R.I.P. Froogle, Long Live GPS!
As has been covered elsewhere in the blogosphere, Froogle is no more. Rising up from the ashes is Google Product Search. While more descriptive, one has to wonder what this really means to those of us optimizing for Base.
First off, the attributes used for narrowing the search have moved to the bottom of the page. This means more people are likely to click on something optimized generally than something optimized for attributes. A favorite trick of some feed optimizers has been including attributes your competitors don’t, then hoping that attribute gets featured. This may be less effective now, so paying more attention to the overall ranking is important.
Secondly, with a better name and some press around the change, we should start seeing more product searches. For those of us with optimized feeds, that’s great news. For everyone else, that’s ho-hum at best, and possibly scary.
In short, if you haven’t already started optimizing your Base feeds for maximum exposure on the best search terms, now is the perfect time to start.
Also mentioned in the podcast, Google Categories Prototype.
Comment by Steven | May 19th, 2007
Not on subject with this thread but I wasnt sure where to post it.
How/When does Google decide to show results for Product Search? How does it decide that you are actually searching for a product and feature it at the top of the page?
If I do a search for “miter saw 12″ it returns with product search results at the top of the page. If I do a search for Samsung TV it just returns normal search results.
Comment by Thomas Pletsers | December 28th, 2007
Today I saw Google changed the base product listing that you could access by clicking more to a prominent shopping link below the search box.