bearmom
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posted on January 3, 2003 06:00:03 AM new
Yesterday's announcement at Bidville:
Bidville has just been approved by the new Froogle product search engine. Within the next few weeks, Bidville`s inventory of products will be uploaded and included in all Froogle searches!
Froogle is a new service provided by Google . It is the world`s first search engine designed for products only and is in early stages of development called "beta" testing. Once finalized, Froogle is expected to be heavily marketed and advertised by the world`s largest and most popular search engine - Google.
Since Froogle only allows fixed price items, Bidville will be uploading its entire inventory of "Take It Price" auctions to Froogle. Currently, over sixty percent of our items have a "Take It Price". Traditional auction items are not permitted by Froogle and will not be included.
According to a recent report , many auctions sites will not be included in Froogle searches. The addition of Bidville`s products will be a tremendous boost to the exposure received by our sellers. Bidville merchants will not need to alter their items in any way. All eligible items will automatically be uploaded to Froogle.
Thanks for continuing to grow with us.
Bidville Management
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blairwitch
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posted on January 3, 2003 09:14:33 AM new
According to a recent report , many auctions sites will not be included in Froogle searches. The addition of Bidville`s products will be a tremendous boost to the exposure received by our sellers. Bidville merchants will not need to alter their items in any way. All eligible items will automatically be uploaded to Froogle.
Um where are they getting the news that no other auction sites wont be included. From froogles own site:
1. What's the benefit of being listed in Froogle?
Froogle is an extension of the Google search engine that millions of people around the globe use daily to research products before they purchase. Listing your product in Froogle is a free way to extend the reach of your marketing efforts to millions of new customers.
Google's worldwide user base performs more than 150 million searches a day. That presents an enormous opportunity to introduce your products to customers you might otherwise spend millions of dollars in advertising to reach. These are people actively searching for the items you sell. And did we mention inclusion in Froogle is absolutely free?
2. How do I get my products listed in Froogle?
Google crawls billions of webpages every month, so you'll likely be included automatically in Froogle's index of sites. If for some reason your store is not showing up and you would like it to be included in Froogle, please submit a data feed. Doing so will ensure that your entire product catalog is included in Froogle, and it will also allow you to control the freshness and accuracy of your product information. Feeds can be updated as you add new products, change prices, offer special promotions, or discontinue products.
3. How do I make sure Froogle has accurate information about my products?
As its software crawls the web, Froogle automatically identifies products for sale and the picture, price, and category associated with each product. Froogle may occasionally make incorrect assumptions about content, resulting in a mismatch between products and images. While we continuously fine tune this process, the best way to ensure accuracy is to provide us with a data feedthat you know to contain the most up-to-date and accurate information about your products.
The cost?
6. How much do I have to pay to be part of Froogle?
Zip. Zero. Nada. Zilch. Nothing. Inclusion in Froogle is absolutely free. Our goal is to enable users to search over the broadest possible range of products for sale online. To do that, we're including all merchants at no charge. If you really want to pay us, however, we are more than happy to sell you advertising (see below).
More of that bidville spin! 
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yellowbud
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posted on January 3, 2003 01:25:35 PM new
Blairwitch: 
"Um where are they getting the news that no other auction sites wont be included."
Um...try to pay attention. They actually said, "many" auction sites won't be included.
Please do explain how you feel that being in the Froogle search will hurt Bidville, or not help at all.
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bearmom
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posted on January 3, 2003 02:02:19 PM new
I don't think BW can come up with an answer to that. Unless, of course, Froogle starts their own chatboard so that BW and dimview can spew their biased stats and prejudiced comments about Bidville for the Froogle readers, the way they have at AW and the Moo!
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yellowbud
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posted on January 3, 2003 02:16:41 PM new
I think you're right, Bearmom.
I think we'll see BW, DV, and some others really grasping at straws now, and of course, they'll double up on spouting the the same old - same old stuff that everyone is so bored with, in lieu of not being able to find a valid fault with this news. (Watch as this prediction unfolds.)
No matter how you look at it, the Froogle search can only help Bidville.
BW will be needing alot of these...
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blairwitch
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posted on January 3, 2003 02:31:03 PM new
Um...try to pay attention. They actually said, "many" auction sites won't be included.
Um....ok so tell me which sites wont be included.
This should be interesting.....
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tooltimes
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posted on January 3, 2003 02:36:48 PM new
Froogle may be the slayer of BV instead of it's savior. There will be milions of items to choose from from all over the web. There will be less and less reason to list at BV and those that do will remain will have less reason to pay for a membership. Foogle may find lookers and not visitors to the site of BV. Gallery? Featured? Worth less and less now.
Isn't it something how the BV faithful follow whatever is placed in front of them by the BV managent without a bit of research on their own.
I bet the good citizens of ancient Troy went ape over the huge wooden horse the first day too. 
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yellowbud
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posted on January 3, 2003 03:07:05 PM new
Aaaaaaaaaand....they're off and running!
I love making predictions!
We can turn this around, tooltimes...
Froogle may be the savior instead of the slayer of BV. (Anyone old dummy can see that.)
There will be thousands of items from BV included in the search results.
There could be all the more reason to list at BV, and to pay for the memberships, as more prospective customers may visit the site, and look around.
Froogle may find more buyers for the site, and the Gallery and Featured could become more valuable tools, worth more and more.
Isn't it something how the BV detractors can obsess, and obsess, and obsess over the business of a site that they profess to care nothing about!
I think a psychiatric convention could have a field day analysing the situation!
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reality1
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posted on January 3, 2003 03:09:06 PM new
Tooltimes
Oh come on, let the BV cheerleaders have their day. How would you like to be stuck in a void for as long as they have, with no real hope of a way out except for the elusions they create in their own minds.
Meanwhile BV management has found a very cost-effective way of getting the puppets to cough up more money.
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tooltimes
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posted on January 3, 2003 04:31:21 PM new
Ed or Bryan or whoever is in charge at BV must be saying to themselves "it's like taking candy from a baby".
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bearmom
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posted on January 3, 2003 05:47:28 PM new
My prediction, which is worth about as much as yours, is that the verification fee, or even the premier fees, will continue to be a great value. Maybe even more so now.
I've said it before, but Ebay is the 'alacarte' site-you pay for each individual item. Bidville is the all you can eat buffet. You pay your 5, or 15 dollars a month and list til you can't anymore-how many auctions and bells and whistles you want is up to you-not your budget.
For the low volume seller, or hobby seller, it's easy to figure your hobby will cost you x number of dollars per month-when I sold at Ebay, I was often shocked when I received my bill and realized how little profit I had actually made. Bidville is the best deal around, and will become an even better bargain as the volume of sales increase.
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tooltimes
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posted on January 3, 2003 05:55:43 PM new
The main difference being sales as in actually selling things with a good chance of multiple bids at ebay as opposed to almost zero sales at BV.
The only value I can possibly see to listing at BV is to use it as a web store. That way any lucky sale from the site itself is a bonus. Sellers can drive traffic to their ebay booth or store.
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reality1
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posted on January 3, 2003 06:03:27 PM new
"IF" the volume of sales increase, would be a better way to put it. BV members seem to be under the impression that Froogle is revolving around Bidville, but in reality Bidville is less than a grain of salt in the overall picture of Froogle. Come on people time to come down to earth.
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blairwitch
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posted on January 3, 2003 07:24:01 PM new
Tooltimes its going to be very hard for any eBay seller to use bidville. I tried it long ago and buyers were not interested in joining the site. Yahoo works since many of my buyers had accounts there.
reality1 it took nerve for bidville to claim many auction sites would not be on froogle. These people will believe anything lol.
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reality1
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posted on January 3, 2003 08:20:41 PM new
BW
Well they didn’t really lie to the members about that. It turns out that Ebay won’t be included because of the type of database they maintain (dynamic) and their refusal to submit a comma delimited data feed to Froogle on a regular basis. That and they are currently only accepting US merchants due to the software is in English only for the mean time. I guess Bidville’s management decided to keep these facts quiet for some reason or another. Maybe to makes this Froogle thing look bigger for Bidville than it really is.
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bearmom
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posted on January 3, 2003 08:21:20 PM new
I don't know about that-we all saw through you and dimwit long ago!
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tooltimes
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posted on January 3, 2003 10:15:43 PM new
I can clearly see some ancient ancestors saying " A witch! Burn Her! " to anything or anyone that questions the high priests of BV's wisdom.
Pearls before the swine I'm afraid.
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tooltimes
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posted on January 4, 2003 01:48:31 AM new
BBW,
Tooltimes its going to be very hard for any eBay seller to use bidville. I tried it long ago and buyers were not interested in joining the site. Yahoo works since many of my buyers had accounts there.
Can't a BV seller simply have a link to his BV 'About Me' page for buyers and let the buyers can pick out any item(s) they want ( all must have a Take It Now price ) and then email the seller with what item(s) the want? That way the seller can close the auctions and sell the item(s) to the buyer. No need to even register or bid at BV for the buyers. The buyer loses the feedback ritual but that's a joke anyway.
The seller can even tell the buyers that he sends to his BV About Me page to ingnore the auction site as it's a big waste of time.
Why pay Yahoo $50/month for a store or ten cents an item per month for any Yahoo Booth items ( 5 cents for 14 days w/ bulk loader )?
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daredevil2010
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posted on January 4, 2003 10:34:51 AM new
Some interesting comments here. I think overall Bidville being listed in Froogle will be a great source of new buyers.
Someone did mention that if all auctions are listed on Froogle... what's the point of being on Bidville and paying their fees. This is an interesting question and one eBay has delt with (they refuse to be part of these sources). Yet in reality, people are almost always willing to pay a bit more to have "better" location. ebay has too many fees. Many people feel bidville is just right.
Given that Froogle will probably the #1 auction serach engine, it will open the doors to tens of thousands new buyers to Bidville every day. Of course this will open the doors to other sites as well... but as long as Bidville has a high enough listings, good deals, and decent service... people will come back.
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tooltimes
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posted on January 4, 2003 11:10:11 AM new
Something is fishy with Froogle. It may be very much like PayPal was in it's beginning. There were no mention of fees and one got the impression that it would be either free or very low cost forever. PayPal didn't start fees until it was well entrenched in the fabric of auction selling and buying.
Where is Google or Froogle's profit motive? If Froogle is a big and rapid success and they have a huge percentage of the online fixed priced auctions listed by their search engine they will be in the absolute driver's seat when it comes to introducing fees. Small fees at first then more and more as Froogle goes more and more mainstream. ( just like PayPal did )
Does anyone see the similarites between Bear Share & Napster/KaaZa and Froogle? Bear Share was to let viewers visit a small and safe part of your hard drive to see files, much like Napster and now KaaZa and the clones http://www.afternapster.com/ to access items you might have for sale or trade. That idea frightened many computer users and this Froogle method searches websites and not PC harddrives instead. Froogle will need to become the dominant player quickly in this technology because other companies can jump in the game. The other players waited far too long to jump on PayPal's forte and now PayPal is much like eBay ... the only real game in town.
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blairwitch
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posted on January 4, 2003 06:43:38 PM new
reality1 ebay may not be included, but they are listed at the bottom of the search page. There are nine sites including yahoo and amazon. These sites pay for advertising.
Tooltimes I had a very nice about me page on bidville, but buyers were not interested at all. I do agree with you that most items are warehoused by sellers to show their buyers from other sites. I would not pay $50.00 for a yahoo store, but since the free auction booths are being added to froogle I will make one.
Given that Froogle will probably the #1 auction serach engine, it will open the doors to tens of thousands new buyers to Bidville every day.
Dont get too excited because the #1 auction search engine is at eBay. When 90% of people think auctions they go direct to eBay. If the buyer isnt looking for cheap cards/overpriced books/low demand items bidville wont do much better. These same items will be flooded on froogle.
Tooltimes there are nine sites listed in a box at the bottom so they are paying already. I expect froogle to put paying members items first in the search. Kmart is already listed and I am sure more will follow.
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tooltimes
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posted on January 4, 2003 08:39:23 PM new
I believe a Yahoo Booth only has listed items at Yahoo. It may be that Yahoo Auctions is the site that is hurt the most by a successful Froogle search engine.
The third tier sites charge no listing fees and most do no charge any mandatory fees on unsold items ( an exception being BV with their $10/yr fee ). The other third tier sites charge an ebay-like FVF and no listing fee yet Yahoo does albeit only a nickel or more. As the other third tier sites join Froogle ( BV is full of BS if they really think only a few auction sites will be on Froogle ) and if the Froogle search is successful and grows in popularity then Yahoo sellers may say " why am I paying to list stuff "? ( as well as BV sellers paying an unnecessary $10 yr fee )
[ edited by tooltimes on Jan 4, 2003 08:40 PM ]
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reality1
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posted on January 4, 2003 09:23:25 PM new
Just for the heck of it I threw a few very general items (for me anyway) at Froogle. Items like “ASUS socket 7” and “Microsoft mouse” just to see what would be pulled up by Froogle. Just as I suspected, I found only a couple links to 3rd tier sites and bidville was not one. I looks at a few hundred of the URL’s and I was amazed to find that the MAJORITY of them started with www.stores.yahoo.com/……. So at this point it looks to me that Yahoo is the top dog. For computer parts anyway.
Oh ya almost forgot. I was surprised to find a few Ebay power sellers that I have dealt with come up and I never knew that they had yahoo stores also. YIKES LOL
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tooltimes
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posted on January 4, 2003 10:10:27 PM new
It's still in beta testing and may be a big flop anyway. I can see it useful in looking for sleeper items that may have some value on ebay but just sit on third tier sites. If you can find a $100 ebay collectible for only $10 on a website somewhere it may be worth some searching.
I read an article that said AOL's new upcoming auction entry would be Froogle-compatible. That'll place Yahoo and AOL at the top of the search results.
Ebay has a heck of a headstart on anything that comes down the chute. I'd like to see Bill Gate throws millions of bucks behind a project like Froogle so they can advertise.
Froogle articles
http://www.cnet.com/investor/news/newsitem/0-9900-1028-20750951-0.html
http://www.internetnews.com/ec-news/article.php/1556221
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This is a smart move by Google. Segmented search is the future of search," said Ken Cassar, senior analyst at Jupiter Research. "The universe of information that the Web has to offer is simply too vast to be able to effectively handle very specific inquiries efficiently without segmentation."
"Google's execution with Froogle is pretty good," he said. "For example, a search on purses from the Google home page yields 1.6 million results. A search on purses from the women's accessories link on Froogle yields only 2,600 results. Still unmanageable, but far better than Google's broad-based search engine."
There are 14 product categories to browse, including everything from clothing to pets.
Google says its technology crawls billions of Web pages every month, so a merchant's store is likely to be included automatically in Froogle's index of sites. If for some reason your store is not showing up and you would like it to be included in Froogle, you can submit a data feed.
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sc0ut
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posted on January 7, 2003 03:20:17 AM new
I heard that ioffer is also going to work with froogle. I still can't decide if this is going to be a good thing for sellers or not, might drive the buyers to alternate sites. I've found plenty of deals at iOffer so who knows, maybe they will all come there.
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tfs13
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posted on January 8, 2003 03:28:04 AM new
I have had 2 items sell out of my AW Storefront in the last week.
Both buyers said they found me using Froogle.
Still might flop, but I sure am happy with the results so far.
Seth
http://tfshop.tfstudios.com
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tooltimes
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posted on January 8, 2003 08:20:37 AM new
There was a recent post on the BV boards about some BV items showing up on Froogle searches but they were way in the back behind Yahoo Stores items and AW store items. Placement will be the key and the stores will probably have the best chance to benefit from the Froogle search.
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blairwitch
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posted on January 8, 2003 09:19:54 AM new
Tooltimes I read the same thing and decided to see for myself. The bidville seller is correct the listings I checked were pages behind. I am starting to think the venues who pay more than the "free" listings will get first crack. Bidville is left behind with the other thousands of webpages, etc. Yahoo stores is going to benefit the most by the looks of things.
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