Froogle Goes Google in the UK
Google today began their shopping search British re-invasion with Froogle U.K, a beta version of their product search service that enables users search for products to buy via Google search technology. Froogle U.K. applies the power of Google’s search technology to locate product information and direct users to online stores where they can make a purchase.
Froogle U.K. closely resembles the simple, clean Google homepage and search results pages, and features links to recent popular product searches, such as [iPod cases] or [mini digital camera]. A product search on Froogle U.K. returns photos of relevant products and links to the stores that sell them. Users can sort products by price, narrow their search within a specific price range, and browse through the merchandise categories.
“We developed Froogle U.K. so that online shoppers could quickly and easily locate the products they are looking for, from the most obscure to the most popular,” said Cosmos Nicolaou, Engineering Director Google Inc. “As Google continues to explore opportunities to bring more of the world’s information to users in more countries and more languages, Froogle U.K. enables us to provide the U.K. market with the tools they need for a better online shopping experience today and into this holiday season.”
While Froogle is enjoying its UK honeymoon, some potential problems are arising with US based web marketers who may happen to represent a site with over 200,000 products. Barry Swartz at Search Engine Roundtable also writes that Froogle is having problems with keeping up with the amount of feeds that can be uploaded uing one account.
There are reports at WebmasterWorld that they can not add more then 200,000 products to Froogle. “We have been successful in uploading up to 200,000 items. We have tried to increase it to a full 700,000 but it always seems to stop at 199,998 – 200,000 items,” one member says. The thread says that Froogle says you can upload a maximum of 1,000,000 products, but it seems like these members are not able to go beyond the 200,000 mark.
