Forum Moderators: open
Time to adjust my job description.
I stand to be corrected... but I expect the 'data feed' to be convoluted and difficult for the sole trader to address.
GoogleGuy, is Google working with the merchant software people (Miva, Paypal, stuff like that) to make this easier for people?
Seems to me it'd be easy for, say, PayPal to automagically export all your information in the format that Froogle wants.
Does a manufacturer/retailer of a particular product have to submit a datafeed in order to rank first?
Right now, it's pages down in the serps, and that doesn't seem relevant. Most organizations prefer to deal directly with the manufacturer/retailer.
martinibuster: I wouldn't think so. We're going to sort in relevance order.
The news button on the toolbar only goes to the main page. It's not a search button like the web, site, images, groups, and directory buttons.
So I guess this is another one to wrap our brains around.
Thanks GG for the answer, mighty nice of you to drop in.
Gguy seem to know a lot about how to help us all "undertstand" froogle today, but as of yesterday no one had ever heard a peep about it. That would indicate one of three possible scenarios.
1. gguy knew nothing about it until we did
2 he knew about it but had no idea is would create such a stir so saw no point in bringing it up
3 he knew and was simply instructed EXACTLY what to say to who and when.
If it's 1, then yeah maybe it's true we are all their friends. it's just some of us don't know it yet.
if it's 2, then all the help we get about how to run our sites maybe isn't such great advice from one friend to another after all.
If it's 3, we not friends, we're suckers
CNN, Washington Post
GG I think you have a winner with this Froogle thing.
Been common knowledge for a long time, everyone was expecting a paid for service [me included], the current format is a surprise.
anon_e_moose (very cool handle, by the way), none of your three alternatives are true. :) Googlers typically don't discuss any projects until they're released. That gives us the flexibility to test new projects without worrying about expectations or release dates. And I'm just a regular Googler; nobody "instructs" me on what to say. :)
It would be fairly trivial to code up an Page that will parse out the relevant from a database and send to Google...set a cron against it, and then forget about it...
Currently all of their pages are indexed in the regular database and do extremely well, so it seems that frooglebots algorithm is not seeing the products as for sale for some reason. Would seem that some additional work is definitely needed to refine the algo a bit more.
Would be nice to know how Froogle decides what products are for sale online so we could make sure everything is as friendly as possible to the bot's new algo.
This looks like an incredible addition to Google's search functions. Applying "products" and "for sale" filters to searches in a relevant and effective manner is a huge leap for search.
Google has done it again.
Title seems less prominent in froogle than google. They must be looking for "price" in the text as well as a numeric that looks like a price - maybe the nearby text is assumed to be the product description.
I have noticed a couple of my listings in froogle are completely off topic - like my blue widgets are listed under red gadgets - I have a featured item box to the right of my item display pages, I'm guessing that the red gadgets were probably being featured (they rotate, so I'm not sure) on the blue widgets page when it was spidered - somehow, froogle associated the text with the wrong item.
I wonder if they will check for the presence of a secure certificate?
Would be nice to know how Froogle decides
That's called their algo.
It would be nice to know but that would just open things up to spam.
It would be nice to know but that would just open things up to spam.
I agree unfortunately. However, if Google is going to take it upon itself to decide if a product is for sale online, it would be nice to know how they decide that so entire sites and thousands of actual products are not left out.
Unfortunately, you are right, if Google were to make ths known it would open up a lot of spam possibilities that would certainly end up diluting Froogle with affiliates etc.
Well, time to start doing a bit of reverse engineering. Ahh..something new to play with.
This is my first message ;) only to say that froogle is one of those things that make me believe this:
Google is in fact Sauron , The Eye that can see all the web
... and the most important thing....
!
GoogleGuy has a Palantiri to establish a link with him!
Congratulations to all for this forum
It's kind of like having your product information syndicated for free.
I am concerned about prices being shown though. These don't include shipping and people play games with low prices and expensive shipping. I wonder how it will play out.
I think, given the very competitive nature of the retail area I work in (furry widgets) that my building a great online business depends not just on price or even shipping costs, but as well on the sense of relationship and trust that I can establish with my customers.
In a previous company I helped found, it was our high number of repeat customers and word-of-mouth about our customer service that allowed us to have decent growth in our competitive field.
I expect to pay even more attention to my target consumer, and what they are looking for, and being one of the first to find new products that fill their needs.
As an article I read today referenced, it's about trust..and building a relationship with one's customer that is worth more than just having the lowest price.
Patriciak
Hopefully Froogle will stay true to the Google Creed of actually finding real search results of real sites.
As opposed to fake sites? Heck, even spammers are generally selling real products/services, so I'm not sure what you mean by this statement.
Actually, after a closer look at Froogle, it just looks like Yahoo Shopping to me. I use Yahoo Shopping when I'm looking for something small and obscure, like Belgian chocolates in the shapes of zoo animals or something. I don't use it when I'm looking for major products, but maybe that's just me. The pricing never seems accurate across the board, which I think will remain a problem for shopping engines like this.
AAnn
Right now, is buried under the advance search option at the bottom of the page, with the scary words beta after it.
Not to many is going to be searching froggle until it hits the main google page.
I agree with what your saying. I just didn't bring it up. Price is not the only consideration when buying a product. You can create and maintain customers in a variety of ways.
best,
Squared
A girl whose name was Lulu (gle)
needed a new hairdo (gle)
but she didn't have a clue (gle)
where to get a haircut and shampoo (gle)
So she asked her smart nephew (gle)
who suggested she search it in Froo (gle)
she was able to quickly preview (gle)
a salon she could quickly go to (gle)
I'm in bad need of sunshine and fresh air!
