In the newest Froogle Newsletter, Google lays out current changes to Froogle and possibly clues to future enhancements. Such changes are:
* Froogle Integrated into Google Home Page
There’s no need to do an Advanced Search to find products these days, since Froogle is now a convenient link on the Google home page:
http://www.google.com/
* Froogle has also been added to the latest version of the Google Toolbar. The Google Toolbar, which includes a pop-up blocker and a form autofill tool, can be downloaded for free here:
http://toolbar.google.com/
* Product Search Results in Google
Google has begun integrating Froogle search results with the regular Google search results. When users search for certain products on Google, the web search results page will display the top three product results from Froogle.
For example, here are the results for the query [hiking boots]:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&safe=off&q=hiking+boots
These ‘Product Search’ results are not paid advertisements, but free, relevant, product-specific search results. As you know, merchants are included in Froogle at no cost, and as with Google’s web search results, Froogle results are unbiased by human intervention. Google does not accept payment for placement within the Froogle results themselves.
This results feature was integrated as an enhancement that will further simplify our users’ shopping experience. By integrating Froogle into the Google search experience, users can quickly and easily be connected to relevant web pages selling the products they’re looking for.
Merchants currently featured in Froogle also benefit by this enhancement as they broaden their customer outreach to include all Google users. Froogle will continue to remain free to all merchants who would like to submit a data feed.
Froogle did not mention if this Google Search results listings would be expanded to other search terms, currently only very targeted search terms have such Froogle listings.
* Safe Search
Froogle has implemented a Safe Search feature that is currently the default for all searches. Adult products should not be displayed if Safe Search is turned on. If your site contains
non-family-safe products, some of these products might not be displayed if Safe Search is turned on.
To turn Safe Search on or off to block or view adult products, click on ‘Preferences’ next to the search box on the Froogle home page: http://www.froogle.google.com. Once you select your preferred level of restriction, Froogle will save your preferences.
