what is the use of google base ?

Google base, also known as Froogle, is an over looked resource for traffic and product sells for an E-commerce website. Products listed with Google base are typically displayed on the first page of search results in a box labeled Shopping Results. Sometimes these ads are places at the very top of the search results under Adwords.

With these first page shopping result listings, you can add products that go directly to your website and not hosted on the Base website. You can also link your Adwords account directly to Google Base, so that your products can show up with your ads.

How to get traffic and product sells with Google Base

1. Use keywords in product titles.

One of the most common mistakes when using Google Base is not inserting keywords in product titles. Unless the product is a commonly searched term, then your visitors will not see your base listings.

An example of a bad title would be “HP Mini 1000 Mi series”. Unless someone is specifically looking for this product then it will be displayed, otherwise it will never show up in search results.

But if you change the title to “HP Computer Laptop Mini 1000 Mi”, your product listing will be displayed for keywords like HP Computer, Computer Laptop, and HP Laptop. If someone does do an exact search for Mini 1000 mi, the product will still come up for them, but by changing the title you have increased the visibility of your product.

Piece of advice, do not go past 32 characters for your products title. If you do go over 32 characters, the rest of words and characters will be cut off.

Example Title Listing with the right amount of characters – HP Computer Laptop Mini 1000 Mi

Screen shot of one my listings in Google, using keywords in title tag. If you are lucky you can get 2 or 3 listings to show up in the shopping results in Google search.

Example Screenshot Listing for StoneGifts.com in Google Search

If you use a Google base or a Froogle module for an ecommerce website like Zencart, oscommerce, cube cart, etc, then I recommend editing product titles in the feed file. I know this can be a hassle, but it will help get traffic to your website. On my website, stonegifts.com, I have to manually edit each product title in the xml feed. Several of the products titles don’t make sense outside of my website and the mod doesn’t read the meta tags, so that means I have to do it by hand.

2. When you are setting up your account make sure to use a URL for your company name. This is for display purposes and lowers bounce rate from visitors who click a product link.

If you are going to use Google base for product listing, then you should use your Website name for your company name. This way when shopping result show up in Google search, it has your url next to it.

The reasoning for this, if people are redirected to your website when they are expecting Google base, they will typically leave your website. If you use a company name in place of a url, chances are your company name will be cut off after so many characters.

By using your url, it looks betters next to a listing and advertises your website, which is the point of using Google base for traffic. It also alerts people to the link redirecting to your website, so they don’t think it’s spam if they are taken to a website that they think they didn’t click on.

Now this doesn’t apply if your company is well known like Target or Sears. If your website is a name brand then you want to use your company name as your url. But for the rest of us e-commerce owners, it’s a great way to promote a website and build trust.

A word of advice when you are using your url as your company name, make sure to capitalize the first letter of each word in your url.

An example would be StoneGifts.com or SupplyStyle.com. This makes the link look professional and it has been shown in multiple trials runs on Adwords to increase click through rate. This does not apply to your actual url for your website, it is just a visual link that shows up in the shopping results in Google, which is typically used for your company name

3. Host your own product listings, do not ADD or EDIT your product listings in Base, or else your product will be hosted on Google base and displayed on their website, not on yours.

If you list products one at a time in Google base or edit an item, your products will be listed within their website. Yes, you can put a link in these listings back to your website, but this is nott the same as doing a data feed and uploading your products with a link to your website.

This doesn’t not apply to people who use Google base feed mods on their website because the links are already created in the data feed files. But keep in mind, if you change your listings in the Google base control panel, your product listings will be changed from being hosted on your website to Google base. So be careful not to edit listings.

When you use a data feed product upload, you can put a link in an excel or xml file and all your Google base listings will redirect a visitor to YOUR websites when clicked on and not to a generic base listing. Google base redirecting to your website also applies to shopping results that show in Google search; shopping result links will bring a visitor directly to your website.

This is a plus for several reasons.

When traffic comes to your website you can display your product in a much better layout and design, that is a bonus unless your website doesn’t look better then Google base. 
You have a better chance of people viewing your other products when they on your website, then if they are just browsing through Google Base. 
The checkout process is on your website, so you can offer any payment processing you want. 
When people make an account, the information is on your website, which is beneficial if you offer mailing list and other mailing promotions.

Here are a few links to Google base help on how to create a Datafeed upload file by using Excel or Xml.

How to make tab delimited excel files, also includes a video to watch –

http://base.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=58083&hl=en

Full list of acceptable Attributes you can use in excel and xml listings –

http://base.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=78170&hl=en

This next link is hard to find on Google Base. The following link will give you a list of product categories. Just select the category you want to use and copy the Xml or text code at the top. You can use multiple categories for products and you can create your own category if you need to.

http://base.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66818

A product listing can take anywhere from 30 minutes to 3 hours before it active, but once active it is instantly search able in Google.

In conclusion, Google base is a great resource to use for e-commerce websites. It’s free to   use and they don’t charge you for listing or selling an item. If used correctly it can bring much needed sales and traffic to a new or struggling store.

Google base will provide you with the ability to go after other keywords that you are not currently after because they are lower on your list, but you still want traffic for. Or for keywords that are saturated and you want to display your products for until you can get enough backlinks for your website to show up as a search result.

If you have any questions about this post or experience any problems when using Google Base, post a comment and I will see what I can do to help out.

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