Google Product Search has joined the comparison shopping “league” nicely. Between November 2007 and November 2008 Google Product Search has seen a 786% increase in unique visitors in the last year period and a total of 11.8 million visitors, which places it within the top 5 comparison search engines alongside the likes of Yahoo etc. This increase is the biggest of any Comparison Shopping Engine.

Yahoo Shopping still holds the top spot with 27.6 million unique visitors recorded on the same date, however, this figure has had no change from records taken November 2007.

Over the last year Google Product Search has made numerous usability improvements to improve relevance and listing quality. Jerry Dischler, Google Project Manager, has stated ”We have made a number of changes to improve both the relevance and the quality of products that are displayed, to reduce erroneous entries and display popular products (making the site) easier for consumers to understand and more useful,”

Unlike other comparison shopping engines, Google Product Search is the only one currently that offers narrowing of search results, by Free Shipping and Tax. It also gives users at first glance information on final charges, sales tax that may be added and the cost of shipping all by entering there location.

Google Base assume that the user has made the decision to buy and therefor the experience is more one of direct, locate and buy method. Customers can browse within results, however, you do not have the option to browse categories. Google have never commented on the number of products on the site or retailers using it. This is something I hope to be able to offer soon as I am currently working on an Item Count Stats Tool.

As i have stated in previous posts, Google do not charge for use of the Google Base service, however, if you did feel like advertising here you can do so with Ad Placements. 

As Jerry says,  ”The type of users attracted to the service makes the ads an easy sell, If a Dell ad displays on Product Search, in the vast majority of cases you are going to have someone who is looking to buy (something on the site),” he said. “So that makes a very attractive advertising opportunity.”

I hope this has brought to your attention just how important Google Base is to not only existing users, but the Online Shopping community and the future of sales. Who knows the increase that Google will see this year, but with the potential increase following 2008 do you really want to miss out?