Maximize Your Froogling for Increased Website Profits


Are you familiar with Froogle? If you are an online merchant, you certainly should be.

Froogle is Google's product search engine and was launched as a "beta product" in December 2002. Froogle's significance is in its ability to generate free "qualified" visitor traffic for online merchant products?assuming they gain "maximum exposure".

What can "maximum exposure" in Froogle produce for online merchants? Merchants who have pursued Froogle maximization for their products have reported significant traffic and associated sales increases. One merchant generated over $19,000 in less than 20 days. Examples like this suggest that Froogle maximization is a worth-while strategy.

There are multiple ways to access Froogle, both voluntarily and involuntarily. Involuntarily methods include Google spidering your product web pages and adding them to their Froogle product index, or if you have a Yahoo or eBay store, your products may be automatically indexed. However, the most effective way to access Froogle comes through voluntarily actions on your part through submitting a data feed (txt file) directly to Froogle.

Yet rather than going into details about Froogle data feed submission techniques and requirements, the focus of this article is on highlighting the most important strategies for gaining "maximum exposure."

Froogle maximization involves focusing your efforts on two, interdependent parts: (1) your Froogle data feed and (2) your product web page (i.e. Froogle landing page).

Maximizing Your Data Feed

The first part of Froogle maximization focuses on setting up your data feed. Unfortunately, many data feed submission programs including shopping carts build feeds that are not maximized for Froogle. Therefore, always review your data feed and implement these maximization strategies:

• Include all relevant product information in your data feed. If you have information for optional data fields like brand or ISBN, include it. Keep in mind that the information in your data feed must match the information on your product web page.

• Write a product name that uses a general product name, the brand name, model name, manufacturer and product type. Think about how potential buyers will search for your product and use these identifiers.

• Keep the description around 40 - 60 characters. Recent research studies are showing that a shorter description leads to a better position - possibly a factor of a keyword relevancy factor.

• Enter the product category path for YOUR website into the data feed; not the Froogle category. Unfortunately. Google states that many merchants enter the Froogle categories where they believe their product should be listed.

• Use the Froogle merchant center for identifying any errors with your data feed. Although the Froogle merchant center is simple - it does provide excellent information to assist in correcting data feed issues.

• Be careful, Google has reported problems with merchant's website image files having a robots.txt file. The result is a Froogle listing with a missing image - a situation that can decrease visitor click-through.

• When naming your image files, the name you give it is very important. Similar to alt tags for conventional search engine optimization, the image should use the primary product keyword such as mp3player.gif or plasmatv.gif in its naming convention.

• Froogle does not accept images that are 90x90 or smaller. So if you do not have a larger image, then simply do not submit one. The best thing to do is send Froogle the same full-size image on your web page and they will re-size it to fit their interface.

Maximizing Your Product Web Page

The second part of Froogle maximization involves your product web page. This is the most overlooked aspect to Froogle maximization and potentially the most important. Although Froogle requires a data feed, it works very similar to a traditional search engine by crawling a web page for relevant factors. So your product web page plays an essential role in gaining maximum exposure in Froogle.

• In general, your product web page should be laid out in a manner that can be easily crawled by Froogle which means using HTML.

• If you are using tables on your product web page, put your product image, title, description and price into one cell or as few cells as possible.

• Include your "add to cart" button (or other purchase indicator) within the same table as your price and product image.

• The "$" sign (dollar sign) should appear and may be of greater value if it is BOLD and of a larger font.

• Keep the title and description listed on your product web page identical to the one listed in your Froogle data feed.

• Add an uninterrupted 25 - 28 word sentence for your description that includes your keyword and is meaningful to visitors.

• Place the product description directly underneath the product title and, if possible, within the same cell as the title, price, and image.

• Froogle pays attention to the product title tag on your web page. Add a unique title tag for each product web page.

• Research has shown that a higher PageRank does not guarantee a higher position in Froogle. In addition, a product listing in Froogle will not transfer any PageRank to your website.

Are You Taking Advantage of Froogle's New Customer Satisfaction Rankings?

Recently Froogle introduced a "customer satisfaction ranking" feature for their merchants' product listings. The rankings are actually pulled from shopping comparison websites like BizRate.com, Shopping.com and others. As a merchant and if you have not done so already, it is highly recommended to setup your products on at least one of the shopping comparison websites to gain a customer satisfaction ranking on Froogle.

Froogle users searching for a product will connect greater credibility with a merchant sporting the rankings versus ones without. If you are competing against a category-killer or large retailer like Target, Staples, Amazon or others, this may be essential since all of these merchants will certainly have customer satisfaction rankings.

As an added bonus, shopping comparison websites have shown to generate a higher sales conversion rate than other marketing channels. Therefore, not only will you help maximize your Froogle strategy; you may also drastically improve your sales conversion rate by adding your products to a shopping comparison website.

By following, these data feed AND product web page strategies, you will gain tremendous advantage over your competition and strive towards generating "maximum exposure" for your Froogle product listings.


More Resources

Unable to open RSS Feed $XMLfilename with error HTTP ERROR: 404, exiting

More E-Commerce Information:

Related Articles

PayPal Powered
Three years ago I was doing some work for a local university helping to redesign an internal website they wanted updated and made more user friendly. When the job was done the person I was doing the job for wanted to use his school issued credit card to pay for my services.
Is Your Business Afraid of the Internet?
My Business is Afraid of the InternetBill Gates, CEO of Microsoft, once said that there would soon be two types of businesses, those online, and those out of business. Those words still ring true today, and many small businesses are missing a huge boat by not getting online.
Outsourcing Your Ecommerce Order Fulfillment
When your eCommerce business grows to the point where you can no longer package and ship the orders yourself, it's time to begin outsourcing your order fulfillment. Although all order fulfillment centers offer the same basic services, their individual methods and costs will help you choose one over the other.
Keep Your Customers Happy by Organizing Your Payment Options
Anyone using a slow, or an awkward payment processor had better wake up!There are some very slick ways to transfer money around the globe, in todays, lightning fast world, both your customers and your suppliers demand payment in the click of a mouse.The processing companies have been fiercely competing with each other for years now, every so often, they revamp and recalibrate.
Is ClickBanks Popularity Drawing To An End?
ClickBank is the Internet's most popular payment processor for online payments but with many rivals appearing on the scene is ClickBank's popularity drawing to an end?ClickBank allows website owners to accept credit and debit card payments online and then deliver the products to their customers instantly. Since August 2005, ClickBank has integrated with PayPal so that people who either do not have a credit or debit card or choose not to use their cards online, can now pay using funds from their PayPal account instead.
Why Suppliers Should Use B2B Exchanges
Business to business e-commerce is on the rise! Worldwide B2B e-commerce revenues are estimated to reach around US$ 2 trillion in 2004. This is a significant leap from last year's US$ 1.
Stakeholder Analysis and Stakeholder Management
What is a Stakeholder?Try "define: Stakeholder" in Google and you will be surprised by the huge differences in the way this simple word is defined. It perhaps proves - in a way - just how confused people get about Stakeholder Management and how inconsistent the different approaches to it can be!My simple definition is "anyone affected by a decision and interested in its outcome".
Mr and Mrs Smith Go Online, as Internet Technology Moves from Fantasy to Normality
According to NOP World, 48% of all Internet users have researched or purchased financial products such as insurance and loans on the internet, or used online banking facilities. In April, NOP World had already recorded estimates of 28 million people online in Great Britain, with 13.
E-Commerce Is Back On The Fast Track
How much holiday shopping did you do on-line this year? If you are reading this, then chances are good that you made at least one purchase on-line. Over 54% of all Americans did it [1].
Effective Management Of Your Customer Services
With a third party merchant account you will have a dedicated 24/7 support team to handle your credit card payment on your behalf as part of your package. You will also need to provide your own support for issues relating directly to your product.
Bringing the World to Your Door
According to Internet.com, by the year 2008 nearly 30% of offline purchases will be influenced by online research.
12 Powerful Ways To Use Autoresponders That Will Take YOU To The Top
If only I had known that autoresponders are a necessity to your online business when I first ventured online, I would have saved a lot of time and money. You have to automate in as many areas as possible and if used responsibly, autoresponders can be your best friend.
Intranet Portal - Business Case ROI
The days of easy money are overIn these post-dot-com days of the 21st Century, the hype attached to IT is well and truly over. The modern Board is deeply suspicious of large IT projects with questionable benefits and a long-term payback period.
Ecommerce Comes from Customer Satisfaction
Online shopping is convenient, but many companies whose web sites do brisk sales often leave consumers wanting. That's according to ForeSee Results, a research company that studied customer satisfaction among Internet shoppers.
Your Site is all Direct Marketing
This may not be a popular view, but I think writing a web site is very similar to writing a piece of direct mail. I'm not talking about smash-and-grab fliers.
Distinguishing Features of E-Commerce
E-commerce offers customers the chance to eliminate many stages in the sales/distribution chain. The mark-ups that occur between manufacturers, wholesalers, distributors, retailers and consumers can add the cost of goods purchased by consumers.
Database: The Secret of Success
BENEFITS OF A DATABASEBy maintaining your list as a database, you can segment in many ways for targeting. Targeting improves the productivity of your offers.
Online Shopping: Legal Challenges for Taxing Authorities
E-commerce offers customers the chance to eliminate many stages in the sales/distribution chain. The mark-ups that occur between manufacturers, wholesalers, distributors, retailers and consumers can add the cost of goods purchased by consumers.
Shopping Carts and the E-Aisles
Have you ever gone to the store and thought you only needed a few things so you didn't grab a cart? The next thing you know your hands are full and groceries are crashing everywhere making a big mess. If only you had gotten a cart.
Intranet Portals - Collaboration through Team Rooms
Knowledge Management for beginnersKnowledge Management (KM) can be defined simply as the process through which organizations generate value from their intellectual and knowledge-based assets. Knowledge assets are often grouped into two categories:(1) Explicit KnowledgeGenerally, everything and anything that can be documented, archived and codified.