Google Base Store Connector

Via SEW Google is trying to make it even easier to upload items to Google Base. Why?

If they can get the most relevant, most descriptive, and most comprehensive results then eventually users will use it more. After they get enough users what was once free can be charged for, or they can find other ways to make money from it. If many merchants upload similar data it probably makes it even easier to identify and filter commercial data from the organic search results. It won't be long before the organic results are out of reach for most stores, and most merchants are forced into using AdWords if they want to buy exposure. Google has outsourced AdWords training, turned determining relevancy into a game, and wants to be the default product information database.

Google will probably also allow merchants to store inventory data in Google Base, which will only help Google make their results that much more relevant, and help merchants tie their ad spend directly to their current inventory. If Google roughly knows historical search trends, related searches, click value, ad spend, conversion rates, inventory levels, and pricing details they would have to screw it up pretty bad to not be able to make money from transactions that originate through a Google search box.

Published: October 4, 2006 by Aaron Wall in google

Comments

October 12, 2006 - 7:55pm

I just reviewed a post about google gaining a reputation for relevancy, and then charging us for info once they have us hooked. That might work for awhile, but we aren't all that simple minded. Don't you think that the other search engines would step up their algorithmic geniuses on staff, beef up their budget to buy the best programmers/analysts and become just as "relevant' as google? (and offer it free, as always.)
Okay, that's the logical side of my reasoning.
However, being female, and a deeply intuitive one as well, let me now affirm that post, and say that my GUT is screaming, they are up to something...SOME thing...big (i'm not sure if it's going to be charging for info, specifically, though).

Adam C
October 4, 2006 - 11:10am

That's "organising the world's information" surely!

All be it to gain a bigger slice of another information market that has traditionally belonged to Amazon and ebay.

October 4, 2006 - 1:50pm

Not long before the ol' Federal Gov't will decide they are too successful and try to slow them down.

john
October 5, 2006 - 7:18am

just a simple question
how do you display all the other info under each google result
[age|PR | del.icio.us | Y | dmoz | bloglines | ... ]
on the blue bar under each google result

thanks

Max
October 5, 2006 - 10:01am

I'm new in this SEO thing, I just started 2 weeks ago with my website SEO. My ranking in google was 2 yesterday and today is back to 0... any ideas why? I just started to use IBP yesterday, and I'm affraid google might have someway of tracking IBP and the links that I put in different pages. Can you get your ranking degraded for having links in pages that are not related to your site?

October 5, 2006 - 10:03pm

Hi John
seo for firefox is the extension

Hi Max
if you were a search engine would you want to trust domains that has footprints which were well aligned with other domains that typically have low quality or deceptive content?

but PageRank values are shifting right now due to an update...if you hit different data centers you will see different values on some documents (especially for newish websites).

Sue Melin
October 5, 2006 - 10:42pm

Hi. Thank you for this website--it is really helping me. I subscribe to a number of newsletters, and am especially fond of a marketer named Perry Marshall. He is fairly well known in his sphere, and seems to have his radar fairly fine tuned for market trends.
He seems convinced that it is in Google's best interest to make sure that their order of listings is as relevant as possible, because readers are choosing them due their excellence at returning relevant results to key word searches.
He seems very sure of this, and insists that they could not survive the competition if they didn't hold their reputation for providing the most relevant search results.
While I would like to think that Google is above being bought, it would be hard to believe that they haven't to some extent succombed to the vast choice of financial choices which are most surely being presented to them by the big money competitors.
I HAVE heard that they engage in censorship, in areas that they don't agree with; Alex Jones insists that they tweaked the statistics on his website's hits, setting the counter back to zero on some controverial articles that were viewed by the multitudes, lest infowars hit #1 in the rankings.
Nonetheless, I have read countless articles about the search engines charging less per pay perclick the more relevant it is.
Here's hoping you all can help me cut through the swirl of info; IS google about to commercialize it's site completely? Are it's days of repute as the most trusted search engine about to end as it sells it's internet soul?
Or, will it continue to reward relevancy, hoping to gain sales in the long run by preserving it's reputation?

Sue Melin, new to the internet.
(by the way, I actually DO have a website called Balmy Beaches, but I don't have a blog, and I didn't know if listing my full non-blog earl was considered spam. Please forgive my humiliating newness to protocol.

Sue Melin
October 5, 2006 - 10:49pm

Hi. Thank you for this website--it is really helping me. I subscribe to a number of newsletters, and am especially fond of a marketer named Perry Marshall. He is fairly well known in his sphere, and seems to have his radar fairly fine tuned for market trends.
He seems convinced that it is in Google's best interest to make sure that their order of listings is as relevant as possible, because readers are choosing them due their excellence at returning relevant results to key word searches.
He seems very sure of this, and insists that they could not survive the competition if they didn't hold their reputation for providing the most relevant search results.
While I would like to think that Google is above being bought, it would be hard to believe that they haven't to some extent succombed to the vast array of opportunities being offered them in exchange for favorable search results.
I HAVE heard that they engage in censorship, in areas that they don't agree with; Alex Jones insists that they tweaked the statistics on his website's hits, setting the counter back to zero on some controverial articles that were viewed by the multitudes, lest infowars hit #1 in the rankings.
Nonetheless, I have read countless articles about the search engines charging less per pay perclick the more relevant it is.
Here's hoping you all can help me cut through the swirl of info; IS google about to commercialize it's site completely? Are it's days of repute as the most trusted search engine about to end as it sells it's internet soul?
Or, will it continue to reward relevancy, hoping to gain sales in the long run by preserving it's reputation?

Sue Melin, new to the internet.
(by the way, I actually DO have a website called Balmy Beaches, but I don't have a blog, and I didn't know if listing my full non-blog earl was considered spam. Please forgive my humiliating newness to protocol.

October 5, 2006 - 10:55pm

Sorry for the double posting--I had to wait forever for this to load, and kept clicking. Went ahead and posted my url, because the system had to verify I wasn't posting spam (because I hadn't posted my url, i guess)
Hey, I'll give a free vacation to anyone who can patiently demystify the net for me. (...sigh)

thank you all again for some quality content.

Sue Melin

October 5, 2006 - 10:57pm

Sorry, I'm having a blonde day...I entered my email address in the url space;
But now, the cool part...will I actually be able to click on my site, when I click Sue Melin again?

October 6, 2006 - 4:19am

So Aaron, your saying that it is possible that stores that upload their store into the google base, will be considered commercial, (not organic), and therefor it will be more difficult for the store owners to rank for any search time that is competetive- since the organic, or natural search results will most likely show up before them/instead of them.

If this is true perhaps these stores are better off eitehr using google's regular link submission, or naturally building backlinks to their store's url.

Rascta
October 6, 2006 - 6:23am

I've uploaded product feeds for a few of my clients to Google Base and seen significant results within 24 hours. In one case, in the organic search results, we went from page three to both #1 and #2 on the organic search results -- above the site with the url www.category.com/product.htm! (our site was still listed as www.company.com/program.php?cat=x&prod=y; although we also added rewrites for the URLs, Google hadn't recrawled it yet.) This is in addition to gaining listings in Froogle and Google Base, and occasionally having a product pop up on Google's main web search. Not bad for a few minutes' work.

I may be wrong, but I don't think that they're penalizing commercial sites, or that they will use Base product listings to do so. Of course, it will help them price ads and determine other ways to monetize for profit.

Russ
October 6, 2006 - 1:36pm

I think Aaron's point was that Google would analyse the info currently being uploaded via Base and utilise the data to strip more commercial sites out of the organic listings thereby pushing businesses into more reliance on AdWords. That said, I think this will mainly apply to the broader / obvious keywords - I'm guessing niche terms will still remain relatively easy to work with?

October 6, 2006 - 4:08pm

Aaron:
Do you recommend using the google base store connector for you ebay, amazon, or yahoo store since it organizes you products better, for the search engine results?

Or...
Do you not recommend using the google base store connector since it will most likely take out your storefront from the organic search results since (there will be many similliar content stores as you), thus causing you to spend money on adwords for exposure?

October 6, 2006 - 5:44pm

He seems convinced that it is in Google's best interest to make sure that their order of listings is as relevant as possible, because readers are choosing them due their excellence at returning relevant results to key word searches.

He seems very sure of this, and insists that they could not survive the competition if they didn't hold their reputation for providing the most relevant search results.

But being relevant and being perceived as relevant are two different things.

And ads on the SERPs means there will generally almost always be at least a few relevant results for any commercial query.

HAVE heard that they engage in censorship, in areas that they don't agree with

Search is both about bringing good stuff to the top AND filtering out junk.

So Aaron, your saying that it is possible that stores that upload their store into the google base, will be considered commercial, (not organic), and therefor it will be more difficult for the store owners to rank for any search time that is competetive- since the organic, or natural search results will most likely show up before them/instead of them.

Don't think of Google Base at something that will supress your rankings, think of it as a way for Google to be able to better classify pieces and types of information.

Do you recommend using the google base store connector for you ebay, amazon, or yahoo store since it organizes you products better, for the search engine results?

It probably won't hurt you to do it, but longterm most sites are going to get margin squeezed by all the major platform companies unless you end up creating your own strong brand or value add platform.

October 6, 2006 - 6:07pm

"It probably won't hurt you to do it, but longterm most sites are going to get margin squeezed by all the major platform companies unless you end up creating your own strong brand or value add platform."

Thank you Aaron, for that answer. The reason I asked is because I planned on promoting my storefront through seo and writing a few articles. If I found out that submitting to the google base platform would hamper my rankings, then obviously I would not submit.

Now I see what you are saying: that google base store connector is only a mechansim for better organizing items/info in or about your store in the search results.

October 6, 2006 - 6:08pm

"It probably won't hurt you to do it, but longterm most sites are going to get margin squeezed by all the major platform companies unless you end up creating your own strong brand or value add platform."

Thank you Aaron, for that answer. The reason I asked is because I planned on promoting my storefront through seo and writing a few articles. If I found out that submitting to the google base platform would hamper my rankings, then obviously I would not submit.

Now I see what you are saying: that google base store connector is only a mechansim for better organizing items/info in or about your store in the search results.

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