As Danny points out, Froogle’s Merchant Center has been sucked into Google Base. This shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone as Froogle mentioned plans for the change back in December.

There’s more information for merchants at Froogle. The most important note for merchants is that using Google Base attributes is extremely important. Yes, you can stick with the basics, but the more information you provide, the easier it will be for consumers to find your products. Also, don’t forget that in Google Base, you can define custom attributes. I’ve submitted a number of feeds to Google Base, so I’ll put together some tips over the weekend for newbies.

And be patient. Just as Froogle is still in Beta, so is Google Base. I couldn’t upload my feed (or as Google Base calls it, my bulk upload file this morning…just try again later today.

Here’s some more information from the FAQ page:

-Where did the Froogle Merchant Center go?

The Google Base dashboard has replaced the Froogle Merchant Center. Your existing account and product information have already been transferred and are now viewable in your new Google Base account. From now on, when you click “Information for Sellers” on the Froogle homepage, you’ll be brought to a new sign-in page.

As well as on Froogle, your content should be viewable at http://base.google.com; you can search there to verify that your products have appeared online after you post them.

-Is Froogle being replaced by Google Base?

Froogle’s search results will remain separate from Google Base. However, the Froogle Merchant Center is being replaced by the Google Base dashboard. Items submitted to Google Base which are appropriate for Froogle will be displayed both in Froogle and in Google Base search results .

Related Resources:
Data feed optimization strategies for Google Base, Shopzilla, and the rest of the Shopping Comparison Engines.
Self-service, affordable data feed submission services from SingleFeed.

Related Posts:
Time to Submit your Froogle Data Feed - April 3, 2006
Froogle & Google Base - The Happy Couple - December 30, 2005
Cleaning up Froogle - One Post at a Time - December 8, 2005