Have you been to Froogle yet? It’s a new product search
engine from Google.
It's quite possibly the greatest online marketing tool for
retailers ever invented.
What
is Froogle-
Froogle is a product specific search engine that indexes
catalogs of online retailers and compiles the information
for their users. Search for DVD Players, and you’ll
come up with 37,000 options as of this writing. You can
then filter down to DVD Players between $200-300 and still
have 581 choices. Want a DVD/VCR combo? Add VCR to the search
query to filter down to 209 options, and then sort by price
with one click.
That
should explain the power of this program for consumers,
but how do retailers make the most out of this by getting
in front of their prospective customers for the products
they sell?
The
Froogle Feed
While Froogle will likely visit your catalog, index it,
and add the products to their search engine, the better
way to go is to send Froogle a data feed. This is basically
a text file listing your product names, descriptions, pricing
information, images, and the URL of each product within
your cart. This will help Froogle accurately serve your
cart's products with up to date pricing..
What
does it cost-
Nothing. Submitting to Froogle is free, and you can do it
as often as once a day (but at least once a month). Google
has also stated that they plan to keep Froogle free by serving
Google Adwords ads alongside the Froogle search results.
How
do I build a Froogle Feed?
After signing up with Froogle, they will send you an extensive
set of instructions on how to create a Froogle feed. If
you have a small set of products, you could easily whip
up a Froogle feed in a spreadsheet like Excel, then save
it as a text file for upload to Froogle. However, if you
have a large inventory with volatile pricing, you’ll
probably want to look into exporting a Froogle feed from
your database. One way to do this is to have your webmaster
script a tab delimited file on your in-stock inventory so
you can easily save it off and load it whenever you make
changes. If you want to turn that up another notch, have
your webmaster script your Froogle feed to automatically
FTP itself on a regular schedule.
Get
Froogling
If you have an online catalog and aren’t Froogling
you’re passing up additional sales. Sign up with Froogle
today and get your Froogle on.
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