Chapter 5: Shopping with Froogle and Google Catalogs

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In This Chapter

• Introducing the Google shopping portal

• Searching and browsing in Froogle

• Special Froogle search operators

• Advanced searching in Froogle

• Introducing the dazzling Google Catalogs

• Browsing mail-order catalogs with the Google Catalogs control bar

Google, the world’s most intelligent search engine, has an academic, ivory-tower sheen. The science behind its index and the insightfulness of its results lend Google an other-worldly feeling. Except . . . shopping! Shopping is the common denominator of the Web — everybody likes to buy stuff. Google turns its all-seeing eye to the swarming, steamy jungle of e-commerce.

Yes, Google is a shopping portal, but not of the sort you might be familiar with in AOL and Yahoo!. Google provides two shopping directories and applies its insightful, destination-ranking intelligence to them. The result is a sharp, objective, results-oriented virtual window-shopping experience.

This chapter covers the details of Froogle, a keyword-empowered shopping directory, and Google Catalogs, an online mail-order browsing environment. Both are delightful — and more powerful than many people realize. The following sections cover basic keywords and clicks, and then introduce a few tricks I use in Froogle and Google Catalogs.

Remember 

Froogle and Google Catalogs are still in beta, meaning they are still being tested by Google and its users. There’s no danger here, because nothing new gets installed in your computer. My hope is that Froogle, cool as it is, gets significantly enhanced before the techies at Google stop working on it. (If, indeed, they ever stop working on anything, which I doubt.) If you have specific suggestions, complaints, or words of adulation about Froogle or Google Catalogs, use these two e-mail addresses:

• For Froogle: [e-mail]

• For Google Catalogs: [e-mail]

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