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Adding content to Google Base and thinking about Drupal
Adding content to Google Base and thinking about Drupal
A couple weeks ago when the not-yet-released Google Base briefly
popped up online, a bunch of tech bloggers became really excited by
this mysterious, new service to organize classifieds and other
listings, possibly similar to eBay or Craigslist. Honestly I looked at
a couple of screenshots, went back to playing with a new ringtone, and
totally forgot about it.
But as I was looking back over
some news, I finally had the time to see what all the hype was about
and wondered why I hadn’t heard anything about it lately. Well, to be
fair, the reason there hasn’t been more hype is because there isn’t
anything new to report.
What really strikes me about all this chatter is the lack of discussion on how to communicate with gbase.
For
example, this screen shot looks like a step by step guide to uploading ‘an item.’
Yet the description on the main page of gbase reads:
Examples of items you can find in Google Base
• Description of your party planning service
• Articles on current events from your website
• Listing of your used car for sale
• Database of protein structures
Would
all it take to upload a database of protein structures be an eBay-like
submission form? What would you upload, a picture of the protein
structure and some scientific code? There is a bulk upload form for gbase, and here is where
it gets really interesting.
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tangent
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Scot Wingo’s eBay Blog lists the categories that
were in the dropdown under “post an item.” This is obviously important
to give an idea of what kind of meta data will be needed and what it
will apply to. Scot’s list of gbase categories runs from classic
bulletin board postings like “Course Schedules” and “Events and
Activities,” to classic classified postings like “Jobs” and “Housing,”
to auction items that have made eBay even more successful like
“Vehicles,” and finally to general “News and Articles” and “Reference
Articles.”
After reading Scot’s post I felt like I was looking for the common thread between local cable 5, HSN (yeah – the home shopping network), CNN,
and C-Span Skinamax (there is a section for personals also). I mean if
I wanted to search for something I would just go to Google and not
gbase, right? And doesn’t Google already know this stuff? Isn’t that
why it has the bots constantly pinging my site and why I feel I should
hook up Google sitemap?
If I am using Google to search and eBay
and Craigslist to buy stuff, why would I use this? Did Google learn so
much about me from Gmail that they can unravel the social network and
reputation of an eBay or a Craigslist like everyone is saying it might?
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end of tangent
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I think a hint lies in a comment by Greg
Yardley in Techcrunch’s post by Michael
Arrington
“I think success will depend on how Google uses the data to help
those who provide it. Take the Froogle mention, for example – if
merchants discover that adding information about their products to
Google Base helps them get more traffic and sell more stuff, they’ll do
so.”
That is the only way to encourage people, businesses,
and organizations to submit their listings directly to Google. They
have to believe that they will get more traffic. And in the FAQs screen shot
it says “your
items may appear on Google, Froogle, or Google Local”
This
extra information or attributes might be what has David Winer so pissed
(well pissed again) at Google’s closed door Zeitgeist conference.
So what are
you uploading? Again, this gbase upload screen shot is really interesting… It is under a
“feeds” section and it showing text files and has an FTP setup for files lager than 10mb.
What is this? Google is going to use some version of XML/RSS – manageable, portable, expendable, readable by humans – and not keep it so simple for people to upload.
From
some of the screen shots you can see that you can search by “attributes”
and these appear in certain sections of the data entry and search process
that look just like tags or predefined taxonomies – there is even soem information about this in the FAQs section. Some XML
with new “attributes”?
I’m trying to figure out how you can get your
Drupal system to talk with gbase and understand why it is handled as a
file and not a feed for syncing sake.
…and just thinking out loud. Any ideas?
Comments
I've been swamped with
I've been swamped with questions this week about the fee structure of Google Base.
Well the folks at buygoogle have put the fee structure out there WITH screen shots of the sellers order management interface and it's definitely worth checking out.
They report that the fee structure is: 2.5% of the transaction plus 25 cents. There is a
I feel vindicated with the addition of the "Orders/Payouts/Settings" tabs to the seller interface. If you'll recall, the "my items" tab seemed mightly lonely out there. | Teen Masturbation| Girls In Gym Showers | Lesbian Orgasm
which one is it? (google base)
So google base is a 'common' or 'public' blog which allows users to add various types of content categorised by a flexible taxonomy?
Or is google base a search engine which allows users to create content for indexing using a determined taxonomy?
Or is google base a classified advert site with a more flexible advert descriptor?
cheers
scotjam.
A Threat to whom
I don't want to run the risk of saying that Gbase is not going to be a populare service, but right now Gbase just seems to general. It is a search engine of adds, great, but Googles success is based on Pagerank right? now how do you implement Pagerrank on adds; by how many people are linking to them? of course not, but then how is the relevancy aspect gonna work, I don't know, looks like the early days of search, just add a page full of keywords and try to get hits.
As Eric is pointing out might as well search Google web search changes for relevancy are higher there.
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