Wednesday, November 22, 2006 at 1:34 PM
By Chris Tuttle, Software Engineer
As we've mentioned before, the key to getting traffic from Google Base is providing rich and relevant attributes for every item. We've posted some suggestions to get you started with attribute names, but what's the best way to enter values for your attributes? Of course, there are several ways to ensure that you're entering relevant values, but the simplest and most important tip pertains to the use of abbreviations.
For example, is the gender supposed to be "female", "f", or "girl"? Should the job function be "sr. mgmt." or "management"? Is "sf" a good property type?
To quote from a famous physicist, "make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler" [1]. Use short and clear attribute values -- "female" and "management" are good examples -- and leave the abbreviations behind. People will have a better search experience, and your items can get more traffic.
