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Google Base

Posted By Darren Rowse 16th of November 2005 Blogging Tools and Services 0 Comments

Google have launched another new product – Google Base – a place for submitting content. I’m still trying to get my head around so here’s how they describe it themselves:

‘Google Base is a place where you can easily submit all types of online and offline content that we’ll host and make searchable online. You can describe any item you post with attributes, which will help people find it when they search Google Base. In fact, based on the relevance of your items, they may also be included in the main Google search index and other Google products like Froogle, Google Base and Google Local.’

One of the keys to Google Base as I see it is the ‘attributes’ feature (looks a lot like ‘tags’ to me).

Content seems to last a maximum of 31 days

The content already submitted includes reviews, car sale ads, recipes etc

They have the ability to upload content a page at a time or many pages at once – and it seems via RSS. What is uploaded can end up in Google’s main index, Froogle or Google Local depending what it is. I’m interested in the RSS feature but a little unsure why anyone would want to upload large amounts of information in this way if they already have a feed being published elsewhere.

A few other questions spring to mind that I can’t see answers to yet in their FAQs.

  • How will the index these pages in the normal Google index. Will they be ranked highly quickly? Will this crowd out SERPS?
  • How long will it take for spammers to find ways to manipulate this? It seems to be that Google is almost inviting it. Could the new sploggerss be sBasers?
  • How long they’ll slap their own Adsense ads on them :-)

I can see how people without a website might find Google Base useful in getting their message out – but I need to dig around a bit more before I can really comment on it and how it might be used for or by bloggers and how it might impact us.

update – I’ve just tried adding a page and am waiting for it to be processed (15-60 minutes is the wait apparently). The page I made was a ‘people profile’ and it was pretty easy to make – a matter of filling in feilds (or deleting ones I didn’t want). I could add a picture and a variety of sets of information including a URL to a website. I’ll show you my page here when it goes live.

The only problem with it was that as with AdWords, AdSense and Analytics Google seems to be having trouble keeping me logged in with my Google ID (which is neccessary to use Google Base). It keeps automatically signing me in with an old ID that they previously asked me to change. This is quite frustrating and I can’t seem to rectify it even with deleting cache/cookies etc.

Another small issue – it won’t let you publish anything with a lable this isn’t spelt ‘right’ – I tried to add ‘ProBlogger’ and ‘Darren Rowse’ as a lable and it wouldn’t allow it. I had to apply for an exemption which was going to take a manual approval from a Google staffer before it would allow me to go live with the page.

update II – Well that’s a surprise – my page is up afte just 3 minutes. You can see it here.

Be a bit gentle with me – I put it together in two minutes (I guess that says something about ease of use) and copy and pasted the description from my linkedin profile.

update III – more ‘discoveries’:

– html code is not possible. This means no formatting, no links etc. I guess this helps cut down on spam.
– no RSS feeds to track tags. This would be a useful addition.
– InsideGoogle reports that some words seem to be banned and are changed. They write:

‘That means that my article, by listing the banned items, was unfit for publication. Read it, and you’ll notice that “mod chips” has been replaced by “modification chips”, “cable descramblers” is “cable box descramblers” and “fake documents” is “falsified documents”. Additionally, I had to remove the exclamation point from my title.’

Others are writing about Google Base at:

Search Engine Watch – Google Base
CJ Online – New Google service allows anyone upload most anything to a publicly searchable database
Danny Ayers – Google Base RDF Lite Solo
Google’s Blog – First Base
The Kelsey Group – Google Base Is Live
John Battele’s Search Blog – All Your Base Are Google, The Launch

About Darren Rowse
Darren Rowse is the founder and editor of ProBlogger Blog Tips and Digital Photography School. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Comments
  1. Doing a great job mate!

  2. Google Base – Base for your Online Business

    I checked it. It is nice but may be used as a spamming tool by spammers.
    It is new service from Google.

    You can store any information in Google Base. Already items like Chicken recipes, Car sales, courses from MIT on calculus are listed. If you don’t have website, don’t worry. Google will help you.

    Google has given you chance to sell your items thro’ their site. Are they trying to have auction similar to ebay? Only time will tell. It may be a concept similar to Craiglist. We will have to wait & watch.

  3. I wonder if Google Base will be used as yet another advertisement medium, selling ad space to AdWords users, perhaps? Also, can you imagine the spam that will flood Google database in the next few days? Google team must have a pretty efficient method of fighting it, I guess. Anyway, good job Google! Google Analytics AND Google Base in just one week. I am very impressed.

  4. I think they will try have an auction similar to ebay. It’s the first step.

  5. Just last night I was reading an article in DM News (Nov 7, 2005 issue, page 29) about Google Base. In the article Joshua Stylman, managing partner of Reprise Media, is quoted, “Google is essentially handing users the controls and allowing them to build the next Citysearch, PR Newswire or HotJobs right on top of Google’s current architecture.”

    Now that sounds interesting. Anybody think that is true? Or likely to happen? Is there really an opportunity here?

  6. I am sure Google wants optimised search of content, putting it on their Base server with their tagging system achieves this. I think it’s brilliant.

  7. Seems that the spammers have found their way in. I used Houston as the keyword and the first 24 pages were nothing but links to getauto.com. So I switched gears(pun) and typed Los Angeles and was offered 24+ pages of links to getauto.com. Not satisfied with this consistent lack of creativity, I did a search for Timbuktu. There are two jobs open over there for I.T. people. haha.

  8. […] Detailliertere Infos zu Google Base beim Problogger. von BloggingTom, abgelegt unter InternetKeine Kommentare » Ähnliche Artikel:Quicknews: Google Base freigeschaltetWird Google zum Portal?Mit Google zum Mond […]

  9. Hey, has anyone heard of this thing called Craigslist.org? haha. Craig must be kinda scared.

  10. I also tried the publishing at Google Base and it was successful.

    Here is the ” Guide To Remove Scurybanks Phishing Trojans published at Google Base.

  11. I’m still trying to figure out exactly what the real-world benefits might be.

  12. […] More information on the banning of words and tagging at InsideGoogle. Post at Del.icio.us Add to BlinkList LatestSolutions […]

  13. Oh, I should have clarified in my article. Google Base doesn’t change words for you, it doesn’t let you use certain words, so I had to change them. Sorry. I’m adding a clarification.

  14. Thanks for the heads up on that Nathan, I have updated my post about it and provided a link to your for more info.

    Darren. Great work on the updates. They are very informative, so I have made mention on my post of Google Base and directing my visitors to you. Great review.

  15. I am completely confused.

    Here’s Google apparently giving us an opportunity to tag our content so that they can more easily know what it is and provide more accurate results.

    Great: why don’t they let us do that with Sitemaps? Why can’t we add tags there that would tell Google what our pages are about? The accepted answer has always been because that would let us lie to Google and they’d prefer to make their own analysis. So how the heck does Google Base fit in then? Why is it OK here but not OK for Sitemaps?

    It looks to me like we can just take the RSS feeds we’re producing anyway, add the Google namespace and tags we want, and just give them that..

    Or to look at it the other way: why do we have to do Sitemaps if we have this? Is this intended to replace and extend Sitemaps??

    It is SOO confusing – they’ve done a simply horrible job positioning and presenting this.

  16. My item does not expire. Why does your item in 31 Days?
    See here:
    http://www.google.com/base/a/9346584983327732247

  17. Sounds like a confused attempt to out-do wikipedia.org to me.

  18. Laura says: 11/17/2005 at 3:20 pm

    FYI, I found your website by searching GoogleBase for “blogging.” Your profile was listed in the search results, but the link takes me here to your blog. I wasn’t able to actually view all of your profile until I came here and followed your direct link to it.

  19. notice when you do a search it has “report bad item” underlined after the serp , so this may cut down on spam and hijinks

  20. Maybe it is just me but I am smelling a simillar service to Technorati and del.icio.us. Google finds a great idea and then uses their muscle to overpower everyone. I am not complaining of course, Google does a good job at this. But Google is also spammed like crazy and this just adds a new “insider” element to tags. :(

  21. Eh, you guys DID notice it says “Google Base Beta” in the logo? So this is hardly a “launched service” yet.

  22. […] Consiglio la lettura di questi due primi report: -> Google Base da Problogger.net -> My Experience With Google Base […]

  23. […] Consiglio la lettura di questi due primi report: -> Google Base da Problogger.net -> My Experience With Google Base […]

  24. It seems to good idea from Google. I have tried it today.. And it is working very well.
    Thanks for the information.

  25. I tried it earlier but got errors but now it has worked. Here is my link :)

    http://base.google.com/base/items?oid=12374376716508719986

  26. I put some information already in google base.
    http://milcarros-1.blogspot.com

  27. Well…it works for me. I dont think I’m going to get any major increase in traffic but I have been able to upload a couple of articles with tags and they’re easily found.

    If (as they say) results will also be included in search engine results then this is a valuable tool. As to how they will control spam & relevancy – that remains to be seen in time.

    Get the best of Asia delivered to your door! Visit http://www.MyOriental.com for details.

  28. I’ve tried to do the uploads numerous times in the past week. I may be doing something wrong but between ebay/google/IE, there sure is something wrong doing a simple upload. Wish they were’nt all on vacation.
    I’ll use my time more wisely.

    Oh well, Happy Holidays anyways.

  29. Anyone seeing any traffic bumps or boosts out of submitting something to Google Base?

  30. We are in a similar market as Google Base but our product gives structure (while still not imposing any set of predefined categories) to our index and therefore makes it possible for users to not only perform keyword search but also browse hierarchically with the ability to specify unlimited number of filters to refine their search.

    Valnur
    http://www.valnur.com

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