Froogle Gains Through New Placement
This week's format change at Google greatly increased the use of its Froogle shopping search engine, according to measuring service Hitwise.
This week's format change at Google greatly increased the use of its Froogle shopping search engine, according to measuring service Hitwise.
This week’s format change at Google greatly increased the use of its Froogle shopping search engine, according to measuring service Hitwise.
Previously not in the top 20 of the “Shopping and Classifieds – Rewards and Directories” category that Hitwise tracks, Froogle has now risen to number 8 in the US as measured on March 29, for share of visits to all sites in this category.
| Rank | Name | Domain | Share |
| 1 | Yahoo Shopping | shopping.yahoo.com | 10.28% |
| 2 | YourGiftCards.com | www.yourgiftcards.com | 6.94% |
| 3 | ShopAtHomeSelect.com | www.shopathomeselect.com | 6.78% |
| 4 | NexTag | www.nextag.com | 4.44% |
| 5 | BizRate.com | www.bizrate.com | 4.21% |
| 6 | DineOutFreeToday.com | www.dineoutfreetoday.com | 3.55% |
| 7 | Lower My Bills | www.lowermybills.com | 3.40% |
| 8 | Froogle | www.froogle.com | 2.59% |
| 9 | Pub Clearing House | www.pch.com | 2.47% |
| 10 | FreeFlixTix | www.freeflixtix.com | 2.38% |
| 11 | Epinions.com | www.epinions.com | 2.32% |
| 12 | MSN Shopping | shopping.msn.com | 2.28% |
| 13 | Shopping.com | www.shopping.com | 2.23% |
| 14 | PriceGrabber.com | www.pricegrabber.com | 2.13% |
| 15 | Coolsavings | www.coolsavings.com | 1.47% |
| 16 | NADAguides.com | www.nadaguides.com | 1.36% |
| 17 | DealTime.com | www.dealtime.com | 1.11% |
| 18 | MSN eShop | eshop.msn.com | 1.04% |
| 19 | StartSampling | www.startsampling.com | 1.04% |
| 20 | Memolink | www.memolink.com | 0.99% |
Where did people go the most, after searching at Froogle? Hitwise says 12.4 percent of them headed over to stores hosted by Yahoo Small Business.
It’s long been considered wise by many to operate a Yahoo-based store in an addition to your normal web retail site, just to increase the amount of traffic Yahoo Shopping sends. Now, Froogle traffic might be another reason to consider this.
What was second place for post-Froogle visits? Amazon — but well below Yahoo Small Business, gaining just 1.6 percent of visits. Other leading retails sites benefiting from Froogle were eBay, Walmart.com, Overstock.com and BestBuy.com, Hitwise said.
Froogle only lists US-based web sites, but that didn’t stop those in the UK of making more use of it. Previously not in the UK’s shopping category’s top 20, Froogle rose to 11th place:
| Rank | Name | Domain | Share |
| 1 | Kelkoo United Kingdom | uk.kelkoo.com | 17.30% |
| 2 | DealTime UK | www.dealtime.co.uk | 6.03% |
| 3 | eBay Shops UK | www.ebayshops.co.uk | 5.18% |
| 4 | ShopAtHomeSelect.com | www.shopathomeselect.com | 5.10% |
| 5 | The High Street Web | www.thehighstreetweb.com | 4.29% |
| 6 | MSN eShop | eshop.msn.com | 3.85% |
| 7 | Shopping.net | www.shopping.net | 2.89% |
| 8 | Ciao.co.uk | www.uk.ciao.com | 1.98% |
| 9 | Pricerunner.com UK | uk.pricerunner.com | 1.73% |
| 10 | MyOffers | www.myoffers.co.uk | 1.66% |
| 11 | Froogle | www.froogle.com | 1.64% |
| 12 | MSN Shopping UK | shopping.msn.co.uk | 1.62% |
| 13 | e2give.com | www.e2give.com | 1.58% |
| 14 | Review Centre | www.reviewcentre.com | 1.36% |
| 15 | dooyoo.co.uk | www.dooyoo.co.uk | 1.31% |
| 16 | Yahoo Shopping | shopping.yahoo.com | 1.29% |
| 17 | The Mutual | www.themutual.net | 1.18% |
| 18 | Virgin.com | www.virgin.com | 1.03% |
| 19 | Ebates | www.ebates.com | 0.97% |
| 20 | ishop | www.ishop.co.uk | 0.85% |
This also means that people in the UK were specifically seeking out the US version of Google, as Froogle is not shown as an option at Google UK.