Google seeks revenue from online retailers

* Google to sell e-commerce search product

* Product has $50,000/year starting price

By Alexei Oreskovic

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov 4 (Reuters) - Google Inc (GOOG.O) is selling a special search product to online retailers, as the Internet giant widens its hunt for new sources of revenue.

Google Commerce Search, which the company on Wednesday said it would begin selling at a starting price of $50,000 a year, puts a key element of a retail website's shopping experience in Google's hands: the consumers' ability to find merchandise.

Google wants to operate the search capabilities for retail sites on its own computers, using a data feed that the retailers provide of their product catalog. Google, the world's No. 1 search engine for Web pages, can perform searches of a retailer's catalog significantly faster than what is currently available on many retail sites, Google Enterprise Search Lead Product Manager Nitin Mangtani said.

"Retailers convinced me that there's a need for this type of product," Mangtani said, adding that sluggish search performance on retail sites can send shoppers elsewhere and hurt a retailer's sales conversion rates.

He noted that retailers can also save on infrastructure and maintenance costs since Google's product is "cloud-based" -- meaning the software is hosted inside Google's own data centers instead of on a retailer's computers.

The commerce search product is the latest example of Google's expansion from Internet search and advertising-based businesses into technology products aimed at corporate customers.