Google Ends Free Ride on Shopping Listings

Google is monetizing one of its last free commercial services later this year when it ends free listings on its new Google Commerce platform (formerly known as Google Base, and before that Froogle). The move will likely create a drastic decrease in the number of products listed, while at the same time ferreting out dubious resellers and fly-by-night scam artists that tried to leverage the free listing service, much in the same way Craigslist has been usurped by questionable businesses.

Starting September 1 or sooner, the new Google Shopping search engine will integrate product listings into search results using the same mechanism for text advertising, Google AdWords. Google claims that ad placement will be based on a combination of maximum cost-per-click as well as ad quality.

Google is offering incentives to existing and new merchants in the form of a 10% rebate on ad spend through the end of the year, and a $100 credit to use towards product listing ads.

Google has simplified the process somewhat by using your existing products in your data feed to base the ads upon, however you must still create ads on a product-by-product basis.

Linking AdWords to Merchant Center

To create product ads, you must link your Merchant Account product listings to an AdWords account, then create a new campaign and extend it to include the Merchant account. This allows you to bind ads to specific products and control how and when the ads appear. Google has instructions here, but we will follow up with more details as they become available.