Google Base Question

[dinki]

For many years I enjoyed a lot of traffic coming from Google Base/Froogle. I've seen a significant drop off since Google changed the way they are using their shopping portal. I've noticed that there is still activity in regards to the google base addons. Is Google base as it was previously dead? I logged into my merchant account and it wanted me to set up an adwords campaign. I'd prefer to have all my products listed rather than trying to target specific ones. Is there any way to do this now?

[schoolboy]

For many years I enjoyed a lot of traffic coming from Google Base/Froogle. I've seen a significant drop off since Google changed the way they are using their shopping portal. I've noticed that there is still activity in regards to the google base addons. Is Google base as it was previously dead? I logged into my merchant account and it wanted me to set up an adwords campaign. I'd prefer to have all my products listed rather than trying to target specific ones. Is there any way to do this now?

Google is starting to "monetise" all its services. It won't be long before we start paying for more and more (Google Analytics will probably soon be a "paid-for" service, or at least the more sophisticated parts of it.)

Google Merchant Centre has gone that way in the USA, which is a "pilot study" for other countries. In one sense I actually agree with this, because in the last few years, Google Shopping has been seriously abused - particularly by rogue traders offering "grey-market" knock-offs or even counterfeit goods. Google rightly wants to stop this activity, and also provide the public with links to sites that are above board and legitimate, and that when products are compared, they are compared with identical counterparts, and not fake ones.

So... that's the main reason Google has introduced a whole range of parameters that a data-feed must now meet.

I successfully use the latest Numinix module for Google Merchant Centre on several sites, (UK-based, so no AdWords account needed). The sites are 1.3.9h and 1.5.1 versions on ZC.