I’m still going to be trying new things and leaving any feedback that I can on this Blog. I really enjoy your post and the fact you go out there and get the answers from these companies we are trying to figure out.

Yes, I have been reassured that Google is aware of many of the Base issues and was told that they are hard at work fixing these issues in addition to adding to their Base services. Keep in mind, it is still in beta (Froogle never left beta, so sometimes that doesn’t mean much).

I am sure relevancy will improve as they continue to gather data from all their services and implement their findings into the products algo.

I too have gotten frustrated when optimizing data feeds. I am of the belief that it depends on the type of products you sell as to what attributes to include. Many merchants just add them all thinking that if I give them everything they will certainly like me better than the rest. This isn’t always true, especially with Google. Keep in mind all the other factors that go into ranking at Google. Many of the Web algo filters are used within, or as a core part of their other services. So domain age, authority, descriptions and hundreds of other things are used in addition to attributes (attributes are used more to classify and display the results, they do not necessarily mean you will rank higher in the results).

Many people I have worked with have had the same dilemma with working their butt off to test and optimize their feeds, only to find that there is no visible increase in rank or placement. I always tell them not to get frustrated, that testing and analysis of performance is a key part to figuring this whole thing out and getting the best results for a given url or product line. They are both things that should always be done and refined as you go, it’s important since the search landscape is always changing.

I agree with you on the Base blog and Group idea. It is crazy that they don’t post more often and provide us with their changes as they happen. I mean come on, they have over 5,500 RSS subscribers and their second to latest post is from back in July. I wish I could post that often and maintain 5,000 plus subscribers, only Google. At least they post more often than the Live Product Search blog.

Thanks again for such a thorough comment and your insight. Together we can help to change the way things are done and improve the tools we need to gain exposure in these markets. I will do all that I can to relay your ideas to their team in addition to sending some of my own. Until then, if you think of anything else, be sure to report it here.

Don’t give up! Keep trying new things and eventually you’ll find the perfect data feed blend for your company. If you ever need help, let me know, I would be happy to provide additional thoughts, if I can.

I am a firm believer that merchants should promote anywhere they possibly can, especially the free spots. Even if it doesn’t generate tons of traffic or sales right away doesn’t mean you shouldn’t list for other reasons (branding, links, more exposure, etc).

BTW, Google Product Search results do appear in the regular Web results. They show up in the Onebox area and also sometimes below the top ten natural listings, I refer to that area as the Twobox.

My biggest thing is the fact they want to produce the most relevant information to the consumers but yet the results in my eyes are really not doing this. After submitting to Base for the last 6 months after taking on the job as the CSE guy at my company, I have done a lot of research and optimization of our feeds and the results just don’t show like they should. And after querying the API of merchants who are getting listed much higher then us, I found that many of these merchants were not submitting all the required attributes and much less information about their products then ours.

The whole key I thought to Base optimization was to supply them with as much relevant information as possible about your product and then you should see better results then merchants who are just submitting the basic requirements or less.

I stated information about this on the Gooble Base help group and people tend to not believe me but its pretty easy to query the API and see these results.

I just don’t like the fact that I am sitting here day in day out and trying to optimize and test different things and not get the results merchants are getting who obviously have configured their feed once and let it go.

Another thing I would like to see from the Google Base team would be more blog postings on issues, fixes, and what will information should be added to base to get the best results from the consumer. I know that Google doesn’t like to give up to much info on how to get better results from their algorithm’s, but I feel that Base is a different scenario, because its like she said in her interview, “Google’s goal is to connect users to the most relevant information”. There are plenty of us that have the great information to give but we will need the best techniques to deliver what Google wants in terms of most relevant information.

Another thing would be to have someone from the team reviewing all of the Google Base Help Group Topics and and communicating more there. I know that the Google Base Guy does do respond sometimes and starts his own Topics but this isn’t that often. Many of the same Topics are repeated and could be answered very quickly without repeats if there was more interaction between Google and the community. We all are striving for the same thing and that is to place the most relevant content at the top of the search results.

Sorry to go on and on and maybe not talking as much about the interview subjects but just what I would like to say to the Google Base people. I think its great that they are trying to reach out to us the best they can and appreciate the tools and generosity of information they let us research.

Thanks so much for the article, and thank you Cynthia for spending the time to speak to the people and let us know some of the insights of Google Base

Personally, I don’t get a lot of traffic from Google Base. It’s good for merchants to find the price from their competitors. For buyers, I don’t see a lot of sales from Google Product Search.

I am hoping the product searches can be integrated into the search results. Not many people know to search product on Google’s product site!