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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
By the way, we've already reported about Google's new service
one
month ago .
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