Froogle SERPs

[wwi]

How are results ordered for a search result page in Froogle? Obviously merchants who send a feed are listed above merchants whose inventory has been spidered. Also the Froogle FAQ states (http://www.google.com/support/froogle/bin/topic.py?topic=281) that the front page of Froogle shows a randomly generated collection of results. However, I'm wondering what happens if someone searches for "blue widgets" and there's many pages of blue widgets available. There must be a way of ranking these results for relevance, no? Does the general Google algorithm come into play here, or is it really about optimizing your Froogle feed?

Thanks!

[Jacam405]

Everything that I've read says that Froogle uses the Google algos and bots.

From the "About Froogle (http://froogle.google.com/froogle/about.html#how)" page:

"As Google's spidering software crawls the Internet, it automatically identifies webpages that offer products for sale. These are the pages Froogle searches when you enter the name of an item you want to find. Froogle also includes product information submitted electronically by merchants. If you're interested in providing information about your products to Froogle as a data feed, please visit our Information for Merchants page.

Froogle's search results are automatically generated by our ranking software. Google does not accept payment for inclusion of products in our search results. Nor do we offer to place a merchant site higher in the results if they are an advertiser or offer to pay for that placement."

I've mainly heard that the layout of your page and it's elements might also help rankings.

[wwi]

Thanks Jacam. :) I guess I'm still left wondering whether the merchant-submitted feeds are sorted according to the quality of the feed or the quality of the landing page(s) in the feed. Meaning, if you Google for blue widgets, site A comes up in the number one spot and site B in the number two. Say both merchants have Froogle feeds. If you Froogle for blue widgets will site A come up in the number one spot because the Google algo ranks that page higher? Or is it possible that site B could provide a superior feed and rank higher than A in Froogle? If so, what factors could create a superior feed?

[Jacam405]

I found this little article which might be able to help, I don't know.

How to Optimize for Froogle (http://www.seoconsultants.com/articles/1383/froogle-optimization.asp#optimize)