In an attempt to improve the consumer shopping experience, Yahoo! announced yesterday that it is looking to partner with eBay's PayPal and will add shopping cart links to sponsored results for merchants who accept PayPal Express Checkout. A WebmasterWorld thread looks at this partnership more closely.
Yahoo! has introduced a PayPal Checkout Program with more information for how merchants can sign up.
Since PayPal is still a familiar household name and Google Checkout is a relatively foreign entity, this seems to be a win in the forum community:
I'm excited about this. I've always liked PayPal and I'm rooting for Yahoo to do great things. It seems like Y may win this little battle.
Chris Sherman covered this topic on Search Engine Land. After speaking with Rich Riley, Yahoo! Senior Vice President, about how this differs from Google Checkout, Chris received a response that is quite similar to my own opinion: the number of PayPal customers is huge (over 100 million!) and this partnership is a great thing for Yahoo!
I have also included a screenshot of the shopping cart link:
The one thing that confused me was that nothing happened when I clicked on the icon or hovered over it with my mouse. In due time, I suppose.
Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.
