Reuters
Google unveiled major changes to its shopping business that will likely prove controversial in the e-commerce world.
San Francisco - Google unveiled major changes to its shopping business that will likely prove controversial in the e-commerce world.
Starting in the fall, product search results for users in the United States will be influenced by how much retailers and advertisers pay, a company executive said. In the past, product search results were based mainly on relevance and the program was free.
Google, the world's most popular Internet search engine, will rename its service Google Shopping from the current Google Product Search.
“We are starting to transition Google Product Search in the US to a purely commercial model,” said Sameer Samat, vice president of product management at Google Shopping. “This will give merchants greater control over where their products appear on Google Shopping.”
Google has been in the product listing and search business for about a decade. During that time, it has provided merchants with free access to shoppers. The company made money by running paid product search ads along with the organic, or unpaid, product listings, according to Eric Best, CEO of Mercent, which helps retailers sell through Google and other e-commerce websites such as Amazon.com and eBay.
“Today, that model goes away,” Best said. “It's a very big deal.”
The changes may ultimately help Google extract more revenue and profit margin from its retail advertisers, which account for up to 40 percent of Google's advertising base, Best said.
For retailers, there are upsides and downsides, he added.
“The downside is that retailers are going to have to pay for performance when it comes to e-commerce traffic and revenue driven by or through Google,” Best said. “The free traffic is disappearing.”
The changes may be controversial in the Internet community because Google's search results have traditionally not been influenced by money, Best said.
“Pay-for-placement to some degree is an alternative to purely organic relevancy results,” he said. “The fact that shopping results will be more closely tied to bid-for-placement will not sit well with all advertisers.”
The new program will help retailers make their products more visible to shoppers searching on Google. The old system was difficult for Google to police because retailers could list a lot of products for free. If they have to pay, it may reduce clutter, Best explained.
“Having a commercial relationship with merchants will encourage them to keep their product information fresh and up to date,” Google's Samat wrote in a blog on Thursday. “Higher quality data - whether it's accurate prices, the latest offers or product availability - should mean better shopping results for users, which in turn should create higher quality traffic for merchants.” - Reuters
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Chrysler stops taking wholesale orders for new Fiat 500 Abarth - detroitnews.com
Just over a month after the first models arrived in U.S. showrooms, Chrysler Group LLC has informed dealers that it is no longer accepting wholesale orders for the new 2012 Fiat 500 Abarth, according to company sources.
The high-performance version of Fiat's diminutive subcompact has been selling as fast as, well, an Abarth. And while customers can still find a few in dealer inventories around the country, those who place orders now will be put on a waiting list for the 2013 model, which is expected to ship this fall.
"I put my deposit down back in March and I found out today that I'm being bumped to the 2013 build batch and now have to wait until mid-September," wrote one disappointed customer on an enthusiast website.
The track-tuned Abarth went on sale in late April. By then, the company already had cash deposits from more than a thousand customers — about as many as it had originally planned to build this year. Fiat-Chrysler upped production to about 3,000 units, but sources said that is all the company's factory in Toluca, Mexico could handle.
Demand for the pocket rocket has been spurred by rave reviews in a number of leading automotive publications.
Most Americans had never heard the name "Abarth" before the automaker aired a steamy ad for the hot hatch during the Super Bowl featuring Romanian supermodel Catrinel Menghia.
Fiat sales were up a whopping 432 percent in the United States last month, according to Chrysler.
"Dealer orders for the Abarth, the ultimate high-performance small car, exceeded the production run of this model for the 2012 model year," the company said in a statement.
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Analysts Forecast Lower CPI, Higher Egg Prices - CRIENGLISH.com
The price of eggs has jumped to 5 yuan per kilogram in nearly a month, Securities Daily reported on Monday.
The wholesale price of eggs in Beijing Xin Fadi Agricultural Products Wholesale Market on Sunday was 10.2 yuan per kilogram, an increase of 57 percent from the price on May 1 of 6.48 yuan.
Xinhua News Agency and National Agricultural Market System of Agricultural Price Monitoring data shows that, the price of eggs in some areas has increased more than 20 percent over the past 10 days, including areas in Tianjin, Jilin, Heilongjiang, Shanghai, Henan and Ningxia.
According to industry analysts, the main reason for the price hike is a short-term supply shortage.
The number of egg-laying hens fell due to tumbling egg prices last November. Also, egg-laying capacity has been affected, supposedly by high temperatures. To add to the problem, farmers are holding out for higher prices during the upcoming Dragon Boat Festival.
"Disease has decimated egg-laying hens in some areas," said Shu Anli, an analyst at Shen Nong, a website for agricultural market information. "But in terms of egg-laying hens changing the price of eggs, the supply for the national egg market is adequate this year."
Data from the Xin Fadi Market website shows that the wholesale price of garlic on Sunday reached 8.2 yuan per kilogram, up 49 percent from the price on May 31 due to the drought in the northern fields.
Still, industry insiders believe that this sudden rise in food prices is indicative of the downward trend of China's consumer price index (CPI) in May, a major gauge for inflation which will be released by the National Bureau of Statistics on June 9. Food prices weigh heavily into the calculation of the CPI.
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