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Google To Require Retailers To Pay To Be In Google Shopping Results
gambit3 writes "In a move to squeeze more cash out of its lucrative Web-search engine, Google is converting its free product-search service into a paid one. Online retailers will now have to bid to display their products on Google's Shopping site. Currently, retailers include their products for free by providing Google with certain data about the products. Google then ranks those products, such as cameras, by popularity and price. 'We believe that having a commercial relationship with merchants will encourage them to keep their product information fresh and up to date. Higher quality data—whether it’s accurate prices, the latest offers or product availability—should mean better shopping results for users, which in turn should create higher quality traffic for merchants.'"
Well, that was a slightly useful tool when it worked... not so much now. Now I will just get a listing of who paid to be there, and who are sure to keep their prices fixed to one another.
"Paid" does not imply "higher quality"; in search listings, it's quite the contrary.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
'We believe that having a commercial relationship with merchants will encourage them to keep their product information fresh and up to date. Higher quality dataâ"whether itâ(TM)s accurate prices, the latest offers or product availabilityâ"should mean better shopping results for users, which in turn should create higher quality traffic for merchants.'
That is a fine explanation of why you want to have a formal relationship with the retailers that you include in your search engine. Of course, that has nothing to do with it being pay-to-play. The pay-to-play is the part that matters to your users. The quote above is clearly deflecting attention from the change from a search engine (motivated primarily to satisfy the user) to a shopping mall (motivated primarily to satisfy the retailer). That is the part that is significant to users.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
FTA:
Google Shopping will empower businesses of all sizes to compete effectively
I wonder how Google's marketing department managed to rationalize that one. Remind me again how putting monetary barriers to competing in a market empower businesses of all sizes?
That's the ticket to bolstering your failing shopping program, get just a little more blood from that stone.
So Google is taking what is really a useful tool for consumers and make it another bidding system...only where the seller is doing the bidding. Now, if this means that all the ebay ads for products I'm searching for disappear, I wouldn't complain too much. however, all I see is this becoming another useless marketing site for moneyed resellers to push their drek, and price fixing so there won't really be any more deals to find. I don't mind ads but if I want to read a site with nothing but, I'll go to my local newspaper's classified section.
It wasn't always comprehensive. But it was useful in that it got the unrelated cruft out of a regular Google search, while sometimes missing a small retailer that didn't provide their product feed to Google. I generally searched Amazon, Google Product Search, and then a general Google search. Guess I'll drop the Product Search.
They could just rank the paid customers higher or even hide the free listings by default. Then at least the free listings would remain available if what I wan't isn't being sold by any paying customers.
The Google Shopping results are full of errors and bogus data. If a small fee helps address this then that's a good thing.
The issue would arise if they costs for a good listing becomes draconian (like Yelp).
If you want your business to show up on google maps it has to pay up. Could hide your city too if the local government doesn't pay to be listed.
One of my biggest issues with Google shopping is the number of prices that aren't current and inability to tell legitimate new sites from frauds. If they can improve that while charging a marginal fee then I would accept that as a worthwhile deal. Ultimately if Google charges enough that competitive shops stop listing then it'll shoot them in the foot. Also, just about everyone in Google's listings appears to allow affiliate sites and or buyers to use cashback sites. Google would be effectively skimming off some of their profit margin that they are happy to give to others.
And if you're shopping for the best price, the retailers with the lowest margins are not necessarily going to be paying to be on Google shopping because that'll eat into they're margins.
I actually see Amazon not paying google.
So does anybody have a decent alternative? It's really hard as it is to actually product search on google because of the SEO fake 'review' sites taking up the first 3-10 pages of results. Having them cut off Google Shopping at the knees like this is going to make it even harder for me to actually find stuff I need to buy.
http://googlecommerce.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/building-better-shopping-experience.html
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Nobody seems to be confused about that.
It's not knee-jerk to understand that the shopping results will now be there for the retailer, rather than the consumer.
You need to learn to control your mania so your posts don't come across as odd, the way they so often do.
Google to set large mountain of money on fire to make room for even larger mountain of money.
Now I'll be looking at the high-paying stores (amazon, sears, penneys) and not seeing the low-or-non-paying stores that often offer the best bargains.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Google Shopping isn't even in their main toolbar. It's now hidden under "more".
Using the shopping function is really a desperation measure - the prices are rarely "good" and the vendor list is exceedingly short. Anything that looks interesting is usually wrong. This is really on loss, since it's one of the few google services that simply isn't worth your time unless you need something obscure and you don't care where is comes from or how much it costs.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Google is also requiring the retailers to pay in Google Dollars which feature a picture of Larry Page at the center of every bill. Beginning in August the new Google Dollars will be the only currency that Google will allow to be used for all transactions with or through Google websites. The new Google Dollars will end the debate over whether the US Dollar or Euro should be the de facto world currency.
Ok, so I take it that you don't currently use the service?
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
Search listings that should be prioritized by popularity and relevance will be heavily skewed by 'paid' listings. But this is a different case, I think. Most of the information is supplied by the vendors. Therefore, it's easy for it to become out of date because the vendors have no accountability for maintaining it. However, if the vendor has to pay a little, then they're more inclined to either keep the values updated, or let the listing expire. It's quite possible that this will do exactly what Google claims: improve the data integrity. Of course, they're gonna put a little in their pockets in the process. But... don't most people expect to get paid in exchange for providing a service? A little revenue means there will be available funds for improvements. It's how things work. Advertisement has always had a cost. Why would Google's listing be ruined by it?
You look for anything that might be a product and you're going to be wading through pages of vendor sites. They should drop the shopping app altogether as it's already integrated with basic search.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
'We believe that having a commercial relationship with merchants will help to eliminate small business competition in the global arena .'
There, fixed the interview for you.
insensitive clod overlords obligatory xkcd car analogy russian reversals whoosh pedant fanbois ftfy in 3...2...1..PROFIT
pay to be listed within first 50 results on SERPS
They already have that; it's called AdWords. And when I read Google's description of the new paid listings, AdWords is the first thing I thought of.
... and they forgot to add : more money for google. i use askvini.com instead
artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.
Dear Google,
As a fan boy, step 1 is to stop relying on your search results when shopping.
Googles likely response? You will stop me finding price comparison (competition) sites easily?
Step 2, I go to Bing or Facebook search. (shudders) - I think I'd rather sh** my pants, but you know what? You ARE DOING EVIL, and this along with your other stunts is getting close to tipping me over the edge.
You SHOULD be helping me FIND the CHEAPEST price, not the cheapest sponsor price, which are almost NEVER the same. Your search will become useless to me.
Sincerely,
AC
The knee jerk reaction about everything google does has gone from annoying, to numerous and now returning to annoying.
At one time those "knee jerks" were nearly all trash-talking Microsoft astrofurfers, then after Jobs declared jihad I suppose it changed to a mix of Microsoft and Apple astroturfers. But now there is a new class of Google critic... people like me who used to think Google could do no wrong. But I have witnessed just too many examples of Google arrogance getting in the way of what is best for the user. A few examples off the top of my head: 1) Obfuscated search lilnks that spy on me, are stupidly awkward to copy, and often add ridiculous amounts of lag resolving to Google servers instead of to where I actually want to go. 2) Google news. In spite of literally thousands of comments from users that they all hated the beta, and essentially no comments in favor, Google ignored the resounding consensus completely and deployed anyway, causing thousands more negative comments. Today in spite of some window dressing it is still worse than the classic. 3) Android. Open source, closed development. As a result it has a fraction of the developers it could have, progresses more slowly, and sucks more than necessary, especially in areas that Google does not monetize. 4) Changed the search page to look like Bing. Good grief. At least Google had the sense to pull that after a few hours. But why didn't they check to see if everybody would hate it first? Oh, probably they did, and ignored the feedback just like news, the only difference being that this time the negatives cut straight at the core business and somebody with a clue recognized the danger.
Now, the thing that makes it worse is, I still have a lot of respect for Google's corporate culture, unlilke Apple or Microsoft which seem to bent on outdoing each other sinking to new depths of corporate depravity. Google is not that far gone, far from it. That is why I personally tend to react more strongly to (possibly) stupid things that Google does. There is still hope that Google can be shamed into doing the right thing, unlike Microsoft or Apple.
In this case I doubt there is any issue. The point is, I am now conditioned to expect the worst whenever I see a new alarmist article, troll or not, because of the really bonehead moves I mentioned above and others, that are incontrovertible facts.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
The point is that the top part is going to take over the search results. The bottom part, where you don't have to pay for placement, is being removed entirely.
From TFA:
First, we are starting to transition Google Product Search in the U.S. to a purely commercial model built on Product Listing Ads. [...] Ranking in Google Shopping, when the full transition is complete this fall, will be based on a combination of relevance and bid price--just like Product Listing Ads today.
From Google Shopping:
Google Shopping will launch this summer with new features designed to make shopping even more intuitive, beautiful, and useful. With this launch, Google Product Search will be discontinued.
Pegged to Facebook, Zynga, XBox Live, Wiipoints... And Smurfberries!
....Because the shopping tab was my go to place to check out brands and compare stuff easily and semi-reliably. Next up paid for page ranking, let's go back to what made search horrible 10 years ago.
Serious currencies, I see, not funny money. Like bitcoins.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Oh, was that humor? I was expecting you to go in a different direction, and then you put Yahoo, HP, RIM, MySpace.
I was expecting AltaVista, AskJeeves, InfoSeek, Overture.
But, yes, I agree with your premise -- does Bing have a shopping search yet?
That's the message I'm getting
I took the time to register about 50 products for my Mother's site victoriantreasury.com that has some handmade products - handmade valentine gift cards based on real antiques in her collection. Anyway the site shows up on the top page of google's results so I thought it might attract people interested in buying in this niche area.. she's really a collector and runs a collectors' society so it is not like Hallmark or anything. But it seemed it would be a perfect long tail kind of niche to fit Google's merchant area.
Well, despite even having to update the spreadsheet more than once as rules changed and putting much time into it, we never got many hits and finally when it recently seemed like it should start working the results list got filled with other vendors spamming tons of identical products to the point that our company didn't even show up in the list of vendors. The engine was very susceptible to be gamed. If they did an ounce of work trying to make a serious engine I would not begrudge them a percentage of any sales made but as it is, I am sorry I wasted my time on Google which you never know if they are going to stand behind a system they build or trash it the next week. Sure glad I didn't get into Google Wave, either. Maybe Google is its own worst enemy?