EBay Product Reviews Taking Back SERP's

Looking at my google search history the other day, I noticed I average about 2000 Google Searches in a month. I've realized that when I search for a particular product in Google, I rarely ever run into an Ebay page. I started to think about how the Google Page Ranking Algorithm is designed, and have come up with a possible reason Ebay is non-existent from the Google SERP(Search Engine Result Placement). Considering that Ebay used to spend somewhere under a reported $25 million on Google Adwords advertising, it would be highly beneficial to take advantage of free traffic from Google search results, which they current activity on Ebay's Product Reviews site indicates a trend of moving away from payed advertising, and a move towards Free search engine result placements.

So, lets analyze Ebay's site and how it works. Ebay is filled with auction listings of products. Each listing has a dedicated page, and the page life itself exists for the duration of the auction period, 7 days. What use is it for Google to index Ebay product pages if they only last 7 days, and then are not useful anymore?

Ebay has just come out with the Ebay Product Review sub-site. This Review subsite hosts landing pages for particular products with: links to auction listings, reviews for that product, and an Ebay product description. Google searchers often search for a particular product, and having this useful page with multiple sources of relevant content streaming in on products should boost Ebay's placement in search results. The content on this page is always changing, due to product reviews, and auction listings always changing, giving the page new relevant content. In doing this, Ebay is creating very useful permanent product pages for Google to index and return in it's SERP's.

One question... Ebay, where are you in the Google Product Search(formerly Froogle)? This is a free service offered by Google that you aren't taking advantage. When searching for an exact product in Google, if that product is in the Google Base, your product will show up to be #1 since most of your products are priced very low. This is all free too, no more spending $25 million. The Google Base also feeds of reviews of everything, now with Ebay's Product Review site, Ebay could submit their massive database of product reviews and generate a whole new stream of free traffic.

For the future, I see reviews dominating the search engines. I believe search engines will be returning relevant useful information, and when searching for a product, searchers want to find a product, cheaply, and have a wealth of information on that product from descriptions to user reviews and opinions. Ebay is setting itself up to be a major contender in the search engine results to Amazon with it's new Product Reviews and Details service, so it will be interesting to see how Ebay's strategy will play out in the end.

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