What is Google Base?
Google Base is an online database provided by Google into which any user can add almost any type of content, such as text, images, and structured information in formats like XML, PDF, Excel, RTF, Word Perfect.
As of 2008, it is available to the public as a beta version. If Google finds it relevant it may appear on its shopping search engine, Google Maps or even the web search. The piece of content can then be labeled with attributes like the ingredients for a recipe or the camera model for stock photography.
As of 2008, the user interface is available in English and German. Because information about the service was leaked before public release, it generated much interest in the information technology community prior to release. Google subsequently responded on their blog with an official statement:
"You may have seen stories today reporting on a new product that we're testing, and speculating about our plans. Here's what's really going on. We are testing a new way for content owners to submit their content to Google, which we hope will complement existing methods such as our web crawl and Google Sitemaps. We think it's an exciting product, and we'll let you know when there's more news."
A major component of Google Base is acting like a online classified ads service, such as Craigslist. However it has also been used for such items as protein structures, current events, real estate, recipes, people profiles, and more.
Files can be uploaded to the google base servers by browsing your computer or the web, by various ftp methods, or by API coding. Online tools are provided to view the number of downloads of the user's files, and other performance measures
Google Base Update 2009
Google base is now in full-fledge operation. In other words it is out of Beta.
The great news is, that you can have it integrated into your content management system. Once it is integrated, the process of uploading products to Google is completely automated, with you choosing the frequency of updates.
- Daily
- Weekly
- Monthly
The best way to decide how often to update, is based solely on how often you actually update products on your web site. For most people - Monthly, is the best option for updating to Google. There is NO BENEFIT to updating more frequently, if you are not making changes to your products.
When using Google Base (Froogle) you will have more opportunities to expose your products on the search engines, and it will certainly help your natural rankings as well. This is a truly exciting program that Google has developed, and we are very happy with the results we have seen so far.
To learn more about Google Base, Contacts Koi Hosting.
