Google targets catalog business

Google Catalogs lets you search thousands of mail-order catalogs, such as this L.L. Bean one, by keyword.

Google targets catalog business

As retailers struggle,
search engine offers
link to 1,500 catalogs

By Jonathan Dube
MSNBC


		Dec. 17, 2001 — Catalog shopping may never be the same. Google, one of the Web’s most popular search engines, is quietly building a searchable database of scanned product images from thousands of mail-order catalogs, hoping to leverage it into a new revenue stream by cutting deals with retailers, MSNBC.com has learned. Consumers will be able to browse the full catalogs online, find anything from designer blouses to gourmet fruit baskets in an instant and, Google hopes, jump directly to merchants’ Web pages to buy the product.

AT A TIME when retailers are struggling to lure in shoppers, Google may be trying to come to their rescue, creating, in effect, an online supermall of catalog products.
The site has not been made public yet, but the “beta,” or test, version has been viewable and searchable at catalogs.google.com since Thursday, just in time for last-minute holiday shopping.
Nearly every type of catalog is represented, from popular ones such as Land’s End and Brookstone to niche ones like Alaska Wild Berry Products and the U.S. Mint Collection — though the site is excluding catalogs that focus on liquor, tobacco and firearms for now.
You can search catalogs that you typically must pay for, such as the $3-an-issue Spiegel’s, plus special clearance sale versions and even back issues — more than a dozen different Sears catalogs, for example. More than 1,500 catalogs from 600 different retailers are included, according to Google spokesperson David Krane. (See the complete list here.)
The catalogs were scanned in using optical character recognition, so that any word mentioned in them can be searched. Google has created a complex set of algorithms to rank the pages, based on repetition, placement on a page and size, among other things.
One search quickly shows the potential value of the concept — to consumers, retailers and Google’s bottom line.
Search for “leather boots,” for example, and the engine returns 860 images of leather boots for sale in hundreds of different catalogs, from Alloy’s Subway Platform Boots to L.L. Bean’s Bison Bigfoot Boots — to even the Jeffers Pet Catalog Cool Paws Insulated Boots.
On each page, searchers will find the phone number to order the catalog’s items and a link to the merchant’s Web site.

Google Catalogs let's you browse through mail-order catalogs, like this one from Victoria's Secret, using small thumbnail images -- which you can then click on to get the full-screen version.

DRIVING SALES

But that’s just the beginning of what Google has planned. The company hopes to persuade retailers to pay for direct links from images in the Google Catalogs database to the products on the merchants’ Web sites — so that, for example, you could click on the photo of the Bison Bigfoot Boots and get sent to L.L. Bean’s purchase page.
Any time you click on a page from a Victoria’s Secret catalog, for example, you are greeted with an entry box and the message: “To find an item on the Victoria’s Secret website, just type in the product code and press Go!”
Retailers aren’t paying for features like that right now, Krane says. The product code boxes were included because “they enhance the user experience,” he said.
But the product code boxes show the potential that e Catalogs offers for driving sales, particularly if it can redirect some of the 150 million people who search on Google every day.
Indeed, Derek Leckow, an analyst for Barrington Research, says that if the site becomes a hub for catalog shoppers, many merchants could find it well worth their while to partner with Google.
“This is probably going to help the retailers who don’t have comprehensive Web sites,” Leckow said. “And it will probably raise the profile of the lesser-known retailers.”
Krane says Google has begun discussing possible deals with retailers but wouldn’t comment on specifics.
Andrea Stephenson, a spokeswoman for Land’s End, one of the largest catalog merchants, says the company hasn’t been contacted yet but would be open to a revenue-sharing deal similar to its affiliate program, in which other sites get 5 percent of sales they drive.

POTENTIAL PARTNERSHIPS

Google has some other money-making tricks up its sleeve. It plans, for example, to sell information to retailers about how people read and search their catalogs. “What are the keywords users enter to find your catalog?” Google tells catalog vendors in a note posted on the site. “How many pages do they typically examine? What kind of clickthrough rates and sellthrough do online catalogs generate? Google can provide you with information about how your customers use your catalog in ways no other research tool can, all the while adhering to the strictest standards of individual user privacy.”
The company also offers deals to retailers who would like to let searchers sign up for their catalogs right from Google. And, of course, Google hopes to sell advertising on the new catalog search pages.
One might wonder why customers would want to search scanned catalog pages on Google rather than sites specially designed for the Internet. But many catalog companies aren’t online or don’t have strong Web sites. And even those that are online still do far more business via mail-order. Perhaps it’s the glossy photos or the familiar format, but catalogs continue to appeal to consumers.
“The real benefit to this is you can compare detailed search results from offline and online catalogs at once,” Krane says.
Despite e-commerce’s rapid growth, the catalog business dwarfs online sales. Of $110 billion in sales catalog retailers made last year, 68 percent were driven by print catalogs, while just 13 percent were driven by the Internet, according to a new study by the Direct Marketing Association. The rest of the revenues are derived from sales at company-owned stores, or stores the company distributes to. On top of that, the study found, a quarter of all Internet customers browse a catalog before buying online.

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