June 2005

In this month's Backbone Media newsletter we give you an overview of shopping search engines and ask the question: Should you be listed? Next, are you considering using webinars in your marketing efforts? Stephen Turcotte, President of Backbone Media gives you five tips on getting the most out of your webinar efforts using search engines.

Shopping Search Engines: Should You Be Listed?
Retailers, manufacturers and other portal sites have the option to list their products within different shopping search engines. A shopping search engine gives the searcher the ability to compare products from a number of sources in one place. Currently shopping engines list mainly consumer products, however, things are starting to change in the shopping search engine industry, as industrial products are beginning to pop up in shopping search engines.

Froogle.com is Google's shopping search service. Froogle is increasing the number of industrial products listed. If you do sell industrial products, as you are searching Google web results, keep an eye out for the product results link near the top of the results page when using your keywords. When the product link appears, click on the link and determine if your competitors are syndicating products into the shopping engine.

If your competitors appear in Froogle, definitely consider listing your company's products. Froogle is receiving a lot of traffic from the product link on the Google web results page as it is so highly placed in the results. For those companies without a top ten listing on Google the product link gives them the opportunity to get a top page ranking through the back door of Froogle. It's free to get listed in Froogle, you can send an email to Google and ask them to index your site, however there are no guarantees to getting into Froogle's database. Another way to get listed is to create a merchant account and develop a feed to syndicate your products into Froogle.

Yahoo!'s shopping engine is powered through the main site at Yahoo.com. Unlike Froogle, Yahoo has a pay per click model and you can find out more about the pricing here.

Shopping.com's site is similar to Yahoo! They also charge for inclusion.

You should be listed in a shopping search engine if your competitors are included or if a portal site is receiving a qualified traffic. For any pay per click model any advertising investment should be weighed in light of the return on investment, run a test and see if the results justify continuing the marketing investment.  

Really Froogle is the site to keep a close eye on for industrial companies as you can have your products listed for free. Contact Backbone Media, Inc if you need help with deciding whether a shopping search engine is right for your company and getting listed.

Sincerely,
John Cass
Director of Internet Marketing Strategies

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SEO Tip
Curious about getting the most out of your web seminar marketing efforts using search engine marketing?

Here's five search marketing tips on getting the most out of your webinar – read more on this article at the Backbone Media blog.

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