it seems that they miss allot of websites on the crawl.

mikeD

3:53 pm on Dec 16, 2002 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



"i am become froogle, destroyer of _________". <- fill your affiliate name on the blank.

Hope this isn't the case. I feel a lot of webmasters who create affiliate sites only do so to create revenue to pay for hosting bills etc. for non commercial / information sites. If you destroy the ability to make revenue from affiliate marketing, there could be a drop in the amount of non-commerical / information sites being created. I know for a fact this would mean quite a few of my non-commercial sites being sunk.

mikeD

4:04 pm on Dec 16, 2002 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



in froogle only people with real catalogs may join. so if you're not direct sales then you can't join. therefore affiliates are naturally flowing the direction of kaput. easy finding them now, anyone left selling in google is an affiliate, and regular searchers will immediately identify them as such and go directly amazon.com for example. real sales people with direct sales programs will be in froogle.

For this not to happen google's best answer would be not to alter the web search. Make sure the sites in froogle are still in the web search.

europeforvisitors

4:17 pm on Dec 16, 2002 (gmt 0)



I feel a lot of webmasters who create affiliate sites only do so to create revenue to pay for hosting bills etc. for non commercial / information sites. If you destroy the ability to make revenue from affiliate marketing, there could be a drop in the amount of non-commerical / information sites being created.

Are you talking about affiliate sites or information sites with affiliate links? There's a difference, just as there's a difference between a newsprint shopping flyer and a newspaper that carries ads.

Mind you, I'm not suggesting that Google needs to (or should) drop affiliate sites. But it does need to keep affiliate pages (and commercial pages, period) from overwhelming its higher-ranking search results. FWIW, I just did searches on a few digital cameras. For several models, manufacturers' pages and independent camera reviews came up in the top positions; for another model, the top slots were occupied by merchant or affiliate pages. Which results were better? I prefer the former over the latter, but maybe that's because I'm not a retailer. :-) I do think the results should be more consistent, though. A user should be able to expect that, if he searches on a product name, he'll find information pages before he gets to sell pages--or vice versa, if that's how Google chooses to display search results.

mikeD

4:23 pm on Dec 16, 2002 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Are you talking about affiliate sites or information sites with affiliate links? There's a difference, just as there's a difference between a newsprint shopping flyer and a newspaper that carries ads

Yeah referring to affiliate sites that contain useful information. And the information is the focus, not the affiliate link. Obviously anything else is just spam and I would refer to it as such.

jackofalltrades

4:29 pm on Dec 16, 2002 (gmt 0)



>Yeah referring to affiliate sites that contain useful information. And the information is the focus, not the affiliate link. Obviously anything else is just spam and I would refer to it as such.

Thats a good point.

Ive seen purely charity based sites that use Amazon affiliate links to substantiate their site (with an account of the revenue earned to date on the site).

Personally, my one affiliate based site was originally intended to be a money maker, but now im just aiming to pay the bills for the other sites.

Do you think we are likely to see affiliate links intruding onto Froogle in some way? Ie, a site offer 10% products and 90% affiliates?

On another note...

I would like to see a froogle type search for purley information based sites. Just me though! :)

JOAT

JimBobMcCalister

4:31 pm on Dec 16, 2002 (gmt 0)



I have noticed that catalogcity shows up a lot, and they are almost entirely affiliate advertisements for merchants.

Honestly, my content is nothing but merchant products/ads, but I can still find my sites/products listed in Froogle.

psoares

5:40 pm on Dec 16, 2002 (gmt 0)



Google has so much computer science knowledge on their staff that I think they'll probably try to identify direct products from affiliates links automatically through pattern recognition and some artificial intelligence.

I do believe a lot of affiliate links will slip by and will depend on volunteer reporting, just like in the search engine.

Next rat hobbie : reporting competitors with affiliate links on Froogle.....the ammount of free help Google gets has no end...until everyone realises Google is a company not your best buddy....