Google Product Search Traffic Down, Other CSE’s Report Steady Or Increased Traffic
I was browsing news headlines yesterday and came across an interesting one on CNN Money about Google Product Search. According to the news piece, the comparison shopping engine site by Google has been experiencing dramatic drops in traffic to their shopping service while comparable shopping search services such as TheFind.com or Pronto.com and even Yahoo Shopping have all increased or remained steady, at the least.
I thought the article was well written and deserved some attention as I don’t recall seeing much about it when it was first published yesterday (I thought it was odd to see the article published on CNN Money and not some other site geared more towards the eCommerce/CSE space). One of the things I liked about the write-up most was the collection of opinions that were gathered by the article author from well-known, influential individuals or companies including other comparison shopping engine employees and founders.
Brief Article Overview:
According to comScore, Google Product Search’s October 2007 unique visitor count dropped 79% from October 2006. It was the biggest drop out of the top 25 comparison shopping search services.
So the main point of the article seems to be the fact that Google, a company who owns over 50% of the search market in the United States, is unable to transition those types of results and numbers to some of their other search services including Videos and Products/Shopping. Although Google was unable to comment on the article topic, and there was no ‘official’ answer from them, I believe the opinions of many of the individuals in the story were right on target.
Here’s what Greg Sterling, of Sterling Market Intelligence, had to say…
You would think that comparison shopping is an area that Google would be emphasizing, but they are not. It goes back to Google’s Darwinian philosophy about its products, which is allowing these things to go out into the world and gain traction — or not.
Here’s what Ron LaPierre, chief executive of PriceGrabber.com, had to say…
Google just hasn’t put enough effort into making the site more competitive. They focused more on taking information from all different sources and presenting it not necessarily in a very structured, accurate and consistent environment.
Here’s what Siva Kumar, chief executive of TheFind.com, had to say…
Froogle started too early. We couldn’t have started our company three years ago, because computers weren’t powerful enough yet. Froogle didn’t have the benefits of all the (advancements) that have happened over the last few years.
Here’s what Danny Sullivan, editor in chief of SearchEngineLand, had to say…
If the company was looking to drum up some holiday shopping traffic, it might have been a little late. (Speaking about the addition of the Products link to the main navigation around Thanksgiving 2007)
My Opinion & Final Thoughts:
To me, this is another clear cut case of a search engine that wants to be everything to everyone (obviously, since Google states that themselves). The problem with that philosophy is that, at times, it can also be a hindrance to a company, especially if there’s too many projects on the table and too few people to PROPERLY launch, manage, test, scale, improve and promote all of them.
The same thing happened to Yahoo Shopping and will most likely happen over at Live Product Search. Although, Yahoo is further ahead than Google when it comes to their shopping services and time in the space. The BIG guys don’t give enough attention to these services, they never really have, any of them. Why would they all of a sudden start now? Oh, because there’s billions of dollars spent annually from shopping Online, plus all the opportunities to get new sponsored listing advertisers. The thing is, the shopping services that are just that, shopping services, will eventually overtake the ones who have too many other services on their plate to remain competitive, even potentially Google (if they don’t invest some money, time and dedicated staff to this, as they have slowly begun to now).
I am all for any service that help shoppers find the product(s) they want quickly, easily and without hassle, and generally I like a lot of the ones that are out there, including Google, Yahoo and Live.com shopping services. It’s just my opinion that some of them will have a hard time increasing traffic and remaining competitive when they are up against companies like TheFind.com, with unbelievable funding, talented staff, motivated programmers and being able to spend ALL their time and effort on JUST the shopping service.
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6 Reader Comments & Links
Add a new comment...Comment posted by Dan Shields
December 27, 2007 @ 1:29 pm
It’s really weird to me that it has dropped off so much. Are they sure these numbers are accurate? Does this count when users click on the one box links?
Google Base continues to be one of our best shopping engines and for free. We see just as good results from Base as we do Shopping.com, Shopzilla and much better than Yahoo.
Most of our traffic comes from one box results though so I’m not sure thats the best thing. You would also think shoppers would feel more comfortable with Google Base since they are getting real results and not ones dependent on how much the store paid the engine per click.
Just like in previous articles you have written on Base, I think once Base can straighten out their algorithm and get more relevant results and market the shopping a little more we could see some great results.
Comment posted by eCopt
December 27, 2007 @ 4:50 pm
@ Dan Shields - It was weird to me too Dan. Yes the numbers are accurate and personally I have found comScore to be a pretty trusted source.
Not sure if it counted OneBox click results or not, but I can’t imagine they would leave them out. The thing with the OneBox results are that most of the links direct users straight to the sellers site, only the top “Product search results for…” link will take users to Product Search results. There is also a link under the OneBox results that will take users to Product Search results sorted to Google Checkout enabled stores.
The report probably only included visitors directly to Product Search, not visitors who used Product Search to find items of interest and went straight to the source.
I also get good amounts of traffic from Base/Product Search and personally my sites have not experienced a drop in traffic from either, however the report was not geared towards individual store visitors, only visitors to Product Search pages. I will still use it, and imagine others will too.
I agree that they need to work on their algo, features, data feed specifications, merchant inclusion documentation and support or discussion groups. It’s still got that Google name behind it, that in itself has to be what has gotten them this far. That and the fact that they are a free service.
Comment posted by Michelle Greer
December 28, 2007 @ 9:13 am
I’m not sure if many shoppers know that Google has Product Search. It would also be difficult for Google to market this service the way other comparison shopping sites do, since they don’t want to deal with the “monopoly” accusations.
BTW, we could not agree here at the office. When you Google a product, and three or so products pull up with their prices at the top, are those Google Products? It would seem like those would get clicked on a lot.
Comment posted by eCopt
December 28, 2007 @ 10:03 am
@ Michelle Greer - You’re right, not many shoppers are aware that Google changed Froogle to Product Search, let alone the ones that never knew either existed.
Most just click from Google OneBox results and get taken to the merchants site, bypassing Product Search altogether. It would be better for them if they took searchers to that product on Product Search, but would be worse for shoppers (due to more clicks to the products).
BTW, the three products at the top are results from Google Base and Product Search (referred to as the OneBox), they are not Google products, they are just displayed by Google. Merchants list their products there by submitting a data feed to Google Base, or by entering products in manually one by one.
Comment posted by Signing Agent
March 12, 2009 @ 12:20 pm
As I checked, according Google Adwords,Google total search traffic dropped down even to few times!
For sample- word cars was searched 68 billion times per month, now its only 11.
Its concerns any kind of business…
Comment posted by Tracy
July 15, 2009 @ 3:18 pm
I have used froogle since beta and I love it. I do at least half of my non-grocery shopping online. But froogle has created itself some problems.
First, Google can’t decide what it’s called. First it was Froogle, then it was Google Product Search, then Shopping; in the google browser add-on toolbar, it’s still froogle. I have been through 3 distinct scares of “Oh, no, they did away with [current name for froogle]!” only to find it under a new name.
Then they added eBay stuff to the search. If I want to shop on eBay, I’ll go to eBay; these listings are just junk to filter through in froogle. What’s worse, the eBay data (often listed as the eBay store name instead of eBay) tends to be out-of-date; moreso than regular listings. eBay users game the system by listing shipping (on 5 ounce items) as “Freight” and then entering the shipping cost in the textual description. Froogle then lists those items as “free” shipping from store X, and the user clicks through to an eBay listing for a used item with high non-free shipping. Waste my time and I won’t be back.
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