In the eCommerce space? A big search development almost went under the radar on Thursday when Google announced that it would discontinue Google Product Search (formerly Froogle) and turn it into Google Shopping. The new Google Shopping will be a paid inclusion engine, also known as pay-to-play.
What is paid inclusion? Paid inclusion is when companies must pay to be listed in the search results for a particular directory. As a result, all users searching for products in Google Shopping will only see products that companies are paying to promote.
In addition, when a user conducts a search for a product as part of a Google Search, Google Product Listing ads will show up in the right rail of the search results or at the top of the page above the organic results.
This development, while leading to more money for Google, is also likely to favor larger advertisers in the eCommerce space who have more money to spend on paid listings at the expense of smaller advertisers.
For more information on this development, please see the following article.