Just in time for the Christmas shopping season, Google is adding a feature to its Froogle shopping service that will allow users to check out pricing and availability of items in their local stores. The move extends yet again the scope and depth of information Google is making available through its ad-supported business model, and is likely to impact the local Yellow Pages business as well as Froogle’s positioning in the online comparison shopping sector.
According to the New York Times:
Google…said that beginning this morning it would make available a feature that provides a local version of its Froogle shopping service. The service uses a third-party database of national product inventory organized by locality…[L]ocal merchants will be able to send Google product information that will be searchable from Froogle. For example, if users type “iPod Nano New York,” they will see map information with the locations of stores that have the iPod Nano in stock.
Google declined to identify the third-party information service that would provide the initial product inventory information for local stores, but it said there would be data from “several hundred” chains, like Best Buy, Circuit City, Home Depot, Bombay and CompUSA…The limitation of the service, Google acknowledged, is that the inventory information might not be precise or necessarily up to date.
The service will be freely available to merchants in the United States, Ms. Mayer said. Google, as it frequently notes, plans to gain revenue from the new Froogle service by placing relevant text ads on the same page as the local results. The company also believes that it gains revenue when users employ Google more frequently as its services become more useful.
An AP report adds:
Besides displaying a map showing all the local stores carrying the merchandise, Froogle also will list price differences…Froogle, a comparison shopping site that Google launched three years ago, will continue to give visitors the option to buy the merchandise online. Google receives a commission for the online referrals.
Initially, Google is depending on a contractor to pull the inventory information from several hundred major merchants. The search engine hopes to make the service even comprehensive by encouraging stores to submit their own customized merchandises list to the newly created “Google Base” - an information clearinghouse for everything from family recipes to scientific formulas. Froogle will pull the product inventory lists from Google Base and include them in its index.
In the comparison shopping niche, Froogle ranked as the fifth largest site with 6.36 million unique U.S. visitors during September, according to Nielsen/NetRatings Inc. The top two comparison sites - E.W. Scripps Co.’s Shopzilla and eBay Inc.’s Shopping.com - each attracted about 15 million unique visitors.
Mitch Shapiro at 2:14 PM|Comments(0)
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