On the Official Google Checkout Blog, Prem Ramaswami says the product is "an easy and fast way for candidates to collect contributions from supporters and build new online communities by enabling supporters to embed Checkout contribution buttons on their websites, blogs, and social network profiles."

He later continues, "We hope this initiative helps bring regular citizens one step closer to the political process."

Well, it may turn off some of those Ron Paul fans – was it a conspiracy that the launch occurred after the first few primaries had passed? – but otherwise, Google Checkout for Political Contributions seems like a decent idea.  Of course, one can always argue that politicians have plenty of money, but at least these funds aren’t coming from lobbyists’ pockets.

Oh, and to any Ron Paul enthusiasts: just teasing.  No need to overload my inbox.

Since all of the information provided in Google Checkout Trends has been anonymized, as it is in Google Trends, it can provide only general results.

At least, we think it’s supposed to do that.

The Google Checkout blog said Checkout Trends "aggregates the sales data of Google Checkout merchants and charts it in a matter of seconds." Interesting enough.

But the searches we tried, like Ugg boots, iPod and Zune, Batman and Spiderman, chess and backgammon, DVD player, Blu-Ray and HD DVD, brought back the same result each time: "Your terms do not have enough search volume to show graphs."

"Go ahead and try it out — and get creative with the searches. You may be surprised at what you find," David Wurtz wrote at the blog.

He’s right. We were surprised. At what appears to be either a colossal outage, or a product that sauntered past the QA department while everyone was scarfing down their gourmet Googleplex lunches.

Nintendo Wii, not enough search volume? April Fools’ Day is a few months off, people.

A few people did manage to pull some data out of Checkout Trends. Google Blogscoped humorously looked for "Google Apps," since the for-pay premium edition uses Google Checkout to process the payment.

The graph for Google Apps in Checkout Trends dropped precipitously in December 2007. Tony Ruscoe noted that could be due to lower spending during the holidays, or that the current data is incomplete or inaccurate.

Garett Rogers at Googling Google cited the inherent flaw in the system, where Checkout Trends shows price times quantity sold over time.

"The reason the results aren’t really valid for items that aren’t priced the same is because the chart shows us the revenue of each item," said Rogers. "A higher price will artificially inflate ‘popularity’."

A form called "Suggest a feature for Google Checkout" gets straight to the point with its list of ideas.  Some of them aren’t that great – we say "meh" to multiple shipping addresses.  Others might open a number of new doors; take, for example, the ability to choose different currencies for the "Buy Now" buttons.

But if you’re prepared to naysay all the existing suggestions, Google also provides a write-your-own box, and as evidence that some of the suggestions will be implemented, a list of six that already have been is on display.

It’s hard to say what sort of gains this approach might generate; when Google Checkout extended its fee-free status through the end of this month, it may have won over most fence-sitters.  Still, now that the money-making holiday season has passed, businesses may feel able to experiment a little.

Meanwhile, PayPal has made inroads with a UK corporation called CyberSource.

Right now the test appears limited to larger vendors using Google Checkout.

A WebmasterWorld thread reveals that searches for "skulls luggage" sometimes reproduces the product results link. Whether it appears in the top sponsored or side sponsored likely depends on the company’s search advertising budget.

Here’s a screenshot of how the product results appear in the top sponsored results for that query:

And here’s a another one showing how they appear when on the side sponsored results:

Search advertisers will likely find this feature an attractive option, especially if they are able to control which products are featured. But it could also provide an excellent vehicle for Google to promote Google Checkout. If online vendors can spotlight their offerings on the search page like this, then they’ll have nice incentive for offering Checkout.  
 

The proof comes from Hitwise’s Robin Goad, who puts Checkout’s traffic ahead of PayPal’s from roughly December 6th to the present.  For a long time prior to that, Google’s offering had trailed by quite a bit.

It’s not all good news for Checkout, though, as Goad goes on to indicate that the PayPal crowd might be more willing to make purchases.  "While I can’t provide abandonment data, it is likely that people visiting another retail site after either Paypal or Google Checkout may have not completed their purchase," he writes.  Later, he continues, "[M]ore people currently visit another Shopping and Classifieds site after Google Checkout than after Paypal, and that the gap is widening."

Profitability is just as important (if not more so) as popularity, so this data may make some companies rethink their position.  Also, Google Checkout has been running heavy promotions in order to capitalize on the holiday shopping season, and as those dry up in the spring, there’ll be even less reason for people to stay loyal.

One way or the other, the stats will be worth keeping an eye on.

The promotion was going to end on December 31, 2007. If you’re a Google Adwords customer for every dollar you spend on AdWords, you can process $10 of sales with Google Checkout for free. After that you’ll be charged 2.0% plus $0.20 per transaction no matter what credit card is used. There are no monthly, setup, or gateway fees.

You must link your AdWords account with Checkout to earn free transaction processing. If you add the link by February, 2008, your AdWords spend from January will count towards free processing in February.

Your Checkout and AdWords accounts must be based on the same currency in order to be linked. One nice feature of Checkout is that the fees, when they are charged, are straightforward. PayPal fees depend on your account type, your monthly sales, and whether the buyer is sending money from a bank account or credit card.

Google Checkout is gaining on Paypal when it comes to the top 200 largest online merchants (barely).

Both Paypal and Google Checkout have holiday promotions running. Better hurry though, time is running out.

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Tag:

    * $5 off orders over $30 – PCSuperstore, TheNerds.net, Cost Central, DayDeal.com, Eforcity.com, KitchenSource.com, ReStockIt.com, Cufflinks Depot, Precious Accents, UpTempoAir.com

    * $5 off orders over $50 – ToolsForLess, AllBrands.com, Discount Dance Supply, Golfballs.com

    * $10 off orders over $10 for new buyers only – Buy.com

    * $10 off orders over $30 – Comp-U-Plus (Enter coupon code GOOGLE10), Mrs. Fields

    * $10 off orders over $50 – HandHelditems.com (Enter coupon code googleoff10 prior to Checkout)

    * $10 off orders over $60 – Aéropostale, Jockey.com, Your Electronic Warehouse, US-Mattress.com, DVD Empire, Flashlightz.com, Coffee Bean Direct, SelectBlinds.com, Stacks and Stacks Housewares, Discount Golf World

    * $10 off orders over $75 – Beauty.com, drugstore.com

    * $10 off orders over $100 – TigerDirect.com, WeaKnees.com (Enter coupon code holiday10), Comp USA, Software Surplus, Digital Foto Club, Dyscern, Focus Camera, SuppliesNet

    * $15 off orders over $150 – MyJewelryBox.com, BowlingBall.com

    * $20 off orders over $100 – LuggagePros.com, ArtSelect, Oriental Furniture, Designer Athletics, AdiamorEvesAddiction.com (Enter coupon code google20 prior to Checkout)

    * $20 off orders over $200 – AreaRugs.com

    * $50 off orders over $500 – TheFurniture.com, AJ Madison, Gem Stone King

    * eBags.com Enter coupon code PAYGOOGC07 to get 20% off purchases.

    * FoxStore.com Enter coupon code GOOG10 to get 10% off all purchases.

    * Shoebuy.com Enter coupon code GOGOOG to get $5 off all purchases

What’s the best deal? All of them! You’ll have to figure out, based on the size of your purchase, which is the best savings for that particular item. One tip: Seperate items into multiple orders so you can get the discount multiple times.

The highest percentage discount: $10 off $30

The least useful but most exciting: Buy.com’s $10 off $10. If you’re a new customer enjoy it, everyone else just ignore. Here’s Buy.com’s page of items that are free or almost free after the discount is applied.

Potential best deal: 20% off everything at eBags. If only they sold more than bags.

PayPal’s holiday deal, I’m sad to say, tops or matches Google in almost every situation. They’re offering 20% cash back, up to $50, on purchases at 14 stores. At the same levels as Google’s offering:

    * $30 – Google: $5 or $10 / PayPal: $6

    * $50 – Google: $5 or $10 / PayPal: $10

    * $60 – Google: $10 / PayPal: $12

    * $75 – Google: $10 / PayPal: $15

    * $100 – Google: $10 or 20 / PayPal: $20

    * $150 – Google: $15 / PayPal: $30

    * $200 – Google: $20 / PayPal: $40

    * $500 – Google: $50 / PayPal: $50

I miss the good old days last year of $10 off $30 and $20 off $50. No major retailers offering that now.

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As Google Checkout ramps up, many thin arbitrage / shopping aggregator sites are going to see a significant love loss from Google. In September Andrew Goodman wrote a piece on how paid search and organic search quality criteria may play off each other, after coming across a post on Inside AdWords where Google stated that some types of sites are likely to merit a low quality score:

The following types of websites are likely to merit low landing page quality scores and may be difficult to advertise affordably. In addition, it’s important for advertisers of these types of websites to adhere to our landing page quality guidelines regarding unique content.

• eBook sites that show frequent ads
• ‘Get rich quick’ sites
• Comparison shopping sites
• Travel aggregators
• Affiliates that don’t comply with our affiliate guidelines

Market Saturation

It does not help any of the shopping aggregators that there are about a dozen competitors (BizRate, Shopping.com, Shopzilla, MSN Shopping, NextTag, Epinions, DealTime, Pricegrabber, Pricerunner, Yahoo! Shopping, etc.). From a marketing standpoint almost all of them offer near identical user experience, so few of them are remarkable or linkworthy. The whole field (including Yahoo!) compete based on renting large swaths of links.

Everyone MUST Rent Links to Compete

Given Google’s recent war cries against buying and selling links, and that there are so many shopping comparison sites, it is easy for Google to whack a few of them with it going unnoticed by anyone outside the companies. But if you are in the comparison shopping field and do not rent links, how can you compete with Yahoo! when they do? You can’t.

The Fall of BizRate.com

I am uncertain if the drop in Google was algorithmic or editorial, but BizRate’s Alexa ranking is off sharply over the past couple weeks, and if you look at top keywords they ranked for on Google (via Compete.com, SEO Digger, or SpyFu), their site is no longer ranking for many of them. In fact, I didn’t even see the US site ranking for "biz rate". For that term bizrate.co.uk ranks #1. When I visit the UK site from a Google search result for "biz rate" the site asks if I want to view the US site or the UK site.

Google’s Algorithmic Whitelists Are Not Carved in Stone

BizRate, which sold to the E.W. Scripps company for $525 million, used to be on Google’s editorial white list.

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So recently the Gmail team has been working on a structural code change that we’ll be rolling out to Firefox 2 and IE 7 users over the coming weeks (with other browsers to follow). You won’t notice too many differences to start with, but we’re using a new model that enables us to iterate faster and share components (we now use the same rich text editor as Groups and Page Creator, and the Contact Manager can be seen in several Google apps). A few other things you will notice are some new keyboard shortcuts and the ability to bookmark specific messages and email searches.

Google Checkout Adds 5 New API Features

* Name Parsing: Provides the first name, last name, and full name of the buyer and
order recipient in separate fields new order notifications.

* Google Promo Notification: If an order is placed under a Google promotion, you can require new order notifications, charge amount notifications, and refund amount notifications to include the promotion amount.

* Ship-to Phone: Returns the buyer’s ship-to phone number in new order
notifications.

* Billing Phone: Returns the buyer’s billing phone number in new order
notifications.

* Improved Notifications: Prevents a merchant from improperly acknowledging a new order notification by requiring their acknowledgment to specify the serial number of the notification.

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Tag:

As users of Google Maps already know, Google has had a coupon option available. Business owners can add coupons to their listings through Google’s Local Business Center.

The addition of GoogleCoupons.com to their nameservers, as ably noticed by our chums at ResourceShelf, could be just a step toward making it easier for business types to get to that service. If Google promotes it more, coupons may help its Business Referral program pull in more AdWords customers.

However, the holiday shopping season is approaching fast. Among Google’s many businesses, it operates Checkout, a payment service for online retailers.

GoogleCoupons.com strikes us as something Google would use to help boost Checkout with its existing and new retail clients. They could direct people performing general searches, like for Blu-Ray or HD DVD players, to retailer offers on a GoogleCoupons.com page.

ResourceShelf noted that the domain still shows Google’s agent, MarkMonitor, as the owner of the domain. If and when that shifts to Google, which it had not as of posting time, we would expect to see a new service debut then.