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they are telling me they will e-mail me within one week with details on how to submit a feed.
Note - I made my original inquiry last Thursday
JP
My favorite part of SES Dallas that it was a live conference, which is a refreshing change from typing into a keyboard to share information. Good, old-fashioned discussion.
The "Meet the Crawler" session was very good, as well as the Dynamic pages forum. I stayed all day for both days to soak up as much as possible. I am planning to attend again.
For these reasons I believe that taking away online stores from web search results could be detrimental to Google's effectiveness and popularity, but hey, that's just my opionion.
Totally agree with you on this point Giacomo, if it ain't broke don't fix it is my opinion. Obviously improving on the quality of search results is always going to be a must, but to break Google up into sections to me doesn't seem the answer. Like you say most people don't have a specific idea what they are searching for. Therefore if both commercial and information sites pop up in the results, it will give the user a better chance to find what they are looking for. People like google because it is easy and simple, to over complicate matters could cause problems for newbies. Sometimes we overlook the fact that a lot of ppl on the web aren't that web savvy.
Obviously improving on the quality of search results is always going to be a must, but to break Google up into sections to me doesn't seem the answer. Like you say most people don't have a specific idea what they are searching for. Therefore if both commercial and information sites pop up in the results, it will give the user a better chance to find what they are looking for.
The trouble is, how many users dig down past the top page or two of search results? Take a phrase like "(Name of big French city) travel," where (the last time I checked) eight of the top 10 search results were for hotel-booking services. That's fine if people are looking to book, but if they're just looking for general tourist information, they'll have to dig deeper and deeper into the SERPs to find material of interest. Offering them the option of excluding e-commerce results (or of including only e-commerce results, if that's what they're looking for) would help to solve the clutter problem in busy categories without requiring that the average user become skilled at search. And for users who preferred the grab-bag approach, there would always be the unfiltered complete index.
I can remember when, just three or four years ago, I could find pretty much anything of value on a given search term just be skimming the first few pages of Infoseek. Those days are gone: The Web is getting bigger every day, and--for some search terms--Google's SERPs are beginning to look like raw data dumps just because of the sheer volume of relevant (or seemingly relevant) pages. Froogle can help, but why stop at product listings?
Hopefully if people don't get what they expect, they'll be more specific, too.
You're kidding, right?
To my great relief I got mine too... maybe Froogle isn't part of some fiendish plot after all ;-)
I'm grappling however with the file format. A suggestion therefore GG... when Google sends the PDF instructions out, maybe an example of a valid file would also help. Perhaps a link to an example on the main Google site?
To WebmasterWorld members who have already done it... could some kind soul email an example file to me? It's so so much easier to use a template than interpret a desciption, and I don't particularly wish to mess up my first effort. Can anyone assist?
Yeah mikeD, it's the K.I.S.S. formula after all. ;)
> Like you say most people don't have a specific idea what they are searching for.
Well, I'm certainly not the first nor the last to say that searchers have a pretty vague notion of searching:
[...] Information seeking is an imprecise process. When users approach an information access system they often have only a fuzzy understanding of how they can achieve their goals.*
* Hearst, M. A., "User Interfaces and Visualization" [sims.berkeley.edu], in: Baeza-Yates, R., Ribeiro-Neto, B. (eds.), Modern Information Retrieval, New York, ACM Press, 1999, 257-323.
What a great opportunity for bad bad devil spammer like me.
GG, would you please add the froogle link on the google front page tomorrow?
We have two sites and one is showing up on Froogle, but none of the images are there. The only way I can find it is by doing a name search, not a product search.
I'm new to this, any thoughts?
I would say that every spam method you list is already or will be soon detected by the Froogle algo and you will be out 1,000's of dollars. These are smart guys. They have already thought of everthing you listed i would say.
that will be one of the most intersting things to see develop.
How will they rank all the sites with a set-up as you mention.
They must put in some kind of Pagerank algo into it, however I think they will be trying to not count afiliate back-links (if they can ever detect them).
As mentioned earlier [webmasterworld.com], IMO, they will never allow sorting by price alone.
There are major on-line shops out there that Google surely wants in Froogle, which would not allow spidering of there index if that would be put in as a sole criterium.
One of Froogle's biggest strengths is that results are sorted by relevance, and can only be narrowed by price.
suggestion: how about a unit field right after the price field - default could be each or you could put dozen, case of 24, gross, pound etc.
1) you could use the "size" field to specify your units. As the size field clearly cannot be restricted to numeric values, you could use it to specify your 'units'.
2) Use the "size" field to specify the number of 'units' and another new field - you may name it: "unit" and include it along with the extended format.
Guys - if anyone has any questions - please feel free to mail me - I'll share whatever I've learnt so far.
I think we should have a new forum for Froogle - obviously the level of interest is very high...
Cheers,
-Mervyn
suggestion: how about a unit field right after the price field - default could be each or you could put dozen, case of 24, gross, pound etc.
suggestion: how about a currency field right before the price field - default could be USD or you could put EUR, GBP, JPY, CHF etc.
Actually the data feed format does have a currency field in the extended format.
Thanks mervynj, I didn't know that (I haven't seen the feed format yet).
The problem is, however, that all submitted products must be priced in US Dollars. Froogle also told me they are currently only accepting online stores where the prices are visible on the site in US Dollars.
So what I'm really asking for here is true support for international currencies.
I think they are testing it now with USD alone - but in future they plan to handle other currencies as well. I think here's where the value of Froogle would be further enhanced. Being in India- I need to constantly keep calculating in my mind as I shop...and if there's a way that I could see prices in Indian Rupees..it would be great. Remember that the lowest price is not the only criteria - the ability to AFFORD the lowest price sometimes is...LOL.
Anyway - I was hoping for more questions on the Google data feed...I guess no one except you took up the offer :-)
Cheers,
-Mervyn
I'm not sure why affiliate sites are so loathed. I see myself simply as a sales person. I've worked hard, within Google guidelines, to get my sites ranked and to keep them there. Now all that work will be flushed in a single stroke. What about all of the online businesses that count on affiliates to sell thier products? I bet they're going to get killed by Froogle.
Well Google,... good job, tool looks good, you'll likely kill my work off fairly quickly.
Thanks.
disintermediation [marketingterms.com]Definition
The elimination of intermediaries in the supply chain, also referred to as "cutting out the middlemen."Information
The network economy was initially hailed by many as a way to eliminate intermediaries, enabling a direct path from producer to consumer. This might have been an misjudgment of the nature of intermediaries and networks.Intermediaries survive by adding value. If changes in the marketplace renders an intermediary's role less valuable, then the intermediary must adapt. If not, the old intermediary will likely be replaced by a new, more valuable intermediary.
Is it happening when Google is updated at the end of each month?
Are there also 3-www's like there are with Google.com?
Istvan
:)
Or maybe a FroogleGal :)
Looks as if it might be worthwhile to set up a dedicated Froogle forum soon, considering the number of posts here...
If Froogle really takes off I'm sure it will earn it's own forum, but for now there's been less than a post a day over the last week.
90% of the posts in this thread happened in the first 72 hours after the beta launch.
