I see your differentiation of advertisers-vs-sellers but it doesn't apply because, yes, I do wanted to be connected to those advertisers. The Google Shopping page clearly shows the message "Sponsored (i)" at the top of the results. Click on the "(i)" for more info and it says:
"Products and offers that match your query. Google is compensated by these merchants."
I'm using the Google Shopping as it's deliberately designed: connect me to the advertisers.
I think the confusion is that regular search results (e.g. search for "how to concatenate a string in PHP?") is a "pull" mechanism in which Google spiders webcrawls and scrapes from pages like StackOverflow. You expect some sort of pagerank curation without requiring StackOverflow paying money to Google. Nevertheless, Stackoverflow answers often show up at the top.
On the other hand, the Google Shopping is a "push" mechanism where the advertisers pay to place their links there. The advertiser/sponsor model is basically how all the major comparison shopping sites work.
I don't know of any reputable/reliable price comparison site that uses a "pull" mechanism to scrape prices across multiple retailers that covers most products. If it does "pull" price data, it tries to derive income via techniques like affiliate url links for commissions. Camelcamelcamel uses a pull mechanism but it only scrapes Amazon and not the other retailers like Best Buy, Newegg, etc.
To turn this around, let me ask you... what price comparison website connects me to sellers instead of advertisers? (A site like Ebay connects me to "sellers" but doesn't include results from multiple major retailers such as Amazon.)
I'm using the Google Shopping as it's deliberately designed: connect me to the advertisers.
I think the confusion is that regular search results (e.g. search for "how to concatenate a string in PHP?") is a "pull" mechanism in which Google spiders webcrawls and scrapes from pages like StackOverflow. You expect some sort of pagerank curation without requiring StackOverflow paying money to Google. Nevertheless, Stackoverflow answers often show up at the top.
On the other hand, the Google Shopping is a "push" mechanism where the advertisers pay to place their links there. The advertiser/sponsor model is basically how all the major comparison shopping sites work.
I don't know of any reputable/reliable price comparison site that uses a "pull" mechanism to scrape prices across multiple retailers that covers most products. If it does "pull" price data, it tries to derive income via techniques like affiliate url links for commissions. Camelcamelcamel uses a pull mechanism but it only scrapes Amazon and not the other retailers like Best Buy, Newegg, etc.
To turn this around, let me ask you... what price comparison website connects me to sellers instead of advertisers? (A site like Ebay connects me to "sellers" but doesn't include results from multiple major retailers such as Amazon.)