The Froogle Effect

Hi all. I'm relatively new to the affiliate scene but want to raise an issue that concerns me. No doubt you are aware of Google's new search facility, Froogle, which caters purely
to online purchasing. It's primary purpose is to display products that are sold online. Whilst I applaud Google's continuing development, this latest invention appears to
potentially threaten affiliates. Froogles small print says:

"Froogle points users to sites where they can buy actual products from the merchants that sell them. Therefore, to be eligible to submit a feed, you must sell products via your website and ship them to the buyer. If you sell services or custom products that do not have fixed prices, use your website only to promote an offline business, or are an affiliate marketing site, your site content may be crawled by and included in Google's web search, but it will not be included in Froogle. Nor will Froogle accept a data feed under these conditions."

If we project this development into the future, a possible scenario is that all searchers wishing to purchase goods online will use Froogle, whilst those that are looking for information, are researching etc, will use Google.

That effectively could mean that all affiliates will potentially lose most of it's revenue as all (most?) affiliates will not be able to get listed in Froogle. This is a development that has me somewhat concerned. I am aware that this is currently a Beta project, and only operating in the US, but would be interested to know others thoughts. TD don't seem too worried at present and quote 'we will monitor'.

Any other thoughts out there?

Lee

Hi Lee,

there was some discussion on this here

pub105.ezboard.com/fukaff...1101.topic

Thanx Bertm. Couldn't find any references to Froogle anywhere before posting my bit. There seems to be mixed views and a lot of knee-jerk reactions but no suggestions or recommendations. My own thoughts are that this engine WILL have some effect on affiliate earnings, it's just the degree of hurt that's not clear.

No-one seems to have mentioned emulating a merchant website in order to get listed in Froogle. Is this a possible route to combatting the problem? I mean how can Froogle tell whether you are a merchant or not?

There doesn't appear to be any feedback from the merchant's point of view either. Does this imply they only get a small percentage of their turnover from affiliates and don't care what happens to them? It would be interesting to know how important affiliates are in terms of percentage of revenue for them.

Lee