Froogle Google - Google Froogle

Google launched a new service called ‘Froogle‘

this week.

It lets you search for information about products

that are for sale online. It’s a comparison shopping service that

uses the same search technology as Google. This means that it uses

ranking algorithms to return the results.

The Froogle service is in direct competiton

with Ask Jeeves’ new comparative shopping service (see news below)

and existing services like DealTime.com.* How does Froogle work?

When you search for a product, for example

the software product "Norton Anti Virus", then Froogle

returns similar results as in Google (that means headline, description,

link), except for:

each result has a picture of the product

(in our example, a graphic of the software box)
each result tells you the store name
each result tells you the price for the

product
You can narrow the search results by category

and by price.

Try

it yourself.

* Where do the Froogle results come from?

Like Google, Froogle uses spider software

to automatically identify web pages that offer products for sale.

In addition, Froogle also includes product

information that was submitted electronically by merchants.

* What’s in it for you?

In the near future, Froogle will be included

in Google’s search engine. This means that there will be a huge

opportunity to present your products to millions of potential customers.

To be part of Froogle, you must meet these

six requirements:

You must sell your products online.
Your web site must be in English.
Your products must be priced in U.S. dollars.
Your products must have fixed prices.
Your online store must be located in the

U.S.
You must sell your own products, affiliate

marketing is not accepted.

If you don’t meet these requirements, you

can use Google’s AdWords program to advertise in Froogle.

In fact, if you already participate in Google’s

AdWords program, your ads will automatically appear on Froogle result

pages. However, you must have requested that your ads may appear

on partner sites.

* How do you get your products listed at Froogle?

Now comes the best part. If you want your

products to be included in Froogle, it won’t cost you anything.

You can either wait for Froogle’s spider software to crawl your

web site, or submit to Froogle manually.

Unfortunately, submitting to Froogle is more

complicated than submitting to Google. You can find detailed information

about the submission process here.

* Beta

The Froogle service is currently in beta status.

This means that Google is testing the Froogle service in public

and that it’s not finished yet.

At the moment, you cannot access the Froogle

service via the Google home page. To access Froogle, you must either

click the Froogle link on the advanced search page or go directly

to the Froogle address.

* Further information about Froogle

Although Google hasn’t published an official

press release, all major news sources have written about Google’s

new service, for example