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Google Matrix

We all know that product listings show up in google, but did you ever stop to look at what shows up? And who is NOT playing in that space?

I'll give you a hint: Amazon and Overstock aren't there. Circuit City and Best Buy are.

Did Jeff Bezos bite the red pill or something? (I'm not even going to ask that question about Byrne!)

Huge Opportunity for E-Commerce Friendly Merchants

This is great news for everyone because, god bless the ding dongs at CC/BB, but have you ever tried to actually buy something through their website? As my teenager would say: OMG, WTH?

So this means that if you have an eBay Marketplace or a Yahoo!Store or any non-stinky website then you have a great opportunity to compete against mid-tier e-merchants for a change.

Gunfight On Equal Terms

If you can't beat Amazon or Overstock or any big e-merchant in a heads up fight for Organic SERPS or for buying adwords then you need to go someplace where you're equal. It looks like the big guys are just ignoring Google Products ... for now at least. So suddently you're competing against other merchants without a household name. Other merchants with limited budgets. Other merchants with the same margin and shipping costs.

How cool is that?

Best of All .. It is Free

Well, maybe not free since you have to get your products up into the google database and you have to renew them every 30 days. But after a small initial effort to do your mapping and work through some issues it should take just a few minutes per month. Which is close enough to free for me.

I was on the plane coming home and the cat next to me in first got to talking. It seems his son (11th grade) had put up a website extolling the virtues of his plumbing business and they'd actually gotten a customer from a google search the day before.

Needless to say, he thought this was pretty trick. Over the last 20 years he'd spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on yellow pages, bus signs, bench-backs, high-school yearbooks, little-league teams, etc, etc. He said that he reckoned that the average customer cost around $100 to acquire, the average bill was around $115, and costs were around $75. So each customer basically lost $25.

But return business was 60% and around 30% of customers stayed around, basically, forever. And their kids, when they stayed in the area, used his company too.

But he was really excited by the idea of getting a customer for FREE from the internet.

So we discussed the cost of professional website, getting someone to do the needful with directories, google local search, ranking on organic SERPS, buying keywords, etc. He was ready to whip out his checkbook and hire us, except for the minor problem that we don't do that sort of work, but I was able to give him some names.

It's pretty amazing to think about how many other small business people are ready to drop $20K on the table to the first person who gets to them to help them get "free" customers from google search.

Imagine what the Yahoo Store or eBay Store owner would pay - especially since they already write a check for online presence.  And they already know what google search means, but just can't get the pieces worked our or have other things to do.

Amazing - there is a LOT of running room out there.