It’s official, Italy is part of the elite ecommerce nations

Google has finally launched Google Shopping search in Italy, more than 8 years after they launched Froogle, the original name for Google Shopping (called Google Product search in the US). Google shopping has been available in the UK and Germany since 2004.

Figure 1. Google Shopping Search home page in Italy Companies wishing to include their products in Google Product search need to upload their data using Google’s Merchant center, previously known as Google Base.

AdWords advertisers should look into AdWords product ad extensions which allow advertisers to highlight products directly in Google search ads and/or and Google Images ads in the Google Search Network. Ad extensions for products are available in the US, UK and now Italy (and a few other countries including Australia, Spain and the Netherlands).

One weakness of Google’s Product search is a lack of multilingual support. Merchants who want to target Südtirol, the German speaking area of Italy or Valle d’Aosta, the French speaking area, are out of luck. Willy Brandt’s admonition

If I am selling to you, I speak your language. If I am buying, dann müssen Sie Deutsch sprechen.

is for naught.

Google Product Search joins Amazon.com in Italy

Google has launched its shopping search in Italy just 5 months after Amazon.com entered the Italian market with an Italian language site. Now if Italian banks could actually process payments and courier services deliver the goods, there might actually be hope for ecommerce in Italy. Google’s own payment system, Google Checkout, is limited to the US and UK for now.

Table 1: Google Shopping availability by country

Microsoft bing says ciao to shopping product search (in both senses of the word)

Google competitor Microsoft also offers a shopping search engine, known as Bing shopping in the US and Ciao in Europe. Microsoft bought Ciao in 2008 but is reported to have put it up for sale. This isn’t a complete surprise, the program is currently suspended despite a revamped user interface.

We have temporarily paused the onboarding of new merchants while we do some back-end optimization work.
This will not affect normal operation of the program – we will continue to display offers from merchants already live in the program.
Although we do not yet have a firm date when we will resume onboarding new merchants, we expect to do so soon and encourage all prospective merchants to check back frequently

As illustrated in the merchant login area:

Figure 2. Microsoft suspends inclusion of new merchants in shopping search

While Microsoft moans about Google Internet dominance, Microsoft notoriously suffers from IADD, Internet attention deficit disorder – companies should consider participation in Bing Shopping / Ciao search where possible, they should balance their efforts knowing there is a good possibility that Microsoft abandons the service.

Table 2: Bing / Ciao Shopping

Similar Posts:

• Bing – features and SEO recommendations, one month on
• Microsoft’s Internet attention deficit disorder (IADD)
• Search Engine Crawlers: Who’s visiting my site and why?
• And then there were two: Microsoft – Yahoo! Search Deal at SMX West 2010
• Pimp-up search engine results with Schema.org semantic markup – before your competitors do

Registration is now open for the next SEO Course (May 14 and 15) and Google Analytics Course (May 9 and 10) in Milan. Don’t miss the opportunity!