Google Launches Commerce Search

[From LA Times/Technology] Google has launched Google Commerce Search as a service designed to help make the Web sites of large online retailers easier to search.

Google says the service, which costs $50,000 and up each year, will improve user experience and boost sales. Says Nitin Mangtani, a lead product manager at Google. "If it takes shoppers eight to 10 seconds to search for something, and they can't find it easily, they leave the Web site."

The main selling points are that everything that has made Google a dominant company (vast computing resources, algorithms that provide right results, and even the ability to fix your typos and find what you're looking for) will help people navigate clunky retail Websites that cause a major stumbling block to sales. (Of course, if the check-out process is equally clunky, the merchant is even more likely to loose the sale!)

Also, according to Forrester Research, page load speed is crucial to keeping shoppers on your site. Two seconds is how long a typical online shopper waits for a retailer's site to load before getting frustrated and bailing out....