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Does anyone have feedback on it? Is it effective? Is the traffic good?
Thanks!
Keep in mind inclusion (via feed or otherwise) is free, so getting in there costs you nothing more than time and effort (building feed).
IMHO its not worth my time to keep submitting feeds, not many people using yet I don't think.
Not 100% sure what you mean by the above. If you mean their requirement to upload a new feed once a month, simply automate that. Make it a crontab entry or something.
I am not saying it is not worth the time investment. If you are looking for an immediate return for the time invested - building the feed - it is not IMO. However, think of it as a way to get on the ground floor, figure out the workings, and have a leg up on your competition when it leaves Beta.
Froolge is a truly great idea. If it works out it could leave Google as more of a research tool and turn all of the shoppers to Froogle. This is of course assuming it ever leaves Beta. It has been in Beta for quit some time now. I am a big support of the theory; I just want to see them do something with it.
...not many people using yet I don't think.
I think you've got to know about it to find it... Froogle isn't like Google News, also still in Beta, that's pretty accessible from the rest of the site.
With News, Google has a full sized database to start with. On Froogle, I've monitored some product searches from time to time, and it's clear that in several areas, Froogle is grasping at straws to come up with sites to return. It's easy to see the algo in action when there are hardly any listings. But the database is building, and results I look at are getting more relevant.
Not sure how they build critical mass, and whether that's the only problem. There's a link to a story in the Supporters Forum indicating that Amazon considers Froogle as potentially big competition, so it's definitely not dead.
I think they are probably struggling with more technically challenging issues than in the news.google like how to insure they get the right price and picture from a page - the mind whirls just thinking about it.
An interesting Economics issue will be if Froogle takes off like Google did, then we will start to see some thing close to real time Ecommerce Economic Efficiency. Whereby Etailers are forced to give more competitive pricing to stay competitive in Froogle. I have to say as excited about it as I am, as the VP of Marketing and IT it makes me very nervous too.
sampyxis,
If you are looking for votes of confidance for Froogle feeds. I just gave approval to integrate an automated feed into the design of our companies new core Ecom management system that will be controling 11 sites.
The potential power of Froogle has yet to be realized. Imagine, right there on several million installed Google toolbars, all your shopping needs met. I think they are currently building their back-end for the upcoming PFI.
