New Google Product Search Merchant Center and Merchant Blog

Google unveiled it's new Product Search Merchant Center today. The new interface consists mainly of existing features from the Google Base interface but repackaged and with some new navigation. In addition, Google introduced their new Merchant Blog. Since the vanity url for the merchant center (google.com/merchants) is much more widely focused, it may indicate that though this currently focuses on Product Search Merchants, it could become a centralized hub for retailers, integrating other Google products. Then again, it seems like having a retail focused version of AdWords with this Product Search merchant center integrated into it would make more sense.

Either way, I'm excited to see this and hope it leads to a higher level of engagement with merchants. Though the vast majority of online retailers are Google customers in some way, the only other retail specific Google vanity url of which I am aware (google.com/retail) points to Google's Retail Industry Knowledge Center, where the latest newsletter is dated April 2008.