Google application improves search at CloseOutCentral.com
CloseOutCentral.com has significantly boosted the number of products visible to retailers looking to source goods at the online liquidation and closeout merchandise exchange by adding a Google Custom Search application, the company reports. The custom search function not only returns product results from inventory already listed in CloseOutCentral.com`s own inventory database but also from what’s listed in the inventory databases of all of CloseOutCentral’s vendors but not yet posted on CloseOutCentral.com.
CloseOutCentral.com, a B2B exchange, selects closeout and liquidation merchandise vendors to be in its directory and index. The Google custom search on CloseOutCentral.com does a keyword search on the site in the same way a Google search would across the wider web universe. But by drawing keyword search results only from the products listed on CloseOutCentral.com or in the inventory databases of its listed vendors, the custom solution delivers the relevancy of the top end of a Google search, while eliminating the irrelevant pages that would also be delivered as part of a keyword search of Google’s entire web-wide index.
“Now, with our Google Custom Search we have effectively done the job of sifting through the millions of unqualified or irrelevant pages normally returned by Google and return only matches from the cream of the crop in the liquidation and closeout merchandise industry,” says Lisa Rioni, chief technology office of CloseOutCentral.com’s parent company, Sumner Communications.
Rioni offers an example of how visibility into the databases of the approximately 150 closeout liquidators on CloseOutCentral.com’s platform increases the number of available closeout lots visible to retailers looking to buy merchandise. Rioni says one closeout operator currently has 28 lots of merchandise listed on CloseOutCentral.com, but has a total of 90 lots in its inventory database being indexed by Google. “That’s an increase of 220%,” she says. Rioni adds that closeout lots turn at such a fast rate that liquidators are hard-pressed to keep all their available inventory listings current on the central exchange.
Rioni says she expects the new search application to boost repeat visitors and traffic to build on increases the exchange already has seen in the past year. Since July 2006, monthly traffic is up nearly 200%, she says.
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