By Jessica Behling, Google Base Support
We’re always excited to share our ongoing efforts to improve the search experience. Today we announced some updates to Froogle that simplify the user interface and make it more consistent with web search. At the same time, we renamed Froogle to Google Product Search. For more on this, please see our post on the Google Blog, and feel free to share your thoughts on Google Groups.

By Naureen Kabir, Google Base Support
With Google Base, as with Google search more generally, our goal is to connect people with the information that is most relevant to them. Last month, Roshan wrote a post about maintaining the quality of your items so that they remain live in our search results. One of the things he mentioned that can help achieve this is the product_type attribute. We’ve been seeing a lot of files from providers submitting t

By Naureen Kabir, Google Base SupportWe’re happy to let you know that Google Base is now accepting tab-delimited (or TSV) bulk upload files formatted using Google Spreadsheets. Most spreadsheet programs allow you to export data into a TSV file, and Google Spreadsheets is no exception. For instructions on converting your Google Spreadsheet to a tab-delimited file, click here. More details and information about tab-delimited files can be found here

By Jessica Behling, Google Base SupportHi, I’m Jessica, and I’m quickly approaching my one year anniversary with the Google Base team. A few days before I started with Google, I drove across half the country with my sister, two cats, and anything I could cram into the leftover space in my car. I’ve spent most of my life in Wisconsin and was more than happy to leave the snow behind! Outside of work, one of my favorite things to do is eat Korean fo

By Clay Bavor, Product ManagerA few months ago, I wanted to share some recipes I’d uploaded to Google Base with friends, but there wasn’t an easy way to do it. So over a few weekends I used the Google Base API, the Google Gadgets API, and a lot of JavaScript to create Google Base Gadgets.Google Base Gadgets are a simple and configurable interface for searching Google Base data from your Google Personalized Homepage or, using a Syndicated Google B

By Kasumi Widner, Google Base Support
Maybe you are one of the lucky people who saw the green “Success” message on your very first attempt at sending us a bulk upload. If you’re not, I’m sure you’ve seen some of our error messages on your dashboard and thought “Huh, what do you mean??” We know this can be a frustrating process, and we’ve spent time rewriting some of the most common error messages so that they’re clearer and more actionable. For

By Xin Chen, Software Engineer
If you’ve registered a new bulk upload in your Google Base account in the past week, you’ve seen the new bulk upload formatting instructions that appear after selecting your file’s name and item type. This page represents a large and ongoing cross-team collaboration between myself, Clay Bavor, John McKeeman, and June Lee. Our goal is to provide you with detailed, explicit information on which attributes you need to

By Naureen Kabir, Google Base Support
We want to give providers relevant information as quickly as possible, and our latest development on this front is an update we’ve made to the Google Base Help Center. Earlier this week, we launched a status module designed to alert providers about any known issues as soon as we’re aware of them. When visiting the Help Center, you’ll find a red box located on the lower right-hand side containing up-to-date i

By Steven De La O, Google Base SupportBack in December 2005, Clint published a post about the label attribute and its usefulness in helping searchers find your items. A little more than a year later, we’ve had the opportunity to evaluate the information included for this attribute, and we’d like to announce changes that affect its use. Moving forward, we will no longer support the label attribute. We’ve found that label values can easily be submi

By Jessica Behling, Google Base SupportIf you’ve ever had a question about Google Base, whether it’s how to post a single item or what you can do to optimize your bulk upload file, one great resource is the Google Base Help Center. On the main page you can browse through entries organized by topic, or search using keywords. If you’re just interested in the day’s top five questions, we’ve got those posted right under the search box on the main pag

Google is now reporting how many of its users are subscribed to website’s feeds, by including the subscriber info in the header its Feedfetcher spider leaves when it grabs a feed. This means that if you look at the header, you’ll know how many users combined subscribe to that feed in Google Reader and the Google Personalized Homepage

By Clint Guerrero, Google Base Support
During the past two weeks we sent out an email to those of you submitting products to Google Base with a request to submit bulk uploads with a richer set of data. We’ve revised the list of required attributes in an effort to improve the search experience and to improve your exposure during product searches.
In response to this note, we noticed some confusion about what values we were looking for

By Robert HotranHello, I’m Robert, and I’ve been a part of the Google Base team since we launched in November 2005. I started working at Google as a contractor in April 2005. I quickly grew to love my job and my team, and so I jumped at the chance to become a full-time employee. You would expect me to say that I wanted access to all the perks and benefits of full-timers, but more than anything, I can’t say enough good things about the Google Base team

By John McKeeman, Google Base Support
If you’ve stopped by the Google Base Help Discussion Group, chances are you’ve seen a post or two from me. If you frequent the Group, you may know me by now as the “Google Base Guide” or, more casually, “The Google Base Guy.” Every day I check in on the Group for signs of any new issues, questions that need a closer look, or just to post an idea or give a product update

By Cynthia Kwon, Strategic Partner Development
Psst! If you haven’t already noticed, the Google Base team has updated its product feed specs. These new specs give more detail as to which attributes you should be sending to us by type of product category. Let’s say you’re a clothing retailer. We are requiring the following general attributes for each product listing you send:
* brand
* condition
* description
* expiration_date
* id
* image_link
* link
* price
* product_type
* title

Further, we want to get even more specific product type attributes that are relevant to clothing

By Daniel Zweifach, Google Coupons Team

Many of you have physical storefronts for your businesses in addition to your websites. If you do,
you know that coupons can be a good way to get new customers through your doors. And now, you can display
printable coupons on Google Maps
- it’s totally free and very easy to set up

By Clay Bavor, Associate Product Manager

Last year saw a number of improvements to Google Base, and we have ambitious plans to make Base even better for providers and searchers in 2007 — plans like this:

Helping you format and describe your items better so they’re easier for searchers to find on Google
Providing more data about your items with expanded stats and reporting
Improving the bulk upload creation process with better error messages, faster processing times, and more

By Patrick Williams, Engineering Manager
We’re continuing to refine the Google Base Store Connector utility for all you online sellers. Here are some of the things we’ve just added:
* More support for eBay customized stores * Single connection support for merchants who have multiple Yahoo! stores * Ability to include more item attributes * Improved retry logic (when retries occur due to timeouts and failed attribute processing) * Automatic prompts to update Store Connector when upgrades are available * Improvements to speed and robustness
So if you’ve previously tried Google Base Store Connector and ran into a problem in one of the areas listed above, we encourage you to try it again

By Mark Heynen, Strategic Partner Development
One of the things I most enjoy about my job is interacting with small and medium-sized technology companies. It’s common wisdom that such businesses are exceptionally dynamic and innovative, and my interactions with some of them over the past several months supports this view.
Google Base offers a unique opportunity for these companies, particularly in the real estate industry

Google Base now has a podcast section, along with a special promo page asking podcasters to upload their ‘casts to Base. I’m not sure how much free space Google allows per upload, but 7,060 podcasts have already been uploaded, although a lot of that is spam (how is a flashlight or headphones a podcast?). In a sense, this is now Google’s podcast search engine, letting Google have another vertical with minimal effort. For podcasters looking for free, reliable storage, Google Base is definitely worth checking out.
(via Steve Rubel)

By Deepak Lachwani, Software Engineer
Earlier this year we introduced a rich text editor for one-at-a-time item posting. This feature helped you create more visually appealing item pages on Google Base. Now we want to help you include attributes so that visitors can find your items more effectively

By Naureen Kabir, Google Base Support
We have some good news to share: previously, the file size limit for files uploaded through your Google Base dashboard was 10 MB, and now we’ve doubled our capacity to handle files up to 20 MB for those files uploaded directly via this Google Base web interface. If you’re a provider who’s been having problems uploading your file through FTP (File Transfer Protocol) and your file size is 20 MB or less, you now have an easier way to do this. For files larger than 20 MB, you’ll need to continue using FTP to upload.

By Donal Mountain, User Experience ResearcherIf you’re a regular reader of this blog, you will have noticed that we’ve been making incremental improvements to Google Base. Last week Dave spoke about the new Bulk Uploading dashboard and in September, Ellen introduced the new Google Base homepage. These are two among many more changes to come.As a User Experience Researcher, my job is to work with the rest of the Base team to make sure that we understand the ways in which Google Base works well for you, our users, and the ways in which it doesn’t work for you

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

Posted by Bindu Reddy, Product Manager, Google Base

On its first anniversary, we’re recapping what Google Base has accomplished on the Base blog.

By Bindu Reddy, Product Manager It’s been one year since we launched Google Base, and the team would like to take the opportunity to thank all our users for all of the hundreds of millions of items that have been submitted, and all the valuable feedback on how to improve this service.We also want to take a moment to recognize some of the significant achievements of last year, including:- The Google Base API that enables users to query items in Base and build their own cool mashups

One year ago today, Google unveiled Google Base, its vague-yet-powerful repository for “everything”. While Base is proving useful for certain types of queries, and is developing into some sort of replacement for Froogle, the typical user has never ever even heard of or used Base. It remains to be seen how critical Google sees Base as being to its long-term plans, as it has been a year, and many of the original promises of Base have not been fulfilled, or under-utilized.
The one thing we did see used from Base were extra search boxes and options above certain search results, like for “google careers”

By Naureen Kabir, Google Base SupportEver been frustrated with having to wait an hour before being able to upload your file to Google Base? Worry no more — the wait is over! We updated our system to handle more frequent file uploads. If you’ve uploaded a file that returns errors once it’s processed, you can upload it again immediately after making corrections

By Daniel Anguiano, Product Marketing ManagerOne popular type of information uploaded to Google Base is cooking recipes. Search for [recipes] on Google and you’ll be able to refine your search by cuisine type and by course. Tens of thousands of them can be found on Epicurious.com, a CondéNet website devoted to sharing recipes and tips for cooking, entertaining, and cocktails

By Clint Guerrero, Google Base SupportIn the past few days, we’ve made some changes to the Google Base data API that will allow developers to create applications that more smoothly integrate with Google Base.One of the upgrades is that items added via the API are instantly searchable. This means you no longer need to wait an hour for them to show up in relevant Google search results pages

By Clay Bavor, Associate Product ManagerAs part of Google’s larger alliance with Intuit, we’re excited to introduce integration between QuickBooks 2007 and Google Base. Now, QuickBooks users can make their inventory searchable on Google using the QuickBooks Product Listing Service (PLS), a tool accessible from the new Google Marketing Tools section within QuickBooks.Before this integration, users who wanted to publish their inventory to Google Base had to export their inventory from QuickBooks to a TSV (tab separated value) file, then go to Google Base to upload it

By Patrick Williams, Engineering ManagerUsing the new Google Base data API, we’ve created a utility that enables online sellers to connect their eBay Stores, Amazon zShops and Marketplaces, and Yahoo! Stores to Google Base so searchers can find their items for sale on Google. Called Google Base Store Connector, this utility will help online sellers drive more traffic to items without the trouble of manually re-entering inventory on Google Base

By Clint Guerrero, Google Base Support About one month ago, we released the Google Base data API. Since then, a number of developers have been hard at work creating applications that integrate with Google Base. We’re aware of some of these integrations, but would like to know about all of them

by Ellen Beldner, User Experience DesignerAs part of our ongoing effort to make Google Base easier to use, we launched a redesign of the Base homepage today. This doesn’t change any functionality, but will make Base easier to understand. In our usability studies, we noticed that providers new to bulk uploading would often see the link “Post an item” and click it immediately

By Mark Heynen, Strategic Partner DevelopmentWe all know that real estate can be voyeuristic. Folks go to open houses for fun, people look up each other’s home valuations out of sheer curiousity. And obviously they look up listings online for fun as well. However, to maintain a robust sales pipeline, many brokers I speak to are finding that it’s important for home sellers to reach out to buyers at all stages in the process, even the “voyeurs” who are 1 to 2 years away from buying

By Naureen Kabir, Google Base SupportWe often get email from providers wondering in which countries and languages Google Base is currently available, and how you can get your items onto these versions of Base. Here’s the lowdown.In addition to the U.S., Google Base is currently available in the UK and Germany in English and German, respectively

By Colin Colehour, Partner Solutions teamI work on the Partner Solutions team at Google, and one of the things that I do is monitor some of our larger Google Base bulk uploads. As a result, I became interested in adding my own content. So as a side project, I started gathering the genealogy data that my father has been collecting over the past 22 years in order to upload it into Base

By Alison Bjerke, Online Operations CoordinatorOnce upon a time, Stephen Salinas got his first job: as a house cleaner. All through high school Stephen dutifully scrubbed and dusted and vacuumed and swept. (That’s what we call “work ethic training.”)Today, of course, Stephen no longer cleans homes

By Preeti Uberoy, Senior AssociateAs a member of the Google Base Support Team, one of the things I enjoy is watching Google Base improve according to the feedback that we get from content providers like you. One of my main job responsibilities is to report your suggestions and comments to our engineers, and make sure that we make the changes that you recommend.Most of the recent developments of Google Base, in fact, are responses to requests from users

By Cynthia Kwon, Strategic Partner Development (and self-proclaimed fashionista)With the new fall wardrobe hitting the stores, I decided it was time to clear my closet to make room for the latest fashions. After choosing a few items that I just could not part with, I was left with a pile of clothes, shoes, and purses, most of which I had only worn a few times

By Michael Adelberg, Strategic Partner DevelopmentOne of the most satisfying parts of what we do is work with Google’s content partners, because that’s a win-win situation. Let me explain.Google Base offers tremendous value for content providers large and small. Before Google Base, there was simple web crawling which involved indexing the content on a website

By Alison Bjerke, Online Operations CoordinatorSometimes we get emails from Google users who have found great ways to use Google Base along with other Google tools and services. Ryan, from TropicalYarns.com has taken advantage of AdSense, Google Base, Checkout, Analytics, AdWords, and more to turn his small business around.

By Matthias Zenger, Software EngineerToday we’re releasing the Google Base data API with which you can write applications that dynamically interact with Google Base. You can upload, edit and delete items, as well as query data to create mash-ups combining Google Base content with other services. It’s a ReST-full API, based on the GData protocol.Check out the demo to see the possible uses, and to get you started in building your own client application