I noticed that a “Google classified specialist” is slated to speak at an international classifieds conference in May. Russ Cohn, Industry Leader – Careers, Classifieds and Local Markets, Google, UK, is slated to speak at the ICMA (International Classified Media Association) conference in Estonia. (The head of eBay Classifieds Group, USA, is giving the keynote address.)
Cohn will speak about classifieds during the economic slow-down, the growing importance of the user, the role of maps, mobile and video in classifieds, and the trend towards hyperlocal products.
In an introduction to the session, the ICMA conference page says, “Much of internet usage starts from the Google homepage, and in the company’s quest to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful, they have turned their beady eye to the classifieds sector.”
Google got into the classifieds space in 2005 with its Google Base service that allowed anyone to add virtually anything, from recipes to jobs. But while Google has geared up the ecommerce functions of Google Base by launching “Shopping,” aka Product Search, it hasn’t done the same for classifieds. (Classifieds listings do not show up in Google Shopping results.) In order to actually search and find classifieds listings on Google, one must go to Google Base – which is not even listed in Google’s index.
(I noticed you can view the source of jobs listings – Google Base picks up CareerBuilder and Yahoo Hotjobs, among others.)
Google could do the same to classifieds as it did with Shopping – provide a direct link to Classifieds in the drop-down menu on Google.com and integrate classifieds listings into Google search results. Google Base provides a maps feature, a useful feature for searchers.
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By: Ina Steiner
Mon Mar 2 2009
source: blog.auctionbytes.com
One Response to “Is Google Ramping up Classifieds?”
there seems to be so many classifieds search sites these days. in addition to oodle and vast, there are the specialist sites like trulia for real estate, indeed.com for jobs, iseecars.com for cars…i wonder when google is going to do something beyond googlebase…seems like a big opportunity.