Yahoo Product Search?

[grobe]

What the situation about Yahoo Product Search;
Yahoo's competitor to Froogle:
[products.yahoo.com...]

Who exactly will they search: anybody like Froogle, people with a Yahoo store, people who have bought a Yahoo directory listing...? Any guess when they will move it out of Beta?

[Compworld]

Considering that they just started the beta within the last couple of months or so, I believe that they will try to make it ready by the holiday season just because Froogle will not be ready. Yahoo! product search is mainly for merchant sites that will submit a product feed. But most of the major sites will also be listed, mainly because they are already in Yahoo! shopping.

CompWorld

[hannamyluv]

I know when they will move it out of beta. Sept 23.

[Robert Charlton]

Just gave it a quick look. Don't know if this has been covered elsewhere, but there are several things I think they'll need to address....

- It's incredibly slow.

- It lacks a good algo... returns a lot of irrelevant results.

- Arbitrary price ranges they provide often fall right in the middle of a range I'd like to specify. I think, for it to be really useful, the user is going to have to be able to specify the high and low price points.

[Compworld]

I would think that they will come out with a far more robust service after the beta is over. After all, if they want to compete with Froogle, they will have to. I wonder though; what is going to happen to all of the PPC shopping search engines (I.E. DealTime, Bizrate, PriceGrabber, NexTag, etc.). I would think that they will now have a tough time to convince their current customers to pay their PPC & start fees after both of the Yahoo! and Google services come out of beta this year. Personally, most of them are horrible, and do not really do a better job than Adwords or Overture. I would think that they cherry picking of merchants and ridiculous fees are numbered.

What do all of you think?

CompWorld

[hannamyluv]

I don't think Y! is going to have a better system than they do now (which is not a good thing). I don't think it is ready for release but releasing they are. I spoke with a rep last week and they aren't even sure where they are going to put it yet, but they are going live on the 23.

I don't think that Deal, Biz or the others will be much affected by the whole thing, froogle or yahoo. Do you think Y! and Froogle are going to run for free? No, no, no. Yahoo's fees kick in Oct 15 on a pricing structure simaler to the shopping engines. I have no doubt what so ever that froogle will do the same once it comes out of beta.

The fact that Y! is rushing the live date for its product makes me think they have wind of Froogle going live, though I have no info to support that or when, if it is true. I think Y! will shoot themselves in the foot with rushing it though.

As far as the current shopping engines go, as long as I make money off them, I am fine with advertising on them. They do have one bonus over adwords and OV and that's that the customer can see a pic. Some of our stuff, we have not put on adwords/OV due to the fact that it just doesn't do well without a pic, but we are seeing success with them on deal and biz.

[GoogleGuy]

"Do you think Y! and froogle are going to run for free? No, no, no."

Hey, hannamyluv, I talked to the froogle folks, and they said there are no plans to charge merchants now or in the future, even when we come out of beta. So that's a difference between the two to bear in mind.

[mcavic]

they said there are no plans to charge merchants ... So that's a difference between the two to bear in mind

Thanks, GG. That's what I expected.

[kanetrain]

Google will not charge for inclusion and probably never will.
Yahoo will charge for inclusion, always has, and always will.

Google, for this reason, is one of the best search engines and best companies in the world.
Yahoo, for this reason, is seen as one of the greediest companies in the world and will never catch up to google.

IMHO, of course.

[Compworld]

Found this on Yahoo! Product Search help:

2.2 During the Beta Term, you will not be charged a fee for the beta version of the Service. However upon the expiration of the Beta Term, a fee will be charged for the production version of the Service. Near the expiration of the Beta Term Yahoo! will provide you with information on how to register for the production version of the Service and the associated fee.

But it does not tell you how much they would charge. If they want to catch up with Google, why would they do the complete opposite of Google

CompWorld

[fr_cnx]

Yahoo product search is running Overture PPC program? is it new?