Tuesday, January 02, 2007
Google Yet to Master Shopping
Google may be the king of web search, but the company still has a lot to learn about running shopping sites.Despite Google's stranglehold on search, it's Froogle and Local search sites aren't among the top three shopping destinations, according to Nielsen/Netratings The top spots are held by eBay, Amazon, and WalMart.
To succeed, Google needs to integrate Froogle and Local search so that you can buy something at the best price, be it online or in a store. Since I live in sales tax free Oregon, I can often buy things cheaper in the store than paying for the shipping cost, so I want to know the best price wherever available.
Froogle lists prices from the online stores of retailers, but it doesn't include the proximity of the retailers from its Local pages. For example, if you are looking for a Nikon digital camera, you can see prices from CompUSA and Circuit City among the online-only results. But even if you enter your zip code, Froogle doesn't tell you where the nearest store is. When I tried to search Local with the query "Nikon digital camera" and my zip code, I got a mishmash of news articles and unrelated sites.
Google should also do a better job of integrating consumer reviews into Froogle, which would help with the selection process. Also, Google Catalogs is woefully out of date, so the company should add catalog pages to Froogle, or just put it out of its misery.
For 2007, mastering local search and integrating consumer reviews will be two of the biggest opportunities for search companies to grow their share. If Google doesn't move quickly, it will only fall further behind.
Posted By John Gartner at 12:41 PM
Permanent Link: Google Yet to Master Shopping
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