Because of the huge amount of publicity doled out to AdWords and AdSense, you might think that Google’s business services are only advertising services. Not true. Google is really in the exposure business, increasing visibility for both advertisers and sites listed in the Google indexes including its two shopping indexes, the subjects of this article. To put Google’s business services in an even broader light, you might say that Google is in the keyword business. As a keyword services company, Google brings together those who seek with those who provide, matching them through the powerful relevancy of keywords. When it comes to seeking and providing, shopping is at the center of the mating dance, on equal footing with information and services. Froogle and Google Catalogs, Google’s two keyword-based shopping portals, employ dedicated engines that match Google searchers to products on the Web (Froogle) and to products in mail-order catalogs (Google Catalogs). The following section describes the kind of shopping portal Google aspires to be, and is.

Google as the Ultimate Shop Window Through Froogle and Google Catalogs, consumers experience a digital twist on the time-honored pastime of window shopping. Rather than strolling from window to window, consumers gaze through the single Google window as its contents change on demand. Froogle and Google Catalogs are hybrid directories/engines that respond to keyword searches. The main difference between Google’s shopping services and those in other major portals is that Google doesn’t get its hands on the money. Customers don’t buy anything through Google. Both Froogle and Google Catalogs function purely as directories to products, sending consumers elsewhere to make their purchases. Following are two important points for merchants:

-  Google has no revenue-sharing arrangement with any merchant represented in either Froogle or Google Catalogs.

-  Preferred placement in the search results for Froogle or Google Catalogs is not available. Although you can’t buy your way to the top of a Froogle or Google Catalogs search results page,

Google does place AdWords ads on Froogle pages. Froogle ads might be the most powerful possible deployment of a product-oriented AdWords campaign because those ads share the page not with information links (as is likely on a Google search page), but with product links. Essentially, every link on a Froogle page is an ad, so AdWords ads don’t stand out as ads to the same extent as on any other page. If you’re a merchant who wants to extend your AdWords campaign to Froogle, you need only set your ads to appear in Google’s network of search sites, in the Campaign settings of your AdWords account.

However, you can’t limit your ads to Froogle pages you must accept AdWords distribution throughout Google search pages. (See Articles 6 through 10 for an extensive discussion of AdWords.) Google doesn’t assist you in setting up an e-commerce shop or transacting business. Compare this approach to Yahoo! Shopping, which is a virtual mall where any merchant can rent space.

Yahoo! helps design and implement the online store and offers extensive transaction services, including a universal shopping cart and easy payment-data collection through Yahoo! Wallet. Banners of featured stores clutter the main pages. The underlying search engine has some smarts. All this is useful, and Yahoo! houses many of the most important online retailers in the business. AOL and MSN have similar programs. You may operate your online store at Yahoo! Store (or in AOL or MSN) and still be represented in Froogle and in Google Catalogs. In fact, many Yahoo! Stores are included in Froogle thanks to a Yahoo! setting that makes the store’s products compatible with Froogle’s crawler. (The setting turns Yahoo! Store product information into something similar to a Froogle data feed, which I describe in the next section.) Besides the Yahoo! Store quirk, Google is store-agnostic; it doesn’t care where you’re located or who handles your transactions. Systems like Yahoo!’s and AOL’s, modeled on shopping malls, are purchase oriented. Google is search oriented. Google is not currently interested in selling products directly, taking payment information, or hosting stores.

There’s no Google Wallet. The Google shopping portal is a search engine that separates products from stores to deliver targeted search lists. Furthermore, it uses evaluations similar to those in a Web search to determine which products matching your keywords are most important and should be listed first. Froogle and Google Catalogs recognize merchant branding but downplay it. The product is far more important than the store, because Google recognizes that priority in the minds of most shoppers. The pages of Froogle and Google Catalogs are as banner-free as all other Google pages. When it comes to buying through Google, through is the right word, as opposed to from. Froogle search results are like Web search results, insofar as they link you to target sites, in this case e-commerce sites with their own shopping carts and payment systems. Google Catalogs provides mail-order phone numbers and where possible links to Web sites.

The quality of Froogle searches

Portions of the Froogle merchant community are grumbling about the quality and consistency of search results. Froogle is a beta product, meaning that, while functional, it is still in a testing and development phase. As a consumer myself, I have found Froogle searches rewarding. In one instance, my sister-in-law could not find a certain lace tablecloth for her mother’s Christmas gift after searching for weeks. My wife found it in seconds using Froogle. So Froogle can cut to the chase impressively. At the same time, many observers believe the technology of this search engine is immature and its results sometimes chaotic. Size is not an issue in Froogle the index contains a gigantic repository of product information, and many major retailers are represented.

The main issue for merchants is the relevancy of results. Indeed, it’s easy to bring up results pages whose products are less relevant and appealing than the accompanying AdWords ads in the right column. A recent search for mp3 jukebox, for example, returned several instances of one particular model atop the list no other products appeared above the fold of an 800 x 600 screen. The accompanying AdWords ads linked to review-and-comparison sites where one might narrow the search more intelligently. From this experience you might think that Froogle responds better to longer keyword phrases and keywords that include the exact model being searched (if you’ve already narrowed the search to an exact model).

Indeed, searching for archos jukebox recorder (a model of mp3 jukebox) delivered more productive results, roughly on par with the accompanying ads. However, a recent search for ipod resulted in several top listings for an arm band accessory that fits on the iPod mp3 device, when one might have expected to find iPods themselves populating the top results. Perplexing problems pop up when you spend time with Froogle. A search for formal wear yielded a full page of evening gowns and other items for women, while the accompanying ads were uniformly promoting tuxedo shops. Being a man, I found the ads far more compelling than the listings. The top ten results for the keywords antique books included a model of an antique car, a globe, a bookend, a set of old dolls, and a vintage post card. The accompanying ads offered Alibris.com, eBay, BookFinder.com, and other productive results.

The observation that Froogle’s ad column often presents better results than the editorial listings leads to an oft-expressed wish in the merchant community for a cost-per-click model in Froogle. If that were the case, merchants would bid for position in the listings and pay for each clickthrough very much like the AdWords program. Generally, sound business favors paying for a good service over tolerating a questionable service that’s free. This is not to say that Froogle is useless by a long stretch. If it were, major companies would not bother making gigantic, regular submissions of their online product information. Companies of all sizes that track the sources of their incoming customers often find that Froogle generates respectable traffic and important sales. All the same, almost everyone believes that there’s room for improvement in the Froogle engine.