Today and for the next few days people will be using a wide range of tools and resources — hopefully not pepper spray — to help them determine what and where to buy to get the best prices on items on their holiday shopping lists. This year there are more tools, sites and mobile apps than ever it would seem. Indeed, there’s just no way to deal with all the online shopping sites and apps comprehensively in one post, but here’s a sample of what’s out there.

Search: where it all starts

Google just this week beefed up its Product Search site with a number of new features and capabilities. Product Search now has more information and is much more “visual” than it used to be (courtesy of the shuttered Boutiques.com). The home page of Google Product Search doesn’t feature any Black Friday specific information but it does promote Google Offers, the useful Google Shopper mobile app and the recently relaunched Google Catalogs for the iPad.

Google Product Search and Google general search results also show information about where you can buy items in stock at nearby stores. This is a nice feature of Google’s product search that isn’t available on Yahoo or Bing.

However if you’re looking for Black Friday information Google Product Search isn’t a great place to start. Yahoo has much more Black Friday content, including a dedicated deals site with Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals. All same information is also accessible from the main Yahoo Shopping site.

You can browse all the Black Friday ads online in one place on Yahoo, albeit in a somewhat awkward scanned-pdf format. Probably the best place to see all the Black Friday Ads in a browse-able and searchable format is ShopLocal.com. It’s not a great user-experience but it gets the job done. The Black Friday sites also have all or almost all the ads online as well.

Not as good as ShopLocal but better than Yahoo, Bing does good job with formatting and presenting the weekly “circular” retailer information, including Black Friday ads. However the “circular” information is unfortunately quite limited. Luckily there is a dedicated Black Friday-Cyber Monday section in Bing Shopping that also features some editorial picks.

You can, of course, also use Google, Yahoo and Bing to search for “Black Friday Ads” or “Black Friday Deals” sites. There are dozens of them (e.g., BlackFriday2011).

Shopping engines: Amazon, eBay and beyond

Amazon is the most aggressive of the online shopping sites, with loads of Black Friday specials including hourly “lightening deals.” Amazon also has a range of iPad and mobile apps for your cross-platform shopping convenience.

These include Windowshop for the iPad, the Amazon Mobile app and several other mobile apps. For example Amazon Deals allows you to rapidly flip through Amazon’s Gold Box and Lightening Deals on your smartphone. There’s also Amazon Price Check for in-store price comparisons.

Amazon rival eBay is also featuring Black Friday deals and daily deals on its home page. PayPal, which is owned by eBay, also has shopping and deals. However, PayPal mainly uses email to promote shopping to its existing users. There are no Black Friday specific promotions apparently.

There are numerous mobile apps from eBay including RedLaser, a barcode scanning app that offers an expanding array of content and functionality (i.e., pricing, reviews and local inventory data). The local inventory data is from eBay’s Milo.com and is available online (though buried) and through a dedicated Milo mobile app, in addition to RedLaser.

Shopping comparison engine PriceGrabber has a Black Friday-Cyber Monday section. Nextag is also offering some Black Friday deals. However most of the shopping engines seem to be sitting out Black Friday-Cyber Monday in terms of specific promotion. That includes eBay’s Shopping.com. As an aside, one of the best sites for general online shopping and price comparisons is TheFind, which also has a mobile app and a local store inventory finder.

Mo-Lo: mobile apps and local inventory sites

In addition to those already mentioned there is an ever growing list of shopping-related mobile apps. Most major retailers now have mobile apps, which typically include sale and deals information. And most of them will have their Black Friday deals there too. There are also at least 10 Black Friday specific mobile apps in the iTunes store right now, the highest rated of which is TGI Black Friday.

ShopSavvy is another mobile app that offers deals, as well as local store inventory data and newspaper weekly circular information. The app also features a barcode scanner that accesses price and product reviews content. Goodzer is another site and mobile app that tells you what stores carry products locally. It doesn’t guarantee real-time inventory information, but claims to have a larger catalog of local products than any of its competitors.

There are also a number of mobile apps that offer venue maps to get you efficiently around the mall so don’t get frustrated and have to use pepper spray on your fellow shoppers. Among them are: Micello, Point Inside and FastMall. Point Inside also features local deals content.

Decide.com, from the people who created travel site Farecast (acquired by Microsoft), will tell you whether you should buy a gadget or electronics item now or wait, based on historical pricing data. It also includes a barcode scanner and features product revenues and nearby local inventory data.

Foursquare and Shopkick are running special promotions in conjunction with credit card issuers Amex and Visa respectively. Foursquare’s is part of a promotion tied to “Small Business Saturday,” which sits between Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Most of the above-mentioned apps are also available in the Android Market.

Deal sites: where every day is Black Friday

Among the top daily deal sites only LivingSocial seems to be doing a Black Friday specific set of promotions. Groupon is offering its normal deals. That generally seems to be the case for the other major deal and “flash sale sites” that I checked.

However Groupon anticipates a big holiday season and expects that consumers will be giving deals (in the form of services and experiences or Groupon purchase credit) in addition to more traditional gifts.

That’s more than enough information to digest. If I were to write more and you were to spend more time reading this you’d be delayed in getting out there and grabbing the deals before they’re gone. However if you’re reading this on a mobile device you may already be in the store or in a checkout line.

Some people have already been shopping all night. But if you haven’t started yet, here’s a little taste of what you may be in for: SNL’s mock Black Friday ad from last season.

Back on March 14th, Google announced new rules for Product Search merchants. Among those new rules were requirements that merchants include tax and shipping costs in their product feeds. The original deadline for this was June 6th, but on June 1st Google extended the deadline until September 1st.

Now, more than two months later, and with the holiday shopping season right in front of us, many merchants are still leaving out tax and shipping costs and/or including false or incorrect costs.

Examples: Merchants Not Including Tax & Shipping

Consider this search for a Toy Story Power Wheels toy.

Three of the 21 merchants haven’t included tax and shipping costs: Fingerhut, Wall Of Fame and Timeless Home Decors. Google searchers would probably like to know that all three do have shipping charges, ranging from $11.32 at Timeless Home Decors to $29.99 at Fingerhut.

Despite Google’s rules, this doesn’t appear to be an isolated case. On a search for this Seattle Mariners comforter set, eight out of 26 merchants aren’t showing tax and shipping costs. One out of 13 merchants selling this Sony DVD player doesn’t list tax and shipping costs. Seven out of 28 merchants selling this Epson printer don’t show tax and shipping costs. There are 23 merchants selling this indoor heater, but only 11 of them show tax and shipping costs.

You get the picture.

Examples: Merchants Showing False/Incorrect Tax & Shipping

As poor as the user experience is when searchers can’t see tax and shipping costs, it’s worse when the tax and shipping costs shown in Google Product Search are wrong.

Consider this search for a Toy Story Lego product.

The eBay seller “rskcollectibles” lists shipping as $6.10, but when I go to buy the item, that price applies to buyers near the sellers’ location. For me, shipping to Washington state is just under $12 — about double what shows in Google Product Search.

Right above that eBay seller is ReallyGreatToys.com, which lists free shipping and no tax in Google Product Search. But that’s not accurate. Click through to the website and searchers will discover that shipping is only free on orders above $75. Since this toy is about $54, shipping is actually $6.99.

Further up the page, the “Bumble Buy” listing also lists free tax and shipping, but when I click through to their web site (which requires registering a new account if I want to even begin the ordering process), I’m told that there actually will be shipping costs.

It gets worse because, if I click beyond this page, Bumble Buy sends me to Amazon.com to buy the item where, okay, shipping is free because the item costs more than $25. But, as a Washington resident, I have to pay tax — and that’s not what Bumble Buy indicated in Google Product Search. (And really Google, what’s with allowing Amazon affiliates to have listings in Google Product Search? I’m not too thrilled about the fact that I just registered an account on a shell website that sends me to Amazon to actually buy stuff.)

Andrew Davis highlighted the misinformation and lack of rule enforcement last month on his blog, and followed it up with another article on Search Engine Watch. He makes the case that merchants that are breaking Google’s rules are getting additional traffic and conversions from shoppers looking for free tax and shipping, while merchants that play by Google’s rules are suffering.

What Does Google Say?

We asked Google about its enforcement of the merchant rules that went into effect on September 1st and a company spokesperson says Google is now enforcing all of the merchant feed requirements.

“Merchants have been getting notifications for errors/data problems” since September 22, the spokesperson says. Google also says it’s telling merchants how quickly they need to fix “egregious violations” — things that could result in having their merchant accounts suspended.

“In general,” the spokesperson says, “we’re asking merchants to fix issues as quickly as possible, to prevent penalties like suspension of their account and ensure the best possible experience for users.”

Google may be asking, but it’s clear that, in many cases, merchants either aren’t listening or they’re not acting very quickly to fix their feed violations. And in the meantime, searchers continue to be misled by some the data and search results they find in Google Product Search.

Happy holidays? Not likely for some shoppers.

(Note: Due to the nature of product feeds and shopping search, some actual searches and search results may look different when you read this than they did when the article was being written.)

To qualify as a Trusted Store etailers must apply and voluntarily provide a range of data to Google. Google believes getting data directly from online retailers is more reliable than doing consumer surveys.

Trusted Stores must have a track record of on-time shipping and reliable customer service. Regarding customer service in particular, the etailer must have a history of quick resolution of consumer problems and issues.

The badge will appear on participating etailer websites as shown in the mockup above (lower right). When a consumer mouses over the badge he or she will see the store’s “grades” for shipping and customer service:

Google told me that there was no connection or tie-in to AdWords, as there was with Google Checkout. I asked about whether the “Trusted Stores” would be able to use that icon in AdWords advertising and they said they hadn’t made any decisions on that. As I spun out various logical scenarios Google cautioned that the program was very new and the company would need to see how things played out before making any decisions about ways to expand or enhance the program.

Most interesting to me was the consumer purchase protection aspect. There’s some fine print like $1,000 in lifetime benefits for any individual. But the program is bold and gives Trusted Stores a more compelling dimension that if it simply rated the sellers. The consumer protection aspect is very much like a credit card extending the manufacturer’s warranty on a purchase. To be clear, Google isn’t extending warranties but it’s offering a kind of money back proposition if there’s a problem and the etailer doesn’t resolve it.

To get the benefit of the program the consumer must opt for the purchase protection, which is free. Then, if there’s a problem, the consumer must first contact the seller. If the merchant is not resolving the issue then the consumer can contact Google to help expedite a solution to the problem or potentially get money back. Google has the clout to get sellers to resolve problems quickly.

People will immediately assume some ulterior motive on Google’s part, that there’s something hidden here. I presented this idea to Google, which said that it was really just seeking to boost e-commerce spending by giving consumers more confidence to buy things online. I believe Google, although on some white board somewhere it’s possible that there are potential future integrations with Checkout and/or Wallet. But this is just speculation on my part.

I would also expect, assuming the program continues and grows, that Trusted Stores badges will eventually show up in AdWords. Again, this is my speculation.

It’s not entirely clear what data will be captured by Google in this process. However I believe the company will have a record of your transactions if you opt for the purchase protection.

Google’s new Product Search home page is very un-Googley. Dare I say that it actually looks … stylish?

It’s dominated by an oversized image area that changes through a series of five different products. There are short text descriptions for each on the left of the images, and then a couple rows of featured products below the fold. It looks like an actual major department store website.

(Mind you, there’s extremely little text on the page, so if you’re an online retailer, this would not be considered “best practices” when it comes to retail SEO. But it’s certainly much prettier than most Google product home pages, for what it’s worth.)

But that’s just one change. Google also explains that deeper pages are being redesigned, too. It begins with the apparel category, where images are larger and new options such as searching by color, silhouette and genre are available. There’s also a a “visually similar” search that will show apparel from other designers that closely resemble an item that the searcher is viewing.

Google says that these changes mirror what’s available on the Boutiques.com shopping site that Google launched almost a year ago. In fact, the company says it’s planning to close Boutiques.com as of October 14 and redirect shoppers to the new Google Product Search. Users of Boutiques.com should get an email soon with details about saving data before the switch takes place.

Google said:

As we announced in July, the new Google Product Search Feed Specification and Policies will go into effect on September 22, 2011. After this date, accounts that do not comply with the new requirements may be suspended.

For more details on those changes, I recommend you ready our post from July.

Related Stories:

• Google Product Search Changes Feed Specifications
• Google Launches Merchant Center For Google Base Users
• Outing Google Merchant Search
• Google Base & Data Feed Optimization
• 9 Tips For Using Product Listing Ads
• Grab More Attention With Google’s New Search Ads
• Google Opens Local Shopping Merchant Details
• Google Slightly Updates Google Merchant Search

The landing page for this feature will be at google.com/trustedstores but it is currently not live. There was a video that was released today that was just made private. The video was shared on Google Operating System Blog but was then marked as private shortly after.

The blog reports that the service “makes it easy for online shoppers to identify stores that provide an excellent online shopping experience.”

We know Google was likely to incorporate merchant reviews as ranking factors since a New York Times article exposed how treating your customers poorly or even abusing them can lead top rankings. Google disputed that and days later released an update to use merchant reviews as a ranking signal.

Now this new feature, Google Trusted Stores, may be simply ad related and have nothing to do with the organic reviews. Google recently removed the checkout badge from the AdWords listing. Maybe this will replace it? Maybe this is just a feature for Google Product Search?

A Google spokesperson told us “We’re always exploring new ways to help improve the online commerce experience but don’t have anything new to announce today. Stay tuned for more.”

Related Stories:

• Google’s “Gold Standard” Search Results Take Big Hit In New York Times Story
• Google: Now Likely Using Online Merchant Reviews As Ranking Signal
• No, You Can’t Rank Well Just By Cultivating Terrible Reviews
• DecorMyEyes Merchant Vitaly Borker Arrested After NYT Piece On Google Rankings
• Google Eliminates Checkout Badge From SERPs

This isn’t Google’s first crack at this type of thing. It first launched Catalog Search — which mainly consisted of scanned-in catalogs that were searchable — in 2001, before shuttering it in 2009. This also isn’t the first time something like this has been done for tablets. TheFind launched a similar app — both for iPad and Android — earlier this year.

The new app allows users to search within catalogs as well as across catalogs, retrieve more information (including videos) about specific products, mark products as favorites, and put together collections that can be shared or made public. Users can also subscribe to specific Catalog “channels” and get updates when a new catalog is released by making them favorites. And, of course, they can buy the products directly from the app.

The idea seems to be to tap into the impulse that has made Pinterest or Polyvore popular, and featuring beautiful magazine-like photos in an iPad app seems perfectly natural. Still, the challenge will be to engage new users. Google is positioning the app as a greener way to catalog shop, presumably trying to reach younger, more environmentally-conscious users. The collage-making and sharing features would also seem to be attractive to fashion-minded folks.

Google is launching with an impressive roster of partners and the company has a form where other catalogers can apply to join. Its site says that all publishers of a digital or paper retail catalog are welcome and that Catalogs is “continually” adding new partners.

Merchants who are participating upload a PDF of their catalog and tag it to integrate data from their Google Product Search feeds. They can also add additional images or videos from their YouTube accounts. Any purchases actually take place on the merchant’s web site, via a mini-browser window that pops up over the app.

Catalog merchants can receive aggregated data about how users are browsing their catalogs — what products are often-visited and which ones are passed by. ”Our partners are very excited to see even very high level data of how users are using and interacting with the catalog,” Abigail Holtz, product manager of Google Catalogs told me, noting that paper catalogs go into the mail and generate very little data.

Currently, Google Catalogs is free for merchants — all of which are already Google Product Search customers. Holtz wouldn’t go into detail about future revenue-generation plans, saying the company is focused solely on building an audience, for now. Plans for doing that include doing PR interviews for media exposure and encouraging merchant partners to link to the app on their web sites. The company also plans to introduce integration with Google+ and an Android application is in the works, though Holtz couldn’t specify an expected release date.

Clearly, the importance and value of the Catalog Search app to marketers will be directly tied to its consumer adoption, so, time will tell whether this latest effort will be a success.

To see the changes, you can go to this document and select the country that you target with your content. Then read the documentation the loads beneath it. Here is the overview of changes to U.S. merchants submitting feeds to Google.

• Availability: Google would like a user to be able to find your products even when they are out of stock. For this reason, the [availability] status of all your items will be required.
• Google Product Category: Google have added a new required high-level attribute called [google product category] that contains the category of the item in Google’s taxonomy (currently only required for a select number of categories). This is in addition to the current [product type] attribute.
• Images: Google is making [image link] required and we encourage you to submit up to 10 additional product images through [additional image link]. This way, you can improve the visual representation of your products.
• Apparel: In order to create a better experience for product variants such as dresses or shoes that are available in multiple colors or sizes, Google is asking you to include information like [size] and [color] in your product feed. In addition, we require you to provide [gender] and [age group].
• Data Freshness: Google will continue to regularly check feeds for accuracy of pricing, availability, and general product information, and take action against accounts that violate our standards.

Those are just some of the changes for the United States.

Here is some helpful documentation from Google on these changes:

• New Google Product Search feed specification
• Summary of attribute requirements in table form
• New Google Product Search merchant policies
• Tips for submitting apparel products
• List of changes to feed specification

Related Articles:

• Google Launches Merchant Center For Google Base Users
• Outing Google Merchant Search
• Google Base & Data Feed Optimization
• 9 Tips For Using Product Listing Ads
• Grab More Attention With Google’s New Search Ads
• Google Opens Local Shopping Merchant Details
• Google Slightly Updates Google Merchant Search

Basically these two mobile formats allow marketers to include product images and related data in ads showing on mobile devices (like PC-based AdWords). Further, if real-time inventory data are available and enabled, users could alternatively be shown information on whether products are in stock nearby.

The Product Extension Ads are intended to drive e-commerce from mobile devices. Google research has found that 77 percent of smartphone owners use their devices in stores. For example, someone looking for a bike might be in a store and consult her phone for product reviews and pricing information. Through Product Extension Ads she might see the same bike for sale online at a lower price and buy the bike through the internet accordingly.

Although built on the same “infrastructure,” Product Local Ads are intended to effectively do the opposite: drive foot traffic into local stores. Product Local Ads will show nearby inventory based on several location-detection methodologies.

In both cases the ads are enabled by linking the marketer’s AdWords account to the Google Merchant Center. Product Local Ads require both a Google Places account and local inventory data submission through the Google Merchant Center.

In addition to the 77 percent of smartphone users who are on their devices in stores, Google’s recent “Smartphone User Study” (as well as other research) has shown that “54 percent of smartphone shoppers use their phones to locate a retailer and 34 percent search for a store’s product inventory.”

The ad formats are available in the US, UK, Germany and France on smartphones.

Was this a talent acquisition, then? Google wouldn’t comment nor give any details on the purchase price for the year-old company. However, a person familiar with the purchase said it wasn’t just for the talent.

Still, it feels that way. I wouldn’t expect Sparkbuy to reemerge, but it does seem some of the user interface design for shopping (Google apparently liked UI ideas the Sparkbuy team had) will make its way into Google Product Search.

At Sparkbuy, the site now has a “we’ve been acquired” message, saying:

We are pleased as punch to announce that Sparkbuy has been acquired by Google.

I know, right? We can hardly believe it ourselves.

When we built Sparkbuy way back in the waning days of 2010, we wanted to make it really easy to find the gadget that’s perfect for your needs. Our idea was that you could combine huge piles of structured data with an intuitive interface, et voila: a few clicks to find the electronics widget with exactly the features you want. Have you tried to find a great laptop or TV recently? Crazy hard.

But when people started actually using Sparkbuy, we started to see that the opportunity was bigger. In fact, it was much, much bigger. There are so many “crazy hard” search problems out there we know it could take ages for us to deliver what our customers are asking for. So when Google showed up and suggested we could work together to turbocharge our efforts, we just couldn’t pass it up.

We’re stoked about the opportunity to share our vision for search with a broader audience. And while we won’t be offering services at sparkbuy.com any more, stay tuned for truckloads of new awesome from our team at Google.

Thanks for coming by!

It’s signed by Dan Shapiro, CEO of Sparkbuy, along with the other two people at the company, Scot Haug and Isaac Myers. Google says all three will begin working in Google’s Kirkland office, which is near Seattle. From the statement Google sent me:

We’re thrilled that Sparkbuy will be joining Google. They have built an impressive comparison shopping site that is simple in design yet powerful for consumers, and we think their expertise, vision and energy will be a great addition to our Kirkland office.