Google to Sharpen Product Search for Holiday Sales: Analyst
Google will beef up product search capabilities on its general search engine in time for holiday selling and emphasize its Google Base selling platform as a comparison shopping engine, according to an analysts’ report published Friday.
The new search will involve presenting users who seem to be searching for a product type or category with a second pop-up search box that will let them refine their query. Those who do will be taken to a page of product listings from the Google Base service.
Robert Peck, an analyst with Bear Stearns & Co., wrote his report after speaking at the Professional eBay Sellers Alliance Summit in San Francisco last week, at which Google officials released the news of the company’s upcoming efforts.
Peck’s report says that listings on the Google product search page will be ranked according to the attributes sellers describe for their products and by relevance to the user’s search terms and refinements.
The new capabilities will come at the expense of Froogle, Google’s stand-alone e-commerce site. Google officials reportedly explained at the eBay sellers meeting that most users prefer to stick with Google’s general search engine when doing product research.
In August, observers noted that the link on the Google.com home page to Froogle had disappeared and been replaced by a link to Google Video.
Google Base was launched last November as a “listing service” where users including businesses, organizations and private individuals could post different types of content, including items for sale. The service is officially still in a beta test phase.
Last week, Google announced a co-marketing deal with software maker Intuit that will provide buyers of QuickBooks, a popular back-office data management application, with tools to streamline product feeds to Google Base and to open Google AdWords search marketing accounts.
