Google launched an interesting tool yesterday. Checkout Trends aggregates anonymized sales data (revenue = price x quantity sold) of Google Checkout merchants and charts it quite elegantly. It's an interesting resource to see just what's happening in the world of online shopping - at least for Google Checkout users. If you're looking to justify rolling out a new product and need some statistics on overall sales trends or even some basic keyword research, it's worth a look.

So, if you're planning on launching a new shoe line, what's going to sell better; red or blue? Type in "red shoes, blue shoes" and you'll see your answer. Apparently, red shoes consistently sold better in 2007, especially on the day after Christmas when there were presumably after-Christmas sales going around. But blue shoes were especially popular in April 2007, and again in late August.

According to a November, 2007 BusinessWeek article, Richard Feinberg, director of the Center for Customer-Driven Quality at Purdue University claims that Google Checkout is good for about 12 percent of the US online payment market. So, it's a small but good sample of online buying.

iPhone vs. Blackberry:

More WM Posts on Google Checkout