Google: Upgrade For Search Engine Due For Holiday Season

Product searches to move onto google.com

[engine]

Google plans to extend the product search capabilities on its main Google.com search engine in the fourth quarter, in time for the holiday shopping season. A Google official shared the news with attendees of the Professional eBay Sellers Alliance (PESA) Summit in San Francisco this week, according to people at the conference.

When people search for products on Google.com, the system will present them with another search box so that they can refine their query, according to Bear Stearns & Co analysts. After people refine their query, Google takes them to a second page populated with product results from the Google Base listings service.

Google: Upgrade For Search Engine Due For Holiday Season [pcadvisor.co.uk]

So, it looks like we're going to get Google Base listings from refined queries on the standard search.

Bye bye froogle.

[walkman]

it seems like the comparision sites (shopzilla etc.)will take a hit now.

[asher02]

I just hate it when Google plays with things just before the holidays season. It became very difficult to build a strategy for ecommerce during the holidays season as serps are far from being solid and usually change just after you finished loading your stock for the holidays.

[panic]

it seems like the comparision sites (shopzilla etc.)will take a hit now.

I think that really depends on the vertical, and how aggressive (or un-aggressive) each of the shopping portals will be in acquiring visitors.

[walkman]

I mean they will lose free visits from Google, as enough might go straight to the merchant if Google becomes the "Shopzilla." Now people no longer need to hit the Froogle tab...

As far as hating Google for doing this before christmas: they have their own (and the user) interests in mind.

[howiejs]

Won't they roll more froogle in there vs. just base?

[Bennie]

Bye bye froogle.

Or maybe even bye bye Google, AltaVista style.

I guess it all depends on what part of the SERPS your working in and how it's implemented.

I can only see the bigger players winning here and with people looking for smaller companies on searches I can't see this as good.

Mind you I could be wrong and it might open up new avenues for business and spam.

[edited by: Bennie at 11:00 pm (utc) on Sep. 25, 2006]

[Bewenched]

Just great .. so now on top of maintaining our own systems and data .. now we have to upload tens of thousands of items into google base?!?!

[howiejs]

Just great .. so now on top of maintaining our own systems and data .. now we have to upload tens of thousands of items into google base?!?!

Yep, this is exactly what google wants

[skibum]

The more you upload to Google base, the more you will eventually depend on Google for everything and maybe have fewer and fewer options down the road for advertising.

[Bewenched]

skibum,
Exactly!

I've done the whole google base / froogle thing with a few of our product lines. Honestly it made me very uneasy giving google all of our data about our products including keywords so users could find the item. Very uneasy.

Not to mention that the sales from the upload did not bring the traffic to warrant more time spent on the project. When we compared the time it took to construct the dataload with the sales it generated and we lost money when we looked at the big picture.

[minnapple]

If the search box is a "secondary option" to refine their search, less that 5% will actually use it after their first search.

Google would be better off, offering the "refined search" box after a few back buttons.

Otherwise it just becomes more clutter to be ignored.

[Liane]

Or maybe even bye bye Google, AltaVista style.

Lord, I wish I had a buck for every time I've seen this written in these fora!

Otherwise it just becomes more clutter to be ignored.

Exactly. If it works, everyone will sing its praises but if it doesn't, it will join the growing list of product experiments which didn't work and quietly disappeared without fanfare.

[sun818]

Google Base can be used to combat spam since they will have access to your data fields. It'll be much easier to detect duplicate content even when its organized differently. As Google Base grows, this will probably be a big loss for affiliate marketers.

When we compared the time it took to construct the dataload with the sales it generated and we lost money when we looked at the big picture.

How can this be? Once you generate an automated system, you put very little time into it. I think at most I must have spent 10 hours developing the upload file and generating a script to FTP the text file. Divide that by the number of months I haven't touched the Froogle feed and it is a minimal investment. Maybe your costs were higher, but the time I spent with the number of sales I have received from Froogle, it has been the best use of my time.

[howiejs]

When we compared the time it took to construct the dataload with the sales it generated and we lost money when we looked at the big picture.

Use the google base API :)

I have a very different feeling about this then the other posters.

I think this is INTERESTING - as a way to get "fresh" listings in the index vs. trying to compete against 5 year old .edu and .gov sites and wikipedia on every SERP . . .

[fiu88]

Now I really have no choice but to figure out how to feed our data to google base!...I noticed a couple of weeks back thagt they had some gooogle base results...must have been a prelim. test...

[rj87uk]

On Google Base:

Want more traffic? Use Google AdWords to advertise your items.
Learn more or sign up

Just one big ploy to get new Advertisers. Good thing i come here or else i would never be able to stay infront of bob, joe and jane.

[mattg3]

Just great .. so now on top of maintaining our own systems and data .. now we have to upload tens of thousands of items into google base?!?!

Capitalism without working anti trust laws tends to develop towards free labour. You are given free tools and are expected to provide free content on the small hope to join the few that make enough money. Especially in English it's a global marketplace. It's the equivalent of small local shops being eaten up by the big supermarket chains. And given that the big option is only a mouse click away and not a car drive, the convenience shopping [aka you go to local shop, because you can't be a..ed to drive to the big one] falls away too. So the best option on the long run is to live in market segments that are too small for the big players to enter, but sufficient for you to survive. Aka very specialised products like selling honey made from some weird flower or so or to support/promote an offline business like a nursery home, pizza service or anything that can't be done virtually. BTW also the reason Google wants wee hobby sites in adsense, as this is the market they can't feed yet with profit but is in total big enough to skim of the small profits these pages can do for themselves.

The commercial net being about 10 years old is still somewhere in the industrial revolution stage maybe even before that. With SEO essentially dead, even knowledge about the SERPS can't really save you anymore.

[Kirby]

Froogle was a bust from the onset. Google base could actually work, and this is a good start. Base extends google into markets such as autos and real estate that wouldnt have worked with Froogle.

The problem Google base will have is dupe content.

[dakuma]

With SEO essentially dead? Please elaborate on this Matt

[ulysee]

Seo is alive and well but it's the black hat's who are now the winners.
This is business this is life and you have to play dirty most of the time to win.
I just wish Google wouldn't of have changed the algo so much to which in doing so created more and more spammers.

Google search was something different something great but now it's just like any other search engine dull and played out.

[howiejs]

Google search was something different something great but now it's just like any other search engine dull and played out.

Base helps fix the above - it brings TIMELY results back into the main google index . . .

I think the negative posts in this thread are really missing what is going on . . .

[dakuma]

From what I understand, the user will be presented? with a second search box? Seems to me as though you are not forced to type anything in this second option, but if you are looking to make a purchase the option is there for you? If this is the case that seems fine and reasonable to me, I'll leave it blank 99.9% of the time unless i'm actually looking to buy something.

[stajer]

I think I found an example. In another topic on this bb, there is a discussion about google running a special ad campaign for <a certain brand of car>.

I googled "<brandname car>" looking for the ads they were talking about in the article. I did not find the ads, but I found something new.

At the top of the search results, google had a form. The form had two fields:

1. enter your zipcode
2. a list of car brands in a drop down (with <my brandname> preselected).

I entered in my zip and was taken to a google local page showing <that brand of car> for sale in my area. Looks like the google base mixed with google local.

[edited by: tedster at 12:10 am (utc) on Sep. 29, 2006]

[trinorthlighting]

Google base and froogle are great. If you do not have your products and services listed there I suggest you do it. We get a good chunk of traffic from there.

Its just another way for a customer to find you...

[WebStart]

<The problem Google base will have is dupe content. >

The problem with Google base is it takes forever and day to upload your content, same problem with Froogle, which is maybe one reason it never went anywhere, compared to say Shopzilla, or Shopping.com which are relatively easy to use.