GOOGLE is poised to take a major step into the classified advertising market with the launch of a free online listings site similar to eBay’s.

The Californian group confirmed yesterday that it is testing a classified listings service called Google Base, under which users will be able to buy and sell products without paying for the service.

The information users submit will be put into a searchable database.

Though the Google Base service will put Google in direct competition with EBay — one of its biggest advertisers — it has a much wider significance in terms of increasing the potential impact on the revenue of traditional classified advertisers such as newspapers and magazines.

As the internet has taken off the lion’s share of classified advertising has been taken away from its traditional promoters. Google’s move will only hasten this process.

Players such as Google will be able to play on their ability to offer a more targeted advertising format than is available in newspapers or listings magazines, where users can see the response they are getting for their money EBay already owns 25 per cent stake in Craigslist Inc, the site that offers free classified adverts.

Google gave what appeared to be an unintentional sneak preview of its plans yesterday when it published a test page for the Google Base service.

On the page it described the kind of content that users could submit to Google Base as a “description of your party planning service”, “listing of your used car for sale”, “articles on current events from your website” and “database of protein structures”.

The company confirmed the page was authentic. It described its Google Base service as an “early-stage test product that enables content owners to send their content to Google”.

It added that it was “continually exploring new opportunities to expand our offerings.”

Google Base is the latest attempt by Google to muscle in on the territories of its rivals and to become a “one-stop shop” for information and commerce.

The company, which has a market capitalisation of $96.9 billion (£55 billion), compared with eBay’s $51.5 billion, is diversifying rapidly from a pure search engine into a group that offers everything from internet phone calls to instant messaging and e-mail.

Technology analysts said last night that a move by Google into the online listing market was a logical next step for the search engine.

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