Marketplaces such as eBay and Bonanzle are dealing with Google's latest changes to its Google Base feed (recently renamed Google Merchant Center for retailers). Last month, Google said it would retire the Google Base accounts of individual sellers who list on marketplaces in order to eliminate duplicate feeds, and instead introduced multi-client accounts for aggregators and marketplaces to manage feeds for multiple sellers under a single account.

eBay issued a statement to say it had received a number of questions from sellers concerned about the Google announcement:

Although the vast majority of traffic to eBay listings comes from searches on eBay, we know Google Base can help drive additional traffic to eBay and to sellers' listings. eBay currently sends information about millions of listings to Google Base at least once every day. We will continue to work closely with Google to ensure our feeds-and your listings-align with Google requirements. There's no need for you to change your listing practices at this point.

It's also important to note that Google Base is not an eBay product. Google-not eBay-ultimately controls which items are surfaced in Google Base searches and in what order. A listing may not show up for a number of reasons such as the time it takes for Google to index eBay items (approximately 3 days) or other reasons.

On October 4, Bonanzle announced that it was submitting all of its merchants' booths to Google Product search and had added the ability for seller to see the Google Products feed it generates on their behalf. Bonanzle said it removed all references to Google Base and changed them to "Google Products" or "Google Merchant Center," depending on context.

Google is requiring marketplaces and aggregators to use multi-client accounts beginning December 1, 2009.