20 November 2006 | Author: S. Inarejos SEO Consultant

Happy 1st birthday, Google Base!

Last Wednesday, Google Base celebrated its first birthday since its launch on November 15th 2006. In the internet age, arriving at your first anniversary is a major achievement for any site, and provides an excellent opportunity to recapitulate and look into future prospects.

What is Google Base?

Google Base is simply an online database into which anyone can submit any type of online or offline content. Google aims to provide an alternative for content submission to the standard form with web crawlers or Google Sitemaps. The main advantage of Google Base in comparison with more traditional methods is that the existence of a website providing the product or service is not necessary, and this is a major benefit for those individuals or small businesses who do not have the resources to establish a website beforehand. It also saves valuable time, since the launch of a new product can be submitted immediately to Google Base, without having to wait for the web crawler to pick up the content you are trying to promote.

Google Base is a free service that helps users enhance the distribution of content and improve their results based on attributes. Submissions to Google Base are also advisable as part of a link building strategy, since URLs can be included as a reference to the main source of information, which eventually will result in more traffic to your website and greater online promotion.

The attributes associated with the data submitted are simply characteristics that define your product or service, such as price, location, etc. Associating attributes with your submissions ease the search process for the users. Submissions to Google Base can be made individually - or, if you have a large number of items, there is a bulk upload option. The only limitation though, is the size of the file you are submitting, which can not exceed ten megabytes.

A year ago, Google Base was essentially a standalone service, and search results from Google Base were not displayed anywhere else. Today, the results for searches are displayed on Froogle, Google Maps and the main Google web search results - significantly improving the online exposure of your submissions.

Unfortunately, at the moment, Google Base is only available in English and German interfaces. Google also provides special guides for providers of real estate content, recipes or products in general.

Google Base's achievements during the first year of its existence have been various, such as the Google Base API. Google Base API enables users to integrate Google Base search results within their websites. A fine example is Findaconvertiblecar.com, which enables the user to find convertibles in the USA by selecting attributes such as the Make, Model or Year. More importantly it also integrates the search results with Google Maps. The ongoing integration of Google Base with the main Google search results is also a major step, although this has not been fully implemented yet.

Google Base has also been integrated into Google Checkout and Google AdWords, thus giving more accurate information to the data providers. Finally, the launch of Google Base in the UK and Germany has opened the European market to this excellent service. In 2007, Google Base will be developed further - and, who knows, it may even be available in French, Spanish and Chinese by the time its second birthday rolls around.

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