SingleFeed Blog

This is a little bit more than a blog post, but we don’t have a good place to put it right now. We’ll get pages set up for each shopping comparison engines soon.

Google Base Basics & The Case for Data Feed Optimization (DFO)

Google Base Custom Attributes, Google OneBox, the future of Google Base

What is Google Base?

Google Base is Google’s free user generated content database. Registered users can submit job listings, personal ads, blog posts, podcasts, recipes, images, technical documents, real estate listings, products, and more. While the following information will focus on Google Base for products, much of the information is applicable to all Google Base submitters, regardless of the type of data involved. Furthermore, SingleFeed has the ability to work with all kinds of Google Base data (we’re just starting with product data), so feel free to contact us at support@singlefeed.com if you’re looking for Google Base assistance or are interested in using our service in the future.

The Case for Data Feed Optimization (DFO) – Where Google Base Store Connector and Automated XML Feed Solutions Come Up Short.

There are approximately 30,000 product feeds being submitted to Google Base. I’d estimate that over 90% of those feeds are being submitted by automated XML feed programs which look at the basic Google Base requirements, do a quick translation, and port your data over. Getting your data to Google Base is an important first step, but it’s only the first step. Programs like Google Base Store Connector remind me of the Submit It service of years ago.

Submit It was a genius idea. Back at the beginning of the internet boom, Submit It allowed webmasters to submit their URLs and some associated information required by various directories/search engines and then Submit It would register your URLs with hundreds of sites. Cost was around $99. People flocked to the service and it was eventually sold to Microsoft, which made it part of bCentral.

As a quiet member of what was then a search engine optimization (SEO) cottage industry, I laughed at Submit It because it was useless submitting your URLs if the content on those pages wasn’t search engine friendly. In the end, Submit It made out like a bandit, but I’m not completely sure if the service actually helped webmasters beyond saving them an hour going to different directories/engines. Getting your site indexed is one thing, getting your pages to come up on the first page of results for relevant searches is something completely different, and something that Submit It didn’t originally address.

Google Base Store Connector works with eBay, Amazon, and Yahoo! Stores (three of the largest players in the ecommerce space) to grab your product catalog and publish it properly to Google Base. Most ecommerce platforms offer free automated XML feed submission to ‘Froogle’ as a benefit of signing up. Using Google Base Store Connector or these automated XML feeds is just like using Submit It and expecting your web pages to come up first for every search.

In other words, just submitting a Google Base feed is not enough, you have to optimize the data feed to get results. Data feed optimization (DFO). Get used to hearing that phrase. Seriously, over the next couple years, mostly because of Google Base, you’re going to hear and see companies talking about DFO. Currently, I feel that there are only a couple companies which talk about it; Channel Intelligence, Channel Advisor, and SingleFeed. SingleFeed is the data feed submission, management, and optimization service I co-founded, and we’re seeing merchants succeed on Google Base, as well as on Shopzilla, PriceGrabber, Become, Shopping.com, NexTag, and other shopping comparison engines because of simple data feed optimization tactics. It’s very early in the game, so we’re just starting to collect proper data, but so far the results are encouraging.

Using Google Base Store Connector and automated XML feed submission programs by the major ecommerce platforms is a first step, but if you’re ready to succeed on shopping engines, it’s time to take the next step.

Search engine optimization (SEO) became a real industry (no matter what the pundits say) because a search engine friendly website gets more clicks than a non-search engine friendly website. Pay per click (PPC) management became a real industry because a properly managed PPC campaign outperforms a random list of keyword buys. Companies like Right Media get buzz not because you can buy cheap ad inventory, but because the campaign is optimized towards a specific goal.

Data feed optimization (DFO) will become a legitimate industry because the benefits are real. Just look at what Brian Mark from Toolbarn has accomplished, generating incredible results through Google Base.

Introduction to Google Base Custom Attributes – Why Custom Attributes Matter

Google Base has over 80 pre-defined product attributes. However, Google is not the expert in forklifts, skis, lingerie, plumbing supplies, or any product that you sell. This means that the pre-defined attributes might not completely cover the wealth of information you know about your products.

Because of this, Google Base allows you to create custom attributes so you can further define your product listings. Think of this as an incredible opportunity to share important information, which I’ll refer to as attributes, about your products, so that consumers will have a better idea of what you offer and therefore you have a better chance of attracting visitors and converting those visitors into buyers. Loren Baker of SearchEngineJournal wrote a post entitled Google Base Attributes Redefine Online Shopping illustrating this point.

The drawback of many shopping search engines is that there isn’t the opportunity to refine product listings by specific attributes. Here are some examples:

-you can’t view skis by ski length, a critical attribute for any skier.

-you can’t view food by ingredients, a critical attribute for people with allergies.

-you can’t view clothes by country of origin, a critical attribute for people who might only want to buy products made in the USA.

-you can’t view forklifts by load weight limit, a critical attribute for any forklift operator.

-you can’t view lingerie by material, a critical ‘attribute’ for…well…we’ll leave that to your imagination.

The reason you can’t refine by these attributes is that the shopping comparison engines don’t support these attributes or don’t have the ability to pull this data out of your titles and descriptions, although they definitely work hard to do so. However, with Google Base, you’re able to add almost any custom attribute to better define your products and more importantly, allow searchers to find the right product and therefore convert into a customer.

And the great thing is that hardly anyone is submitting Google Base Custom Attributes so you have an amazing opportunity to out-do your competition just by taking the time to add information to your feed which you already know or already have in your database just sitting there waiting to be used.

Why Google Base Will Matter – Have You Heard of Google?

Ok, but why does data feed optimization in the form of Google Base Custom Attributes matter if no one goes to Google Base (base.google.com)? It’s my belief that Google Base will get an incredible amount of exposure through Google OneBox results over the next year. [I wrote about OneBox results as well as Yahoo! Shortcuts, Ask Smart Answers, and Microsoft Instant Answers last year for Search Engine Watch (I’m currently an on-again, off-again contributor to Danny Sullivan’s Search Engine Land).] As I explained earlier, product submissions to Google Base currently get you on Froogle and Froogle listings sometimes pop up as OneBox results. I’m not quite sure what will happen to Froogle over the next year, but I think that Google will put its strength behind Google Base as opposed to Froogle.

But I don’t expect Google to display OneBox results for just any Google Base listing because Google’s organic results are just as good as the Google Base listings generated through automated XML programs. The OneBox results should be reserved for something more relevant than anything else on the page. Relevance means a lot of things to a lot of people, but Google has already made it clear that the more information you provide to Base, the better your results will be. Makes perfect sense. If you’re just submitting the basics, what’s readily available on your site, Google already has that data. However, if a merchant spends time optimizing a feed by adding more descriptive attributes, like Google Base Custom Attributes, about a product, then the data will be better than anything Google can currently crawl.

I know what you’re thinking. You can just spam Google Base by making up dozens of attributes about products. Well don’t. I was very critical of Froogle back in 2005 because of the infestation of spam. Google has since cleaned it up and already has a ton of checks and balances in place to protect against bogus data. I’m not saying it’s perfect – there are still too many affiliate links and duplicate listings (Shop.com is walking on very thin ice and the incredible rankings for eBay listings make me think there’s something fishy going on there) but in general Google is taking Base very seriously and will vehemently protect it.

When enough people add relevant custom attributes to their feeds and submit in-depth structured data to Google Base, this will lead to Base listings becoming more relevant than organic listings for many searches, which will encourage Google to push Google Base listings even more. I’m in no way saying organic listings will disappear. The number of crawled listings will always exceed the number of Base listings. However, the relevancy of the Base listings will make it harder to compete through PPC and organic listings.

I believe that whenever Base listings are triggered through OneBox and other parts of the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), organic listings get demoted in two ways. First, the listings are pushed down the page and second, the OneBox listings get a disproportionate amount of the clickthroughs on the page. This is just a hypothesis, and I don’t have statistics to back me up, but if you think about it for a second, it’s not too hard to imagine.

At this point, you’re either asleep at the wheel or eager to get started with optimizing your Google Base listings. I’m hoping it’s the latter.

We at SingleFeed believe strongly in metrics oriented marketing, so before you go out and work hard on your Google Base feed, make sure you have a log analyzer program installed. Google would like you to use Google Analytics, but there’s also HBX, WedSideStory, Engine Ready, Coremetrics, Omniture, etc.

Next step is to get your data feed together. Obviously I’d recommend using SingleFeed, but there are many solutions out there, and you can also do it yourself.

Expect SingleFeed to publish a lot more information on Google Base in the coming weeks and months. As always, you can keep up on the shopping comparison engine industry through ComparisonEngines and find out more about data feed optimization (DFO) through LoveYourFeed.

As always, please feel free to contact us directly: ‘info at singlefeed dot com’.

As you probably know, SingleFeed fully supports Google Base Custom Attributes. Now it’s time to get merchants to really start using them.

Google Base has 7 types of custom attributes. Here are examples taken from Base Upload Instructions:

String Type: Any Text String

Example: c:favorite_movie:string

Example Value: Total Recall

Integer Type: Whole Number Value

Example: c:revenue:integer

Example Value: 32000000

Decimal Type: Number with a decimal point.

Example: c:engine_displacement:decimal

Example Value: 3.5

dateTime Type: Date and time, in ISO 8601 format: YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss. (Times are based on the 24-hour clock.) You can also create a range of dates by including a start and end date, each in this format, and separating them with a forward slash.

Example: c:birth_time:dateTime

Example Value: 1979-10-12T03:44:26

Example: c:dates_employed:dateTime

Example Value: 2004-03-20T09:00:00/2006-03-10T17:00:00

Location Type: Location value. Addresses should be formatted as: street, city, state, postal code, country. Each location element should be separated by a comma.

Example: c:interview_location:location

Example Value: 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA, 94043, USA

URL Type: HTTP URL.

Example: c:favorite_data_feed_management_company:url

Example Value: http://www.singlefeed.com

Boolean Type: Value may be either yes/no or true/false.

Example: c:promo_offer:Boolean

Example Value: true

Real world examples include:

c:drum_lift_type:string

Example Values: hoist, hydraulic, mechanical

Uses: This could be used for a forklift retailer

c:cutting_depth:decimal

Example Values: 2.5, 2.75, 3

Uses: This could be used for a power saw retailer

c:caliber:decimal

Example Values: .177, .22

Uses: This could be used for an air rifle retailer

c:serving_size:integer

Example Values: 4, 6, 10

Uses: This could be used for a cappuccino machine retailer

c:adjustable_shoulder_straps:Boolean

Example Values: True, False

Uses: This could be used for a lingerie retailer

c:customer_feedback:url

Example Values: http://www.aesecurity.com/cufe.html

Uses: Does your site have a feedback page? How about a shipping information page

c:customers_also_bought:url

Example Values: [insert url]

Uses: Upselling similar products, complimentary products, and more.

So how do you create your own custom attributes?

As you can see from the examples, there are three parts to the custom attribute:

The c: tells Google Base that the attribute is a custom attribute (that’s an educated guess).

The part in between the colons (:) is the attribute name.

The final part is the kind of attribute (string, integer, decimal, dateTime, location, URL, boolean).

Please note that attributes with two words are separated by an underscore ( _ ).

Once you enter these Google Base Custom attributes as headings in your feed, just fill in the corresponding field value in your feed for your product listings. You can leave a field blank if a product should not have a custom attribute associated with it.

As you can see from the examples above, these attributes are not hard to use and with a lot of knowledge about a product and just a bit of creativity, you can come up with a number of custom attributes.

Here are other examples to get you started:

c:hypo_allergenic:boolean (data in the feed can be true or false)

c:down:Boolean (data in the feed can be true or false)

c:thread_count:integer (data in the feed can be 200, 400, 600, etc.)

c:made_in:string (data in the feed can be USA, China, Egypt)

c:bed_size:string (data in the feed can be twin, double, queen, king)

I’m not a ‘beds or sheets’ expert, but I was able to come up with 5 custom attributes fairly easily. Why not start out by adding 2-3 custom attributes and take it from there. Eventually, Google Base will pick up on these attributes and make them into recommended (although not required) fields as they’ve done so for 22 categories. For example, if you sell computers, they recommend adding the following attributes:

battery_life

capacity

color

height

length

model_number

mpn

operating_system

optical_drive

processor_speed

recommended_usage

screen_size

tech_spec_link

upc

weight

width

These optional attributes aren’t custom attributes, so you don’t have to put a c:[insert_header]:[insert attribute type]. However, I’d still recommend taking the time to brainstorm additional attributes. My IBM (it wasn’t Lenovo when it was purchased) T43 could have the following custom attributes:

c:IBM_Active_Protection:Boolean

c:Fingerprint_Reader:Boolean

c:Touchpad:Boolean

c:Trackpoint:Boolean

Please note that you don’t have to turn SingleFeed’s current attributes into custom attributes. If you’re already submitting MPN, for example, SingleFeed is processing it as a custom attribute (since Google Base doesn’t accept MPN as a regular attribute).

Now it’s time to get started. If you come up with really good custom attributes or want to share attributes with others, submit them as comments here. If you have any Google Base Custom Attributes active, you’ll see the link on the Active Products page indicate active.

We’ll soon have a page up and running which will discuss Google Base in depth so stay tuned.

Google Base notified its users last night through it’s nifty status update module in its help center that:

“FTP Processing Issue Resolved: Our engineering team has finished correcting the issue that has been affecting our FTP machines over the past few days. Our file processor is now catching up and handling files submitted earlier this week. We expect that our system
will be completely caught up by tomorrow (3/22).”

From what I can tell, the processing is not completely caught up.

Also, I want to properly set expectations for our users. While we’re submitting your feeds every 24 hours, we unfortunately have no control over what happens on the shopping engines’ side. We’re in touch with all the engines to properly push your feeds through, but sometimes there can be delays. Right now this isn’t being properly communicated to our users and we’ll work on fixing that soon.

As for new users, we’re about to update our FAQ/Help pages as well as the rest of our documentation. It’s important to note that it can take up to 5 days to properly submit a feed the first time (only the first submission takes this long). On our end, it takes up to 2 days to categorize your products and then on the shopping engines’ side, mapping and other set up processes can take up to 3 days. We strive to get new feeds up and running ASAP. Please note that any company that guarantees your products will be up and running in 24 hours is just not telling you the truth.

SingleFeed, ahead of the curve (again), has launched full support of all the new Google Base required fields!

You can read more about the new Google Base field requirements here, http://groups.google.com/group/base-help-roadblocks/browse_thread/thread/ac53a9f6edec0f8b/d42e1cd9f9a66a97#d42e1cd9f9a66a97, and here, http://base.google.com/base/products.html.

The most onerous of the new requirements that Google Base has instituted is the required Expiration Date field. If a row in the product feed does not contain the expiration date, the row is INVALID. If a row in the product feed contains an expiration date greater than 31 days, again, INVALID.

SingleFeed to the rescue…

All feeds set up on SingleFeed for transmission to Google Base automatically are guaranteed to have the expiration date column set to 30 days from the time of upload. AND — every day, if you enable the auto-renew option, we will make sure that your expiration date for every one of your products is always updated to 30 days from the moment of the upload! (remember, we publish your feed — upload it — every day)

If you previously uploaded your SingleFeed to us without the Google Base required expiration date, or forget to include the expiration date within your file in the future, DON’T WORRY, we automatically correct your feed through the Correction Wizard and automatically keep your expiration date fresh — 30 days in the future.

More details about how it works…
There are 2 new SingleFeed columns within the SingleFeed file format…

• GOOGLE EXPIRATION DATE
• GOOGLE EXPIRATION DATE AUTO RENEW

The format of GOOGLE EXPIRATION DATE is YYYY-MM-DD. (e.g. 2007-03-12)

The format of GOOGLE EXPIRATION DATE AUTO RENEW is Y or N (e.g. Y) If you specify an expiration date, but leave out the auto-renew, we assume that you do not want us to update your expiration date for that product.

If you want us to automatically, daily, every time we submit your products to Google Base, to make sure that your expiration date is 30 days from today (keeping your content, fresh, alive, and valid) just set the Google Base Expiration Date Auto-Renew to ‘y’ (which, btw, stands for “yes, please auto-renew”).

Enjoy! (I know you will.)

Jeremy Horn
SingleFeed