Comments on: Google Product Search Traffic Down, Other CSE’s Report Steady Or Increased Traffic

By: Team Packs

Team Packs — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 05:22:28 +0000

I use froogle (now google product search) and really enjoy the benefits and ease of use. One feaure I am still not sure about is their integration of this with adwords. I am not sure if this is a positive or negative impact for adwords customers.

By: Tracy

Tracy — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 22:18:44 +0000

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 What’s worse, the eBay data (often listed as the eBay store name instead of eBay) tends to be out-of-date; moreso than regular listings.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.

By: Signing Agent

Signing Agent — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 19:20:47 +0000

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…

By: eCopt

eCopt — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 17:03:27 +0000

@ 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.

By: Michelle Greer

Michelle Greer — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 16:13:36 +0000

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.

By: eCopt

eCopt — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 23:50:43 +0000

@ 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.

By: Dan Shields

Dan Shields — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 20:29:28 +0000

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.