Googlelicious! The new GoogleBase - an Introduction

Author: Todd Levi

It's not an article directory, it's not a search engine and it's not a bird, a plane or even superman. Then what exactly is this new ""content home"" from the Google team and what does it mean for web site marketing? Let's get it straight from the horse's mouth: ""Google Base is a place where you can easily submit all types of online and offline content that we'll host and make searchable online. You can describe any item you post with attributes, which will help people find it when they search Google Base. In fact, based on the relevance of your items, they may also be included in the main Google search index and other Google products like Froogle, Google Base and Google Local.""

The new GoogleBase is a database to help people get all kinds of information about anything. It's a throwback of sorts that allows people to publish anything they want and then have it be found, not by relevant search engine rankings and optimization of webpages as we know it, but by attributes. Say for instance you have class information you want posted for a basket weaving, simply change the attributes searched for to ""Basketweaving 101 with instructor Baskethead"", tell folks in the class what these attribute are and when they go to GoogleBase.com and search for it, BLAMO - they have found your information! This is the theory behind the giant's new website anyhow.

One major difference between this form of publishing and standard web page publishing is that you give Google your information and they host it as opposed to you hosting it on your server. This means everything in the base is self contained. This isn't all together true though, websites can be posted to the base through direct link postings to the site. A simple search for SEO in the base will show that some of the results still go to hosted websites outside of the base.

A picture is worth a thousand words! With GoogleBase you can add a picture that will be displayed in the search result pages making this type of searching more attractive that normal text based searching.

What does this mean for SEO Experts? Since its launch in November 2005, we are not sure what effects this will have on SEO, yet. Google does say that based on a postings relevancy your submissions to the base might also get included in Google's search engine, Google Local and Froogle however this is still yet to be seen.

My first impressions of GoogleBase are good. This type of ""information at your fingertips"" will certainly help in a lot of ways. Look out though; the porn industry is already on the GoogleBase prowl using it as a medium for mischievous purposes. David Berkowitz from SearchInsider insightfully says that GoogleBase could potentially cause problems for AdWords marketing at Google as products can now have a free medium of advertising: ""This could conceivably cause problems for its AdWords business. If a small business can market its products and services through Base for free, why would it use AdWords? There are obviously some kinks to work out.""

Remember: As Google changes its face, so does the rest of the internet. Let's watch this beta database program over the next few months and see what happens.

About the author: Todd Levi is a search engine optimization specialist and web designer found at http://www.LeviSolutions.com. He also supports an internet marketing and SEO blog found at http://SEO-Marketing.LeviSolutions.com