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Google Base To Replace Froogle
An anonymous reader writes "Google plans to introduce a new shopping feature in time for the holiday season. Soon products on Google Base will be searchable via the regular search box. Simultaneously, Google intends to de-emphasize its own Froogle shopping search engine; Google intends for Froogle to no longer be a standalone Web site." From the article: "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. 'Ranking will be determined by the attributes that the sellers listed for the product as well as by relevancy,' the analysts wrote. Currently, Google has no plans to monetise this product-search capability with display ads or listing fees, but that could change, they wrote. "
This seems a good time to mention http://www.givemebackmygoogle.com/ as featured in the b3ta newsletter recently. It filters the majority of shopping comparison sites from a google search, it's not perfect but it makes a big difference.
This is very old news. Those of us who have been using Froogle were notified about this transition about 6 months ago via email. Ho hum.
I use Froogle all the time. It's really simple to get useful results out of it - do you really think you're going to find a $15 ipod somewhere? Of course not, that'll be some useless case or related item. So set your lower price bound to something half-reasonable, like $100. Cuts out tons of crap, as long as you have *some* clue about the expected price range of what you're looking for.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
"The ad buyer just wasted money so the other guy could get a sale."
Not if the consumer didn't click on the ad, and instead clicked on the lower price in the search results. Google only charges per click, not for just showing the ad.
You can filter out search terms using the hyphen (-) just like in a Google web search. Try this:a se&hl=en&btnG=Search+Froogle
a se+-charger&hl=en&btnG=Search
http://froogle.google.com/froogle?q=cheap+ipod+-c
Want to get rid of the AC chargers too?
http://froogle.google.com/froogle?q=cheap+ipod+-c
Ramen
"Base" as in DataBase. It's supposedly not just for shopping, but also for content hosting.
Someone had to do it.