ComparisonEngines

On Sunday, the Google Base Blog announced the launch of the Google Product Search Partner Program.

ChannelAdvisor, Channel Intelligence, and SingleFeed (the data feed optimization company I run) are the inaugural partners of the program.

Here are the details of the partner program.

As one of the partners, I’m obviously thrilled to be included in this launch.

As I said in our press release “While there are many online marketing channels for merchants to test, Google Product Search is one of the most effective, but least utilized marketing channels. With the assistance of SingleFeed [or CA, CI], merchants can properly list their products in Google Product Search and be visible in areas of Google.com search results that display structured product data.”

I think this is a great move for Google. Yes, I’m a bit biased, but…if you look at the Google Base help groups you’ll see that merchants need some assistance with getting up and running on Google Product Search. Furthermore, I’ve personally reviewed hundreds of different feeds being sent to Google Product Search and know that merchants and agencies aren’t even submitting the minimum required product attributes, let alone testing data feed optimization (DFO) strategies.

Most established etailers have someone dedicated to SEO and someone dedicated to PPC. These employees constantly analyze and optimize organic and paid listings. Yet marketing through shopping engines is still usually an afterthought. Way too many companies ’submit it [a data feed] and forget it’. Hopefully CA, CI, and SingleFeed, as well as future Google Product Search Partner Program partners will lead the way in evangelizing the benefits to proper data feed submission, as well as data feed management and data feed optimization (DFO).

Thank you Cynthia, Jessica, April, and Jassim for including SingleFeed. We look forward to working with you!

Froogle is being replaced by Google Product Search. I’m waiting for the site to launch (it still says Froogle) to write up my comments. In the meantime, check out Elinor Mills’ take or Danny’s take.

A search for ‘engineering jobs in san francisco’ brings up a google base search box:

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A search for ‘new york apartment’ brings up a google base search box:

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Does it make any sense that a search for a product (Plantronics CS50/HL10 Wireless Convertible Headset) brings up Froogle listings as opposed to a Google Base search box or at least Google Base results?

The vertical search results on the main shopping engines should not be ignored. We’re all very familiar with Search Engine Optimization (SEO), but you can also get to the top of Google through Google Base. I estimate that over 30,000 merchants are taking advantage of Google Base, but only a very small percentage have actually done anything to improve their results on Google Base.

Over at SingleFeed, I discuss the concept of Data Feed Optimization (DFO) to help submitters get listed higher on Google Base and therefore have the opportunity to show up as a Google OneBox result, above Google’s organic listings.

Here’s a summary of the post entitled Google Base & Data Feed Optimization – How to Succeed on Google Base:
-Google Base is for almost anything. You can submit products (which I focus on), job listings, housing listings, recipes, blog posts, personal ads, and more.

-Most product submissions happen through an automated program that only submits the bare minimum requirements. This usually results in mediocre traffic to those listings. Google Base Store Connector and automated XML feed submissions through major ecommerce platforms remind me of the Submit It service of the early Web 1.0 days. Submit It would submit a URL to hundreds of different directories/engines for a small fee, but in my opinion, it didn’t matter if your URL was submitted if the page wasn’t search engine friendly. The same thing goes with data feed submission. Submitting a data feed is just one step. Merchants must optimize the data feed to get significant results.

-Introduction to Google Base Custom Attributes. Google Base has over 80 pre-defined optional product attributes, but will never be the expert in any particular product, so Google Base allow users to submit Custom Attributes. With this extra information, searchers will have a better idea of what the merchant sells and therefore the merchant has a better chance of attracting targeted visitors and converting those visitors into buyers. For example, a ski retailer might add a custom attribute for ‘ski length’ because it’s a critical attribute for a consumer making a ski buying decision. A energy bar retailer might add a custom attribute for ‘ingredients’ because it’s a critical attribute for people with allergies.

-When does Google Base matter? No one currently goes directly to base.google.com, although millions do go to Froogle which is made up of Google Base product listings. Hundreds of millions more go directly to Google and are sometimes exposed to OneBox product results, which are populated through Froogle (via Google Base). I think OneBox results will get a lot more prominent on Google this year. However, Google isn’t going to display just any Google Base listings in that prized OneBox area. The OneBox listings will be reserved for information that is more relevant than anything else on the search engine result page (SERP). Relevance means a lot of things to a lot of people/engines, but Google has already made it clear that the more information you provide to Base, the better your results will be. If a merchant spends time optimizing a feed and adds Custom Attributes, then the data could be more relevant than anything else Google has in its index.