Christmas is for Merchants not Affiliates
Google Christmas Google plans to lead Holiday product searchers to Google Base, so merchants be sure all of your products are uploaded there. Froogle will be de-emphasized but Google will heavily feature Google Base during the holiday shopping season, sending a flurry of Christmas shoppers to the Base listings.

I’ve looked at “Base” several times to see how it could be used by affiliates but the rules seem to strictly prohibit affiliate links and affiliate pages just as Froogle did. Here are the rules: “Posting is not permitted for the promotion of affiliate sites or products sold through an affiliate marketing relationship. This includes item pages that are made up primarily of advertisements.” Following is the scoop from AuctionBytes about Google’s holiday plans.

Google Tells eBay Sellers It Will Roll Out Product Search “When users conduct a product search on Google.com, they will be represented with an additional search box where they can refine their search. When the user refines the search, Google takes the user to a second page, which will be filled with product results only from Google Base.” Results will be ranked in order of product attributes and by relevancy. Because Google found most product searches were being conducted on Google.com, Google will de-emphasize Froogle.com as a destination.”

Yahoo! News Reports: Google Will Boost Product Searches “Google.com can already detect if someone is looking for real estate to buy, and asks users to refine their queries before delivering listings from Google Base. Thus, the plan outlined at the PESA conference would apparently be a significant extension of this existing feature toward multiple product categories.”

I read this story over the weekend and planned to blog it then but got too busy, then SEObook reminded me about it this AM when he blogged: Are You Spamming Google Base Yet? over at Threadwatch.org. Aaron said “The holiday shopping season is coming, and Google will be pushing Google Base hard.”