Google launches Froogle shopping site
Published: 12 Dec 2002 15:56 GMT
Google is beta-testing a new service that uses the company's search engine to help consumers find products online.
Dubbed Froogle, the new service lets consumers search by category or by simply typing a product type into the search window. The search results are provided using Google's spider technology, which scours merchants' Web sites for relevant product data.
The service for now is a bare-bones affair. Unlike the shopping pages on some portal sites, there's no central shopping cart or wallet, and the company has no special merchant stores. It does allow consumers to narrow their search by price.
"Froogle (provides) a lightning quick way to search the largest collection of stores and products on the Web. That means if the item you're looking to buy is online, Froogle will likely find it," the company said on its Web page.
Google representatives could not immediately be reached for comment.
This is certainly the time to try to reach shoppers on the Web. Online sales were up as much as 22 percent in November, according to a new study. Also, e-commerce is moving from its erratic infancy into a more stable maturity, with a few key survivors now defining the online shopping experience.
Placement in Froogle's listings is free for merchants, who can contact the company to set up a special data feed to ensure their site gets included.
Google has run a catalogue search service, also free to merchants, since December 2001. That service, also still in a beta-test phase, now scans around 700 catalogues, letting consumers browse for products and giving links to the catalogues' Web sites.
And while both the catalogue and shopping service are free to merchants, the company points out that stores can take advantage of the search service by buying advertising linked to search questions. That's similar to what happens with Google's standard search. The company doesn't sell placement in its search database, but it does sell space on results pages tied to keywords used in the search bar.
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