Google's New Engine: Froogle Hits the Ground Running

In the beginning, Google crawled the web indexing nearly everything it could sick it's spiders on. That included an abundance of e-tailers of course, but the informative sites within Google seemed to command the most SERP attention.

On the 11th of December - the beta version of Froogle.com was launched, offering the search expertise of Google to the world of online products.

For consumers, a relevant search tool is now available to quickly and easily find products for online purchasing. For webmasters and small business owners, a new free way to push products is now available. Seem too good to be true? No, just another stepping stone for the folks at Google.

While Froogle has only been out there for us to use for one week, we have been able to learn a lot. Let's take a look at what we know.

Froogle is Free
Free for use. As an online advertising medium, this is an amazing accomplishment. While people are paying near $1.00 per click for some competitive phrases over on Overture - Froogle can provide them with the same traffic, for free.

Too good to be true? According to Google themselves, your inclusion to Froogle will cost you "Zip. Zero. Nada. Zilch. Nothing. Inclusion in Froogle is absolutely free." It's about time.

Timely Entrance
I will be the first to give credit to Google for launching Froogle when they had. Let's face it, holiday season online purchasing has dramatically risen this year - and even resources like Comscore Networks agrees (See this link for more information)

Merchant Inclusion is Easy
Many other advertising portals claim this, but Google seems to actually stand by their word on this one. Instead of having advertisers optimizing their product descriptions and image file names for Froogle - just send them access to a data feed - and you're in.

Promising Future
Okay, so a product search is nothing new. But with the search giant Google as a foundation, Froogle is not likely to disappoint. While no one can easily see into the future and predict the impact and market that Froogle will attract, it is surely going to grasp some attention.

FEO - Froogle Engine Optimization?
In the world of search engine optimization, this is a huge step. Now, optimizers need to be concerned with Google as well as Froogle. With trusted feeds, will Froogle even be a legit target for optimization? What kinds of optimization will be needed? How can they be applied?

The future of Froogle optimization is simply unknown. Froogle isn't perfect, and neither is Google. But the mass volume of users to Google makes it the primary target. If Froogle commands similar attention, be prepared.
December 20, 2002