Author Archive

By Donal Mountain, User Experience team

As a user experience researcher on the Base team, it's my job to really understand how you are using Base. I spend much of my time observing people who already use Base every day.

I do this research in order to learn as much as I can about people's interactions with Base: what parts of the product do you particularly like or dislike? Which things are enjoyable, and which are cumbersome or downright confusing? I then take this information back to the rest of the Base team, so that we can be sure that we're all working to make Base easy to use, with the features you really care about.

If you use Base regularly, you can probably list a few quirky things you'd like to see changed. If you're new to Base, chances are there are some gray areas for you. Seeing things from the perspective of our users is often quite humbling -- it reminds us of all the work we have yet to do.

Base really is a beta product, which means we're continuing to make it as easy and rewarding to use as possible. If you have any particular insights, please contact me directly.

By Jennifer Hyman, Product Marketing Manager

Our search refinement experiment has garnered a lot of interest from the Base community. To recap, this feature provides Google.com searchers with fields and categories to better focus, refine or narrow their original search query to more easily find the content they're looking for. For example, if you search for 'recipes' on Google.com, you see a search refinement option at the top of the search results that includes choices for type of cuisine and main ingredient. Selecting a cuisine (Italian), and main ingredient (pasta) will provide you with a page of more detailed and relevant search results about Italian pasta recipes. And within that page, you'll have additional options for refining your search even further. We're still testing this refinement feature across several content categories to help people more easily find exactly what they want.

As a Base provider, how can you get your content or product listed on Google.com and these refined search results pages? It's relatively simple: the more detailed information you provide about your item, the better its chances to be included in Google.com search results. While our search algorithm takes many factors into account, content and listings with detailed attributes assigned to them have a greater likelihood of appearing on Google than those without. Here are some example suggestions for attributes by category:


Recipes
cholesterol
cooking_time
course
cuisine
fiber
main_ingredient
preparation_time
servings
sodium

Jobs
location
job_function
job_industry
job_type
salary_type

Housing
area
bathrooms
bedrooms
description
listing_type
location
price
property_type
year

Vehicles
make
model
year
manufacturer
model_number
mileage
vehicle_type
brand
condition
location
payment_accepted
price
size

The Google Base Attributes page offers more details and best practices for the types of information to include in your feed. So get started now to see if you can add more attributes.

By Sundar Subbarayan, Google Base Partner Solutions team

Lana, Ed and I from the Google Base Partner Solutions team work primarily with partners who have a lot of content and need some help getting it into Google Base. We work with companies across a lot of verticals including vehicles, jobs, products, people profiles, merchants, and reviews, among many others.

For example, a few months ago we worked with the U.S. government to get clinical trial data from http://www.clinicaltrials.gov. When we contacted the folks from this agency, they were more than happy to have their data in Google Base, but they didn't have the resources or the capacity to generate a feed for it. So we worked with them to crawl their site, find the clinical trial pages, extract the attributes, generate a Google Base feed and have it submitted. (Now you can search for them.)

Another example of a particular request is helping traditional brick and mortar retail stores get their product inventory data into Google Base. For a retailer who may have several hundred stores and several thousand product items in each one, generating a feed is not an easy task. We help mitigate this problem by taking two separate feeds -- one a store location feed for all of the stores, and another a product inventory feed of all products they might sell in these stores, with a reference to one or more store IDs in the product feed. Then we merge the two feeds to generate a single really large Google Base feed.

The really cool thing about all this is that whether it's a single listing from an individual, or a feed we generate by doing custom work for a partner, both are treated the same way, and they could potentially appear side by side in the search results, depending on what a searcher is looking for.

What makes working on Google Base exciting for us is the feedback we get from our partners -- like hearing anecdotally about a site's traffic quadrupling because people could now find them on Google. Of course, it's not always such praise that keeps us ticking. Sometimes it's the fun of the challenges our partners bring in. The work we did for traditional brick and mortar retail stores was born out of such a request. Either way we'd love to hear more from you.

By Clint Guerrero, Online Operations Coordinator

So what goes on behind the scenes at Google Base? We thought you might like to hear a little more about who we are and what we're working on, so I'm going to share a little bit about myself, Clint Guerrero, and my role at Google Base.

I'm an Online Operations Coordinator, and one of my main projects is to keep on top of how we're keeping up with the needs of Google Base users. Every week, the whole support team meets to review our progress, discuss the latest changes to Google Base, and identify goals for service improvements. I prepare the agenda each week, keep a running log, and file a report for the team.

What sort of issues come up on our agenda? First are weekly statistics on our core work: how quickly we're able to review bulk uploads and respond to your emails. We try to keep our turnaround time short, and we also look out for common issues you have identified. I also read the discussion threads on Google Base Groups to make sure that we're tracking what you're talking about.

Next on the agenda is our Provider Satisfaction Survey. Every so often we solicit feedback so that we have a tangible measure of how you think we're doing. Then we discuss product updates, team goals, strategies, and whatever else comes up.

We work hard to help get your content displayed on our various search applications, and here's my biggest tip: Make sure to provide as many attributes as possible. The more attributes we have, the better we can match search queries to your content. Attributes also enable us to include your items in refinement searches. If you're searching for [women's tops], you can refine the search according to "price," "brand," and "designer name." If you included these attributes in your bulk upload of women's clothing, these refinements may trigger your items.

I'd like to see more content related to non-profit work on Base; before coming to Google I worked with a volunteer agency based in Texas. We were involved with some development projects in Botswana, and there is definitely a need for people who can volunteer their time to education and training, especially in relation to technology. Some day I'd like to run my own business, and this is one area I hope to pursue.

By Preeti Uberoy, Senior Associate

We know that uploading content to Google Base is not always the easiest thing to do, and we're working on that. In the meantime, we thought we'd point out some recent improvements to the Help Center and bulk upload instruction pages that might make the process more intuitive. For one thing, we added a lot of screen shots to cut down on the reading like this illustrated view of how to change your default display name.

More importantly, we redesigned our bulk upload instructions. Now you can find specific instructions for different types of content: business locations, courses, events and activities, housing, and so on. We list the required and recommended attributes for each item type, and we've also provided sample files. When you click on a specific item type, you'll go to a unique instruction page where you'll find links to sample files in tab delimited and XML file formats. For example, here's a properly formatted RSS 1.0 file for a bulk upload of events and activities.

You can even download a sample Excel file for your item, fill in your information as shown, save it with your registered filename (don't forget to save it as a text file), and upload. We're still working on getting the last few sample files up, so we apologize if you find one of the few that's missing.

Don't think that this means we're discouraging custom item types - to the contrary. Maybe you'll surprise us with content that we haven't anticipated, and create new ways to use Google Base.

By Jean Tessier, Google Base Engineer

We're pleased to offer Google Base providers more information on how your items are faring. For example, you might want to know how often they are part of search results ("impressions"), and how frequently people are clicking on them ("clicks"). Now you can find the answers on your "My items" page.



We've added three new columns on the items dashboard: impressions, clicks, and page views. Each time an item is part of a Google Base or Froogle search, the item gets an impression. Each time someone clicks on an item on a search result page, the item gets a click. Each time someone clicks on the URL of an item hosted by Google Base, the item gets a page view. (This might be from a search results page, a URL in an email, or any of a number of other ways.)

We can only update impressions and clicks once a day, but hosted page views are updated many times throughout the day. (One small caveat: we just began collecting data early in June, so the counters will not have information for items that you posted before then). More information about this new feature can be found here.

And here's a tip: if your offer has many impressions, but few clicks, spruce up its title and add detailed attributes, images, etc. to make it more appealing and easily searchable by users.

By Matthias Zenger, Software Engineer

Today we're releasing the Google Base data API with which you can write applications that dynamically interact with Google Base. You can upload, edit and delete items, as well as query data to create mash-ups combining Google Base content with other services. It's a ReST-full API, based on the GData protocol.

Check out the demo to see the possible uses, and to get you started in building your own client application.

The Google Base API is designed for developers who would like to integrate their applications with Google Base. Due to the nature of the Google Base API, developers should have technical know-how and experience programming applications. If you're a casual user of Google Base and would like to add a few items at a time, we suggest you do this using existing submission methods: single-item postings and bulk uploads.

By Alison Bjerke, Operations and Support

Sometimes we get emails from Google users who have found great ways to use Google Base along with other Google tools and services. Ryan, from TropicalYarns.com has taken advantage of AdSense, Google Base, Checkout, Analytics, AdWords, and more to turn his small business around.

By Michael Adelberg, Strategic Partner Development

One of the most satisfying parts of what we do is work with Google's content partners, because that's a win-win situation. Let me explain.

Google Base offers tremendous value for content providers large and small. Before Google Base, there was simple web crawling which involved indexing the content on a website. But there were challenges: sometimes the web crawler could not find all pages on a site, and, even if a page was crawled, it was often difficult for a computer-based system to understand the meaning of the content.

So we created Google Base. Anyone with content to distribute can send their information directly to Google, and do it in an organized and structured format. Google is able to leverage these structured attributes to present information that exactly matches a query. Content providers win because their information becomes more accessible, and reaches people who are looking for exactly what they offer.

At the same time, Google Base makes it easier for users to find specific content and listings that often are located deep within provider sites. A great example is a search for the perfect recipe on Google. Now it's easy for cooks to narrow their search attribute by attribute (i.e. cuisine type, main ingredient, meal-type, and so on) until they find the results that match exactly what they want. For each listing, Google presents a link directly to the page on the content provider's website with full information, saving time and helping people find exactly what they need.

By Cynthia Kwon, Strategic Partner Development (and self-proclaimed fashionista)

With the new fall wardrobe hitting the stores, I decided it was time to clear my closet to make room for the latest fashions. After choosing a few items that I just could not part with, I was left with a pile of clothes, shoes, and purses, most of which I had only worn a few times. What to do with all this stuff? Instead of just giving it away as usual, I decided to try and sell it to help fund my fall fashion purchases. Since I'm a member of the Google Base team, I naturally turned to Base to list my fashion treasures for sale.

The current challenge we often see from people and retailers selling stuff on Google Base is that they just don’t give enough information. The way Google Base works is that the more structured data (attributes) you give us, the better chance you will have of matching a user search and getting your information displayed. Simple concept, right?

But even as someone who works on this product, I must admit that the process is not entirely intuitive. For example, take my favorite pair of Gucci boots. Following the feed instructions, I would send the following pieces of information about these beauties:

Apparel_Type: Shoe
Product_Type: Tall Boot
Gender: Female
Color: Black
Brand: Gucci
Condition: Used
Price: $400
Payment_Accepted: Google Checkout

However, just sending those attributes do not really do my boots justice. I mean, these are Guccis! I've worn them only twice and they're just one season old. The patent leather detailing on them is gorgeous and they come with this cute silver buckle that has the Gucci Logo embossed on it. Clearly, to give only the suggested attributes is not enough. Only custom attributes can truly describe them. Like this:

c:Category: Couture
c:Season: Fall 2005
c:Outer_ Material: Fabric
c:Inner_Material: Leather
c:Heel_Material: Patent Leather
c:Embellishments: Patent Heel, Buckle
c:Sole: Rubber
c:Heel_Height: 3 inches
c:Heel_Type: Stiletto
c:Boot_Shape: Pointy
c:Size: 7
c:Trim: Patent Leather
c:Zipper: Side Zip
c:Circumference: 15 inches

Can you start to get a better picture of what these fabulous boots look like? Because I have provided so many attributes, I have a much better shot of matching a user search. So, my fellow sellers, retailers, and fashionistas, take it from someone on the inside. I know it takes more effort to send all this information -- but it will be worth it!