Froogle is Google’s comparison shopping engine. It debuted a few years ago and has lived in beta ever since.

Froogle just received it’s first major upgrade in quite some time with the integration of Google maps into Froogle based on certain search words.

If you search for a product near city, then the map is pulled into the results. Even a search for city product does not pull map results at present. (Expect this to be fixed eventually, or a more intuitive way of seeing products overlayed on a map).

Alternately, one can also use the ‘local shopping’ vs ‘online shopping’ tabs to determine the shown results.

If you are a merchant who wishes to sell on Froogle, the instructions from Google are here. Many shopping carts these days can also export Froogle feeds which make uploading your entire product inventory quite easy.

Related Resources:
Froogle on Kelsey Blog
Froogle Feeds work with Google Base – Webmaster World
SEO Roundtable Blog Post

Press Release

CNET Networks, Inc. (Nasdaq:CNET), today announced local shopping functionality that lets consumers find stores in their area that stock the technology gadgets they want to buy. Part of CNET’s annual holiday line-up of resources for consumers, the new local shopping functionality serves up comprehensive local store information, such as the store’s hours, contact information and directions.

I searched CNet for local shopping, and the closest function I could find was a ‘enter zip code’ form. After filling it out for 10 zip codes in the Chicago area, the only results that were brought back were for ‘online stores’. No physical stores were found. Circuit City is one of the ‘online stores’ and has about a dozen stores within 20 miles of me, yet none of these actual stores were presented.

Hopefully, this type of data integration grows over the next few months. It’s a great idea in theory, but there’s not an easy way for an advertiser to add inventory, or for a user to pull back local information yet.

Keep an eye on CNet, they are quite leaders in many online review areas, and I’m expecting them to quietly integrate this data to provide some great functionality without a lot of press to keep one informed.

Google has announced today the launch of Google Analytics. Essentially, it’s Urchin 5.0 for free.

Once must use a Google account to access the tools. This seems just one more step in the consolidating of user information by Google.

Urchin 5.0 is a 3rd party cookie serving system. So, if you’re currently having issues with 3rd party cookies, this software won’t solve your problems like a 1st party system will. However, if you don’t know where to start for stats and integrated information, then this might be a great place to start.

The other aspect that hasn’t been talked about yet is it’s ability to integrate with Google’s cross channel tracking system. Google launched a program quite some time ago which enabled one to track any PPC or Advertising action on their website with the Google code. This might be a way for Google to facilitate for tracking all your advertising.

Before you think that Google is trying to store all your information and could use it against you, remember:
1. The use of Urchin is voluntary.
2. YSM (yahoo search marketing) has been allowing advertisers to utilize this type of tracking for well over a year.

Along with the free product, Google has a new set of information on their site entitled, Conversion University. Currently there are two sections, Driving Traffic, and Converting Visitors.

If you’ve been using PPC and online advertising for a while, the articles will seem quite basic. If you’re still new to the PPC game, they’re worth reading (as is just about anything that deals with converting visitors).

As the site is currently down (seems the website wasn’t ready for the traffic), there is no way to tell quite what will be involved, such as:

1. What is Google’s Privacy Policy on this tracking?
2. How often will your analytics be down?
3. Will Google place a visible Urchin logo on your site (like the Google conversion tracker does on any converting pages at present)
4. How will this affect your Google logins. Do you want your Froogle, GMail, Local Business, AdWords, AdSense, Search Query, RSS Feeds, Bookmarks, and Tracking information in a single database?

Only time will tell the success of the program; however, there is no doubt that it will be widely used. Analytics are often the last thing small advertisers approach, and the no cost barrier will help small advertisers get more out of their visitors and statistics than they normally would. For that, Google has done a good service for small businesses. For the rest – we’ll see.

This is a very interesting post by Steve at Micro Persuasion about bookmarklets. (Full Story).

A bookmarklet is a small java script file that can be saved as a favorite. When they first arrived on the scene, many were a bit afraid of them as they were java script programs being added to a browser and many spyware and firewall software had a big problem allowing some of them to execute.

Overtime, they’ve gained tremendously in popularity and it’s common to see social software use a bookmarklet function to post to another application. For instance, one can have a bookmarklet to post directly to blogger, wordpress, and other blog software.

Delicious and Technocrati have them for saving posts and organized blogging information.

They have allowed a unique bit of functionality in browsers, and anyone who spends a lot of time writing or reading blogs should take a look into using one of these services to help tag and save information.

The pay per call trademark is owned by Ingenio. Not sure what Yahoo is going to call their pay per call solution; however, there are many reports of them currently offering a beta test solution on the PPCall platform.

Google is calling their solution Click to Call.

The Kelsey blog has some information about this test.

Expect a few more rumors and announcements over the next few months.

A little info about PPCall:

PPCall is the next generation of small business advertising. Instead of paying per click (the traditional model currently abounding on the web) advertising, pay per call is charged when someone calls the advertiser.

In some industries, this model will never work. Amazon doesn’t want phone calls, they want online shoppers.

However, a plumber would rather pay for a phone call to talk directly with a potential client than have someone visit his website.

Small businesses are familiar with the traditional Yellow Page market. They often measure success in phone calls and actual leads/sales. Paying per click, worrying about website conversion rates, bounce rates, click fraud, etc is not part of their business model or expertise – hence why many small businesses have not adopted the PPC model of advertising.

PPCall will help to alleviate the slow migration of Small businesses onto the internet by giving them a chance to advertise in a model they’re more familiar with – phone calls.

PPCall will probably see a slow adoption over the next year, but those who adopt will be able to take advantage of a growing internet trend – online search to offline sale.

John Slade (a really nice guy for those of you who haven’t met him – understands the value of information) just made a post on the Yahoo Blog that Overture (YSM – Yahoo Search Marketing – which ever name you wish to call them) have lowered their minimum deposit to $5.

This comes on the wake of another recent announcement of YSM dropping the minimum monthly spend.

This means, with an affiliate code, a new advertiser can get $30 deposited into their account from YSM, deposit $5 of their own money, and have $35 to try out this type of marketing.

While this might not seem like a lot of money, considering the average monthly marketing budget for a small business is around $233 (after yellow page funds have been removed), every change in dollar amounts is critical to brining on new advertisers.

This is yet another good move by Yahoo, who has just been on a roll lately with YSM and their Local projects. Can’t wait to see their next announcement.

Local.com is an up and coming local based search engine. Their user query is increasing each month, and so is their local data.

Ingenio has been a pioneer in the PPCall (pay per call) arena, and continues to look for new quality distribtuion.

This partnership should be very good for both companies as they look to gain market share.

Pay Per Call is a paid-search advertising model pioneered by Ingenio last year that empowers business — including small and local merchants who may or may not operate a website — to generate targeted phone calls instead of website clicks, and pay only for calls received. Ingenio also powers the industry’s only ad distribution network dedicated solely to Pay Per Call. Local.com represents additional distribution for Ingenio’s Advertising Network, which is anchored by AOL Search.

Launched in August 2005, Local.com enables consumers to find local businesses, products, and services quickly and easily. Powered by Interchange’s proprietary Keyword DNA(TM) and local-web indexing technologies, Local.com is designed to deliver consumers highly relevant local-search results. The inclusion of Ingenio’s Pay Per Call advertiser listings represents

Press Release.

Google recently integrated their local service with their map structure in the first of what I hear is several new developments for this property.

Google’s next move is to launch Google Local for the phone.

The wave of JAVA enabled phones has allowed a large development of new phone based applications. If you have a JAVA enabled phone, it’s usually quite easy to add new services (often in the form of games or organizers) to your phone.

This service is a very stripped down version of the Google Local property. It allows for search, driving directions, and what is sure to be the best feature – just call the establishment. (This would be a great place to integrate Pay Per Call Advertising).

The service looks very easy to implement, if they support your particular brand.

I found it odd that I have a brand new JAVA enabled phone (the Motorola i836) which is not supported at all. There could be an issue as Nextel is my carrier, and it was recently acquired by Sprint, thus Google hasn’t updated their service yet, but no Google Local for me to test out.

Google has released a nice tour of the property so you can see a wide variety of screen shots in how the service will work.

One thing that did impress me is their nice list of FAQs. There have been times when Google released a product with very little support – not this time. It looks like Google understands they need to capture users through phones and their local property, and are quite willing to offer some free services and support to reach these goals.

Google has done a good job of integrating maps and driving directions into the application. With both satellite imagery and traditional maps, one can find directions, view the area, and find their way across a city to a local business.

The integration with search and mobile devices will only grow over the coming years. Google has taken a large step in adding value to not only their local search property, but leaping off the computer to user’s phones so they can take Google with them everywhere.

Despite the late announcement this should be a very good program:

The topic of this month is “The Search: A ten year perspective”, during which we will look back at the early days of the search industry, its key turning points, and discuss its short term outlook and its future.

If you’re in Mountain View, this event should be on your list.

Full Details.

The Google AdSense blog just published the new details on the AdSense referral program.

Users who sign up for AdSense through your referral button will learn about a great product, and you’ll have a new way to generate revenue – $100 when each user you refer first earns $100.

There are a large number of banners that can be added to a website, including some that are not the usual AdSense size blocks.

Pretty simple information, and it was very much expected.

The part I didn’t expect was that Google is also paying $1 for every Firefox user who installs the Google Firefox toolbar.

Again, quite a few different banner sizes, some as small as buttons.

No text links for either program – only images, which seems out of character with Google’s fascination with everything text, and slow adoption of images overall.

The real question though is: Why is Google giving away this money?

• Are they recommending firefox?
• Are firefox users finding better plug-ins and not using the toolbar?
• Are firefox users not giving Google all the data it collects through the toolbar, and they need a higher firefox penetration?

It’s interesting to see Google not only push a browser and toolbar, but to pay for referrals.

If you’re willing to pay for something, you usually get something in return.

• Is it uses?
• Or data collection?

Personally, I uninstalled every Google product after both the GMail notifier and the last Google Toolbar updated itself on my machines without my permission. I consider this a security breach, and someone else trying to control my software.

It will be interesting to see what else Google starts paying for in the future. How about AdWords account referrals?