TGIF, it’s time for another BIG Thanks post week ending the month of November. If you’re not already familiar with this series, it’s a weekly one we do on Fridays to thank sites, blogs and authors who have mentioned our blog in a post, linked to us from a post or have added us to their blogroll. For anyone interested in checking out our previous BIG Thanks articles, they can be accessed in our BIG Thanks archives, within our Site News and Updates section.

I was searching around on Google Product Search today and noticed something amazing, new features. Not only are there new features, but they are useful to both shoppers and merchants who upload to Google Base in order to get listed in Product Search.

My regular readers know that I have been giving a lot of attention to Google Product Search and Base the past two weeks as they continue to add new features and improve both of those services. They have even been updating Google Checkout policies lately. Hmmm, makes one wonder what’s in store, looks like they are getting ready to do something BIG with all of the attention that these core Google commerce services have been getting recently.

So, what are the new Google Product Search Features? Check them out below, you won’t be sorry…

I will be heading down to Las Vegas tomorrow to attend the annual WebmasterWorld PubCon Conference. The actual conference doesn’t start until Tuesday next week, however I decided to go a little early to take in some of the Vegas attractions, shows, sights and, of course, the nightlife. Posting may be a little lighter than normal, but I do intend on publishing some must see content today, tomorrow and next week, so it won’t be completely deserted, just not everyday like I prefer.

Recently, I discovered the newly launched PayPal Labs site (currently located at http://www.x.com). PayPal Labs is the new destination for the latest, greatest and hottest PayPal applications put out there by PayPal’s distributed payments team. It is meant to inspire engineers, product managers, and other employees at PayPal and to tap the creativity, innovation, and passion of their teams.

I also wanted to mention the new official PayPal Company/PayPal Labs blog, simply named, The PayPal Blog. The team of bloggers uses The PayPal Blog as a forum for their employees to engage other PayPal users, in order to connect them with company leaders and team members. In addition, the bloggers hope that users will share their feedback and discuss or comment on the latest happens at PayPal.

PayPal Labs is PayPal’s showcase site which allows you to take our experimental products for a spin. Many of these projects come from startup-like groups within PayPal, which is why the tubular design in this site pays tribute to the logo used in PayPal’s original Palm application.

This is big news about Yahoo that you’ve probably heard already (it hit CNBC and other major mainstream media outlets today), but I felt it was important to mention it here as well. I usually don’t like to cover topics that have been blogged to death, however this particular topic involves two things I am very passionate about, eCommerce and search.

So, what’s the big news? Apparently, Yahoo Merchant Solutions (formerly Yahoo Stores) had an outage which lasted roughly 14.5 hours on Monday that affected over 20,000 eCommerce merchants on the busiest shopping day of the year (Cyber Monday). The cause for the outage is not too clear, although there are reports of malicious attacks against them which may have affected their systems. Other statements and reports reveal that it may have been due to higher than expected traffic volumes over the Thanksgiving weekend, or that the routers or other system equipment may have been misconfigured. The outage and response from the downtime prompted an official apology from Rich Riley of Yahoo’s Online Channel Division.

During the Thanksgiving break I was able to spend some time updating parts of eCommerce Optimization. I will continue to update the site and add new features or resources, but updates to the site will come slowly as I tend to prioritize the content, including new articles, guides, interviews and reviews. In the mean time, be sure to subscribe to our feed, that way you will never miss new blog or community feature announcements like this one.

This time around I mostly concentrated on reader and comment features that I hope will help to make our community even more enjoyable for our readers, especially those who comment on blog articles regularly. There are also some new additions to our blog sidebar that help tie in many of the comment features that were added.

So, what are the new features? Check them out and be sure to leave your feedback in the comments…

Lots of news from Google Base this past week. Sweet!!

There was a post yesterday afternoon on the Google Base blog announcing the re-introduction of the model_number attribute. Model numbers are similar to the MPN (manufacturers part number) or UPC (Universal Product Code) data feed attributes.

It’s Friday again everyone and time for another BIG Thanks article. Remember, this is a regular series we post on Fridays to thanks individual authors and blogs for linking to us, adding us to their blogroll or mentioning an article of ours on their blog. We have five more supporting sites to mention for our BIG Thanks post today. For those of you who have not already seen our previous BIG Thanks articles, you can access the BIG Thanks archives, and other site related updates, in the eCommerce Optimization Site News and Updates section.

I received an email from Google Checkout informing me that there is another Terms and Program Policies update taking place. If you currently use Google Checkout and have not yet read the update, please do. Chances are there isn’t too much that will affect the way you conduct business, but I always find that there is at least one thing that directly affect me.

This is not meant to be a thorough review or commentary, just the email for your reference…

The Google Base blog has a new post today announcing the addition of a new bulk upload dashboard within Base user accounts. This announcement comes shortly after an interview I conducted where I was told they would be adding some features and continuing to improve what they already have. I was just commenting with one of our readers about the lack of posts on Base’s blog, it’s nice to see them post again so soon.