Outing Google Merchant Search

A reader sent us an example of the new Google Merchant Search live and in the wild. What’s Google Merchant Search? After a little poking around, it appears to be a new but unannounced program in beta where people can comparison shop services like loans.

Here are the Google Merchant Search FAQs, and here is a demo page. From the looks of it, you can compare loan providers, you can pick a vendor and then speak with a lender – all through this system.

Here are the screen captures:

Notice how the ad has been adapted to feature this product:

When you click through, you are taken to Google Merchant Search:

After selecting a provider, you then leave your telephone number to receive a callback. More screen shots at the demo page show how this works.

The program is only working for secured loan providers in the UK right now. Google has been likely testing it since April 2008, since that’s when the company was spotted blocking pages on the Google.com site from being indexed by their own or other search engines. However, the pages we’ve found show up because they are on the Google.co.uk web site.