ChannelAdvisor

Google Experimenting with Additional Product Results

**Clarification - we just heard from a Google spokesperson.  They informed us that the screenshots are actually NOT the Google Products Ads test, the experiment has not started yet.  This is some other experiment.  It will be interesting to see what the official 'Google Product Ads test' looks like.

It's always fun to stumble across a Google test. Phillip Lennsen over at Google Blogoscoped posted today about a new Product Ads feature in the Google Affiliate Network, so this may be part of the testing for that. The screen shot below shows two sets of shopping results on a standard Google SERP for "crocs mammoth." The lower shopping result set is the often seen "one box" area powered by Google Product Search feeds, but the upper set is something we haven't seen before.

The first two links go directly to Shopping.com. The last goes to Campmor but it is a Shopping.com network link. It's hard to know for sure if this is unique to Shopping.com at this time or if more searches would eventually result in content from other sites, but about a dozen queries yielded nothing but Shopping.com links. Some went to Shopping.com product pages while others went directly to the advertiser's site, including Amazon and eBay.

Several things are confusing about this. It's almost as if Google has become part of Shopping.com's partner network, but if this is in fact Product Ads testing, it's possible they just selected Shopping.com as a test partner. Either of these is a little puzzling considering past tensions between Google and eBay (Shopping.com's parent company).  Aside from the fact that Google and eBay historically don't play nice, why would Google insert a second set of product data instead of working to monetize Google Product Search? Maybe they'll replace the one box with this product set? How is this better for users than Google Product Search content? How can merchants optimize a single data feed for both Google Product Search and Google Affiliate Network considering they likely use different algorithms and may be directly competing for SERP real estate?  Curious to say the least.

I'm also not sure what impact this will have on merchant's Shopping.com experience in the short term. If this continues/expands, traffic could ramp up significantly. Google Product Search conversion rates are generally good, so hopefully that would carry over to the direct links to retail sites, but I wonder how users will react to going from Google results (at the very top of the page in some cases) to Shopping.com, and then through to the merchant (or not).

Some of the links we found go to a page where we have a tracked item live so we'll keep an eye out to see if traffic changes significantly for those items.

Some other screen shots (a little grainy unfortunately):

Ciao US Goes the Way of MSN Shopping

Microsoft announced today that Ciao in the US will cease to exist as of July 1. Feeds will no longer be processed and the Ciao.com domain will redirect to Bing Shopping.

This pretty much ties up to the MSN consolidation in the US. Ciao will no doubt continue to exist in Europe. The real question is if and how they will more formally integrate Ciao with Bing in Europe. Right now it just redirects from Bing to Ciao, which is a little confusing from the user perspective, but maintains the SEO advantage of the already popular sites and leaves intact the social aspect of Ciao as well. I imagine the Ciao US social network never grew significantly, but the European network is probably pretty substantial, so Microsoft won't want to lose that aspect. We often see for sites with more of a social focus such as Ciao that the unique visitor numbers, and therefore impressions, are significantly raised, even if click-throughs to merchants are relatively lower. This suggests a higher revenue opportunity from display advertising, which makes one wonder why display ads on Ciao are scarce.

CSE Strategies and Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition (IRCE)

CSE Strategies readers - today kicks off the annual retailer confab - IRCE in Boston.  We'll be there in force and it is certainly a big year for comparison shopping engines so there will be lots to see and learn on all topics CSE.

We've put together this handy CSE Strategies guide to IRCE here so you can optimize your IRCE time and learn as much as possible.  ChannelAdvisor will be in booth 749 and there are 10+ engines that will be present.  Any of our representatives will be able to discuss all of the changes coming up with CSEs and how our software can help you manage CSEs.

If you want to meet at the show, shoot me an email or tweet, or stop by the booth.  CSE Strategies readers will get a free smoothie - so mention you are a reader at the booth for a cool (literally) treat.

As a value added service, we've provided two handy cheat sheets so you can do the 'CSE Strategies' tour of the show floor. The first is Alpha by company the second is by booth.

Alphabetical CSE Strategies Guide to IRCE

Company	Booth	Comments
Become.com	244	CSE 2.0 engine - seeing some good growth
Bing.com	813	The newly rebranded Live.com, MSN shopping, Live shopping, Live Cashback and all of that.
ChannelAdvisor	749	Best software available to manage CSEs - bar none.
Google	707	Small search engine company with something called Google Product Search or Google Shopping (aka froogle)
Pronto	849	Division of IAC with rapidly growing CSE that has some great social elements
Shop.com	845	Shared cart CSE that has opened up to non-cart folks recently.
Sortprice	1253	Newer CSE - lots of breadth.
TheFind	422	Newer CSE - focused on breadth.
ValueClick	952	Smarter.com and pricerunner.com
Winbuyer.com	349	Put a mini CSE right on your ecommerce site so buyers can price shop without leaving - like progressive insurance for ecommerce
Yahoo!	449	Mostly pushing their store offering, but sure to have some Y! Shopping folks there too.

By Booth Number - click here for a map of the exhibit hall.

Booth	Company	Comments
244	Become.com	CSE 2.0 engine - seeing some good growth
349	WinBuyer.com	Put a mini CSE right on your ecommerce site so buyers can price shop without leaving - like progressive insurance for ecommerce
422	TheFind.com	Newer CSE - focused on breadth.
449	Yahoo!	Mostly pushing their store offering, but sure to have some Y! Shopping folks there too.
707	Google	Small search engine company with something called Google Product Search or Google Shopping (aka Froogle)
749	ChannelAdvisor	Best software available to manage CSEs - bar none.
813	Bing	The newly rebranded Live.com, MSN shopping, Live shopping, Live Cashback and all of that.
845	Shop.com	Shared cart CSE that has opened up to non-cart folks recently.
849	Pronto	Division of IAC with rapidly growing CSE that has some great social elements
952	ValueClick	Smarter.com and pricerunner.com
1253	Sortprice.com	Newer CSE - focused on breadth.

Google Product Search Announcement About Attribute Changes

 Google announced today that the condition attribute will soon be required. Valid values are new, used, or refurbished. This is definitely good news in that it suggests they will soon either display this information or filter on it. Such a change would positively impact the user experience on Google Product Search since right now, consumers don't know the condition of the item until after they click through. I've bought many refurbished items in the past, but as a consumer, it is definitely nice to be able to clearly see condition as early as possible so you don't click on a refurbished or used item when you definitely want new.

In addition to their blog post, Google emailed merchants today with the condition attribute news,  a recommendation to use their most recent taxonomy in the product type attribute, and announcement of a new attribute, "compatible_with." This new attribute is specifically targeted at merchants in accessory categories such as ink cartridges or cell phone accessories to give them a structured way in which to communicate the core product models with which their items are compatible.

Full email below:

Hello,

We'd like to let you know about an important change we're making to the Product Search data feed requirements. As you know, you can help shoppers find your products by including high quality, frequently updated product information in the form of attributes.  In order to provide shoppers with the most useful information, we'll be making the "condition" attribute required starting on June 30th, 2009. 

In order to keep your feeds active past this date, please remember to include the "condition" attribute for all of your items if you're not already doing so.  Please include one of three values to describe your product: new, used, or refurbished.

For more information on formatting the condition attribute, please visit http://base.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=148684

In addition to making the "condition" attribute required, we've made some other changes to our attributes:

Recommended: "product type" 
The "product type" attribute allows you to specify a product category for each item. We recommend that you use our product taxonomy, however, you are welcome to use your own categories.  For more information, please visit: http://base.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66818

New: "compatible with" 
The new "compatible with" allows you to specify what products your item is compatible with.  For instance, if you're listing an HP 74 (CB335WN) black ink cartridge, you can use this attribute to tell us that it's compatible with the HP Photosmart C4480 and HP Photosmart C4580 printers.  Using this attribute will help you avoid listing the same item multiple times with different compatibility information. For more information, please visit http://base.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=73932#optional

Sincerely,

The Google Product Search Team

Amazon ProductAds Webinar on June 24th.

Amazon is hosting a free webinar on ProductAds June 24th at 1pm EDT, 10am PDT.  You can register for the Webinar here.

At ChannelAdvisor we're seeing those retailers that adopt ProductAds have it shoot to the top of their CSE list from a traffic/roi standpoint very quickly so we recommend everyone that isn't selling on Amazon today take a look at this program (which we fully support BTW).

You can register here and the blurb for the webinar follows:

Learn how to advertise your products to Amazon.com customers and drive traffic to your website. 

Product Ads is a cost-per-click advertising program that puts your products in front of millions of Amazon.com customers. Simply upload your product catalog and set your bids and budget. Amazon will display your ads in highly targeted placements. When customers are interested in buying your product they click through to your Web site and purchase directly from you.   

This webinar will give you an overview of Product Ads and show you how to optimize your ads. 

Your website must have online checkout to participate in the Product Ads program.  The program is not currently available in the Amazon categories Books, DVD, Music, Digital Downloads, Automotive, Grocery, Pet Supplies or  Industrial.  Product Ads is only available today to US businesses to advertise on Amazon.com.

MSN Bing Replaces Live Search - MSN Shopping Officially Done

Bing has landed. After much hype, MSN has replaced Live Search with Bing, its new "decision engine." The shopping component, which appears to be called Bing Shopping, is  a re-skinning of Live Search Products/Cashback. This is not too surprising since the existing interface was already pretty good and since they whole Bing change was probably enough of work without having to redesign the shopping area as well.

Much like Google did for Product Search a few years back, MSN has accentuated the product component by prominently displaying a shopping link on Bing result pages, as well as the home page. This will likely lead to increased traffic and awareness of the cashback program, especially in the early days as news outlets cover the Bing launch and curious users use their internal decision engines to evaluate if switching to Bing is worthwhile.

Meanwhile, in Europe, the Bing  Shopping links point directly to the various Ciao sites, where available. The Ciao network is sure to see a boost in visitors as well.

In addition, as expected, MSN Shopping will cease to exist as of June 30. If you are a retailer currently advertising on MSN Shopping and not cashback, now is a great time to re-evaluate your MSN strategy.