Optimizing Base items to get more eyeballs

Wednesday, July 19, 2006 at 6:27 PM

By Bindu Reddy, Product Manager

A lot of you are asking about how to optimize Google Base items and bulk uploads and increase traffic to your items. Here are some quick tips on how to get maximum exposure.

- Submit items with as many pre-defined attributes as possible. We only show items with these attributes on Google.com and Froogle. Learn more

- For your items to be displayed in all location-based searches, specify precise locations with a street address and Zip code.

- Refresh your bulk uploads to keep your data up to date. Our algorithm will demote items that are not refreshed regularly.

- Use Google Checkout as a payment option if you're posting a product item that you want Google to host. Product items that don't have "buy" buttons are far less likely to be sold than those which do.

- Want more traffic? Create ads for your items and set a maximum bid. We'll run your ad on Google search when people search for queries relevant to your Google Base items.

Still want more help? Please drop us a line and we'll be happy to help.

Discrepancy in bulk uploads and dashboard

Friday, July 14, 2006 at 4:18 PM

By Steven De La O, Google Base Operations

Discrepancies in dashboard totals have left quite a few of you wondering about the status of your items in Google Base. This confusion is caused by the different totals displayed on the Active items and Bulk upload files pages of your account dashboard. The item details on the Bulk upload files page include the total number of items in your bulk upload file and how many of them were successfully processed. In some cases, this number will differ from the total displayed on the Active items page.

Example 1: Bulk upload file details
Example 2: Active items total for the same file

The Active items page lets you view and edit a snapshot of random items from your bulk upload file. We recently increased the item limit for this snapshot from 3,000 to 10,000 items to make it more useful to those of you submitting large amounts of items. An issue is that the Active items page may not show a complete list of items according to this limit. This happens when deleted or inactive items are included in our snapshot. Improvements to the functionality of the Active items page are in the works, so we’ll be addressing this issue in a future release.

So where can you get an accurate picture of how many of your items are in Google Base? We suggest using search results. To view all your items in the search results, in your account click on Item URL next to one of your items, then click on the link that reads All items by… at the top of the item page. On the next page you'll be able to see the total number of items displaying for your account in the top-right corner.