Product Search is also a great vehicle for Google Checkout, the payment service that still needs a lot of promotion. As you can see from the screenshot below, there's so much Google Checkout in Froogle, that you start wondering if the entire service is an ad.
Google Checkout also has special offers (savings, free shipping, frequent flyer miles) for consumers, in addition to more than a year of free processing for merchants.
Google indexes all the reviews from Google Checkout users and adds them to Product Search (e.g.: reviews for SnowandWater.com).
As the stores who use Google Checkout gain more and more visibility in search results and ads, Google hopes to pressure the rest of the merchants to accept Checkout. Users are trained to look after the Checkout badge because they'll buy things faster and more conveniently.
Even if Google appears to lose money in Checkout, the future could bring a bigger spending in AdWords and happier / more loyal users. To achieve this, Google added a link to an unpopular service to the homepage and cluttered search results and Product Search with Google Checkout badges.
Google's fast and frugal checkout makes Google more powerful because you trust it with information about your credit cards and the things you buy and because you finally allow Google to finish the process of obtaining search results with a genuine confirmation: an acquisition.
Is it just me or has Google Product gone downhill since it changed from Froogle? There used to be more items listed and now it is mostly stuff that is google checkout related. Alot of the results are expired and if you sort lowest to highest the results don't always work.
ReplyDeleteThe Google Promotion box on top is interesting. Google previously stated: "[O]ur ads are created and managed under the exact same guidelines, principles, practices and algorithms as the ads of any other advertiser. Likewise, we use the very same tools and account interface."
ReplyDeleteSo, everyone outside Google can create such a box via AdWords?
@Anon
ReplyDeleteOr if you sort by seller rating you get sellers with one or two glowing reviews with no way to set a threshold or remove a seller from the results (unlike a web search where you could just add "-seller" to the search.)