Free Website Content
What is Google Base
What is Google Base
By S. Housley
In order for Google Base to succeed, it
will need the support of both publishers and users.
Quite frankly, most are having difficulty seeing the
value in Google Base. Google Base, is a new service
in beta, from Google that requests that publishers add
their information to the "Google Base". Google
Base is hosted by Google. All types of item submissions
are accepted online and off-line information in a variety
of formats. Google Base uses tagging similar to that
found in many social-bookmarking applications, though
Google refers to it as labels. The labels are used by
Google to categorize or add attributes to the information,
that better describes the content. The more popular
specific attributes become, the more often Google will
suggest them when others post the same or similar items.
Additionally, items that become more popular will show
up as suggested item types in the "Choose an Existing
Item Type" drop down menu.
Based on the relevance of the submitted
items, they may also be included in the main Google
search index, and other Google products such as Froogle
and Local Google Search.
Because the individual submitting the
content can define the content using labels, the system
is left open to rampant spam. While there does appear
to be a "checks and balances" in place with
each listing showing a "report a bad link"
button, that allow searches to report and indicate that
content has been improperly tagged, contains adult content,
or is otherwise inappropriate content. It is unclear
whether Google will create a hierarchy of web surfers.
DMOZ and many Wiki systems, create a leadership structure
of users to minimize spam, but the fact remains that
both systems are prone to abuses. It is unclear whether
Google will implement a similar system.
Google Base is currently available only
in English. Web surfers can experiment with Google Base
and browse through existing items at any time. However,
to submit items, a Google Account must be created. Google
Base will currently accept bulk uploads in CSV, RSS
1.0, RSS 2.0 and Atom 0.3 formats.
Content providers who already have RSS
feeds can easily submit their content to Google Base
without requiring a lot of additional work. Unfortunately
at this time, each Google Account only allows for 10
feeds to be submitted to Google Base. Many content publishers
have merged content topics and multiple RSS feeds into
a single RSS feed. This is inefficient and may ultimately
hurt the structure of Google Base, as each RSS feed
may contain items that are unrelated.
One nice feature of Google Base has is
a geo-targeting search feature that produces results
for a very specific region. However at this time many
submission do not include a product location so the
geo-targeting feature, while a nice addition, will need
some refinement as well.
Google Base currently produces far less
relevant searches than a vertical search engine. Why
Google is relying on tagging (labels) rather than the
contextual spidering makes little sense. And why Google
has taken the step of content hosting is unclear. Search
Engines historically devalue duplicate content, the
Google hosting may provide a unique twist to the duplicate
content debates.
While Google Base is still in beta, it
is clear that it needs to be polished. In order to garner
the support from publishers and users Google articulating
the purpose and intent of Google Base might help in
gaining support.
About the Author:
Sharon Housley manages marketing for FeedForAll http://www.feedforall.com
software for creating, editing, publishing RSS feeds
and podcasts. In addition Sharon manages marketing for
NotePage http://www.notepage.net
a wireless text messaging software company.
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