I think it’s pretty obvious that we believe Google Base is not only here to stay but is going to be more and more important for natural search success on Google.

Google today published a few guidelines on its Google Base blog on product attributes that are worth reading. More importantly they are encouraging merchants to engage Google via the Google Base group on product attribute requirements and ask questions. Great way to get a dialog started and even pick up a few best practices.

Google Groups allows you to subscribe to threads so you don’t even have to go back and check regularly on updates or interesting content. Another one that is worth subscribing to is the Google Checkout Merchant group, covers anything from seller protection policies to promotions and feature requests.

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In his first official U.S. announcement, eBay’s new head of eBay Auctions, proclaimed a day of celebration on Valentine’s Day. And of course an insertion fee promotion for auction-style listings at 50% off. Details are here.

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Now that SearchAdvisor has launched, we thought we’d talk to one of our early users to get his feedback.

Josh Mohrer is the VP of Marketing and Development for Uncle Sams Army Navy Outfitters and a ChannelAdvisor champion. I don’t mean that he recommends our products but more that he is an aggressive, creative and savvy multi-channel merchant always on the lookout for strategies for growing his business profitably. He is one of our customers who inspires us and challenges us to create great products. He has a very strong eBay business (ebay.unclesamsdeals.com), eCommerce site (www.unclesamsdeals.com), comparison shopping engine feeds, and is now focusing more on paid search to drive traffic.

More importantly, Josh has been an early beta tester of our new SearchAdvisor product. We sat down with Josh to learn more about his paid search business, how he’s been using SearchAdvisor, and what he expects to do next.

ChannelAdvisor: First off, what branch of the Armed Forces sells more gear? Army, Navy, Air Force or Marines?
Josh Mohrer: Most of our gear isn’t branch specific, but all the branches do pretty well. The peacoat, which is a Navy creation, is our overall best selling item, but we sell a lot of Army and Marines stuff too. This Marines jacket is one of my personal favorites and has also done well for us.

CA: Why do Paid Search?
JM: Paid Search is where people go first for shopping, and to maximize our sales we need to be where the buyers are. The draw towards AdWords was also the Google Checkout badge and leveraging Google’s holiday promotions. However, the clicks are not as qualified as with the Comparison Shopping Engines so it was not my initial focus.

I started paid search in October of 2006 for the holiday season with a budget of about $200/day and an emphasis on the big keywords in my space. I had to generate all of my own keywords and estimate budgets manually. Since I had already built a ChannelAdvisor Store, I was able to take advantage of the matrix inventory option and support for Google Checkout and the holiday promotion Google ran.

(more…)

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Brian Smith over at Comparison Engines (who will be joining us at our Catalyst conference) just broke the news on BrowseGoods, a new Web 2.0 visual shopping interface that gives you a glimpse of where shopping may be heading. Not only is it more intuitive then paging through product listings but it’s also more fun.

BrowseGoods is an Amazon Affiliate and all the products are pulled from select Amazon categories (right now Shoes, Toys, Sports and Watches are supported). I would expect them to expand to more categories pretty soon and then take the concept to other Comparison Shopping sites.

It was pretty easy and fast for me to find a cool board game offered by one of our customers, Yellow Mountain Imports, and it appears to show all of YM’s products in this category separated by a small border (you can drag the product map to the right or left to look for similar items).

AmazNode is another cool example of leveraging Amazon’s comprehensive and well-structured product catalog and Amazon Web Services architecture to build a mashup. I would expect to see many more of those (Yahoo! Pipes is also something to monitor) and if you’re an online merchant you really want your products included in the Amazon database (yes, there’s a theme here …).

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Formula for creating a dull story:

• Read a Hitwise report about traffic.
• Write up a quick headline about X company crushing Y company.
• Post it to your blog.

Personally I think backward-looking trends aren’t as important as analyzing what the company appears to be doing. It’s like saying right before the end of the Bronze Age, “iron demand seems weak”.

Perhaps the signs aren’t clear? It seems like more, and more, and more in Google’s search results. Not to mention the places it’s been showing for a while.

Can you tell me where Google advertises to consumers about Google Base? Hmm, I can’t find it either. It’s a tool for merchants and data producers.

Personally I think the community has told Google loud and clear they want to provide Google’s main search results with richer and more accurate data. Google Base is the response to that, and it seems to me that they are just getting started.

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