A little while back, Google began placing a little shopping cart in the ads of online retailers who use Google Checkout. Suddenly Paypal had a problem: (1) online retailers that advertised with AdWords had an incentive to adopt the competition, and (2) the competition had both search engine and PPC representiation that PayPal lacked. Well, it looks like PayPal is beginning to develop some search engine representation. But there still are considerable weaknesses their new exposure.

The online shopping search engine The Find has recently announced a partnership with PayPal through which users can search for products from vendors that offer PayPal as a payment solution. As the :

Mountain View, Calif. (PRWEB) June 12, 2007 -- TheFind, Inc. (www.thefind.com) today announced the launch of paypal.thefind.com, a new shopping search engine built specifically to enable consumers to browse products exclusively from merchants who accept PayPal payments.

Just like results on TheFind.com, products will be shown to PayPal customers as visually compelling catalog-like images, not simply text links or thumbnail images. Unlike traditional comparison shopping sites, merchants will not have to pay for their products to appear in search results on paypal.thefind.com; instead, products from PayPal merchants will be indexed and become part of the natural search results.

The most striking weakness of this partnership is that PayPal does not get any representation within the PPC ads of an extensive publisher's network. They might, then, want to consider working with one of the other big names in search engine marketing that already have their own sites set on Google.

Another major weakness is one that pertains to branding. First, The Find isn't exactly what you'd call a top-tier search engine. Secondly, there is nothing on its homepage to steer you towards (or even make you aware of) the PayPal engine. Finally, the PayPal Engine itself is barely distinguishable from the parent engine.

Whether or not PayPal will stand the test of time depends partly on whether their status as a predecessor to Google Checkout, and partly on their ability to expand into new relationship with other online empires. On the one hand, it'll be a case of whether their user base will be large and loyal enough to keep them afloat. On the other hand, PayPal's determination to not become lazy, arrogant, and dependent on that current (albeit cushy) user base, and develop new markets will be tantamount in securing its future as an online payment solution. In the latter case, this will likely include a mix of affiliate marketing and search engine marketing partnerships, securing exposure on publisher's networks, and continuing to expand into markets that are not yet pioneered.