Google Base is retiring the accounts of individual sellers who list on marketplaces in order to eliminate duplicate feeds. Instead, it has introduced multi-client accounts for aggregators and marketplaces to manage feeds for multiple sellers under a single account.

Marketplaces like eBay already send product feeds to Google Base on behalf of their merchants, but Google said the multi-client accounts would allow aggregators and marketplaces to consolidate and manage data feeds and reporting for sub-accounts. Google will require marketplaces and aggregators to use multi-client accounts to submit and manage their sellers' feeds beginning December 1, 2009. Google said it would notify individual sellers and retire their accounts.

eBay sellers had complained over the summer that the feed eBay sends to Google Base was broken and attempted to send their own feeds themselves, putting their automatic eBay Store feeds on pause. Some other ecommerce marketplaces have also complained about the feeds breaking.

Google has been working on the shopping features of Google Base to improve its Google Product Search (accessible through the Shopping tab). Merchants may no longer upload one item at a time to Google Base and must instead submit listings through a data feed. It is also making it easier for sellers to link their Google Base account to Google Checkout.

The Etsy marketplace has been working with a search engine optimization consultant to improve sellers' rankings on search engine results and announced some of the changes it will be making, including adding the words "on Etsy" at the end of page titles to help searchers quickly identify links they trust.