Google has finally picked up the pace with its shopping search engine, Froogle, and given Froogle more exposure in Google search results. In a site redesign yesterday, Google included Froogle shopping search in its “search tabs”, which let searchers scan through sections like News, Groups, and now Froogle for keyword searches. the new Froogle tab takes the place of the old Google Directory listings tab, which is a partnered directory with Netscapes’s DMOZ project.
Froogle has been in beta “testing” for the past 15 months and is becoming a more popular product searching option within Google, but may be behind such opoular shopping engines as Shopping.com or Yahoo Shopping. Last year, Google started to list Froogle search results as the top 3 listings when users search for popular and targeted shopping terms. The new Froogle tab adds to the branding and awareness of the Froogle shopping search engine among Google users, hopefully filling in the void among its competition.
Unlike most shopping search engines, Froogle listings are free for merchants and only require the uploading of a product feed to the Froogle index. Most other shopping search engines work on a pay-per-click lead program, something that we may see in Froogle’s future… perhaps integrated with the Google Adwords advertising platform.
