“Be it products, housing, jobs or vehicles, we want to make it easy for you to upload and manage your content in Base,” announced Dimitris Meretakis on the Official Google Base Blog.  “The new dashboard provides a better overview of the status of your bulk uploads and your items.”

A pictorial comparison followed, and the fresh arrangement is definitely a big improvement over the old one; in typical Google style, there’s little clutter and a lot of organization.  The presence of fewer colors even makes the font easier to read.

Meretakis more or less stopped giving out concrete facts at this point in the blog entry.  He did, however, state that other improvements are in the works, writing, “A number of useful features are underway . . . .  We’ll keep you posted as new features develop.”

Now, if I just didn’t have to make six trips to carry in all the paper towels.

All right, so it sounds a little hokey, but the effort has some admirable goals.  Google.org has partnered with TechnoServe, and “[t]he program is designed to help Tanzanian entrepreneurs develop skills, obtain seed or expansion capital and establish the networks that help transform their business ideas into successful enterprises that create jobs and other income sources that transform the lives of all Tanzanians,” reports Alex Mkindi, TechnoServe’s Deputy Country Director in Tanzania, on the Official Google Blog.

Aside from the human-interest aspect, it’s also a pretty good PR move – thanks to Street View, and to some less-than-complimentary findings from Privacy International, Google’s not being looked at in quite the same “fun and quirky” way.  Believe Begin Become should at least reinforce the image of “goodness” that Google prefers.

It should act to elevate Google’s position within Tanzania, as well.  The search engine company has previously arranged to bring servers into the region, but with a new base of operations just a bit to the north, training 250 people in business management could lead to some very positive outcomes.

Indeed, David Bulengo, who works on the Believe Begin Become Organizing Committee, states, “The network of professionals and business leaders involved with Believe Begin Become will allow a new generation of young entrepreneurs the chance to learn from their experience and to create wonderful business opportunities.”

Whatever Google’s reasons for participating in this endeavor, it seems that Believe Begin Become’s outcome will be undeniably positive.

 As noted in todays post by on the Google Base blog one way to solve that problem is to create different landing pages for your Google Base entries. That is not so great advice from a company that suggest that we make pages for people and not bots. Besides the amount of effort you would have to put into making the pages, you could end up looking spammy and creating a metric crap ton of duplicate content. I don’t think the they really thought this post all the way through.

An altogether easier way it to simply add a query string to your Google Base submission that designates the source of the traffic. An example might look like this “http://mycoolsite.com/super-cool-page/?ref=base”. Then to determine the amount of traffic you get from Google Base go to the Content Section, select the “landing pages report”, and in the “find url search” at the bottom search for urls containing “ref=base”.

Now isn’t that much easier than duplicating your whole site?

Step One:

Step Two:

Step Three:

And the new:

It’s like this for all the verticals listed on the homepage, including recipes, housing, jobs, hotels, and anything else listed here. It’s a really nice improvement, besides looking better and having more white space, also giving you all those boxes to refine your search, and multiple views for the search results (list view, grid view and map view.

Thanks so much for Arie for pointing me at the new interface.

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Froogle Shops For A Frugal Experience

White background, Google name on top, search box in the middle, one or two buttons next to the box.

That’s pretty much the trade dress for a Google product finding its way into a browser window, and as of now it’s a look shared by the service formerly knows as Froogle.

Google’s shopping and product search now goes by the more descriptive name of Google Product Search.

Google’s Marissa Mayer blogged about the name change, saying the Froogle name caused confusion for some people.

We liked the Froogle name, a mild play on the word "frugal." Frugal Google, find stuff for sale on Froogle. Even though it may look like a missed opportunity, Froogle never really caught on with people and had been one of Google’s low-trafficked services.

Now it’s being recast as a pipeline into Google Base, with a helpful link to Information for Sellers on the Product Search page.

Google also touts its Checkout service at the same link. Upload your stuff, set up a payment process, and wait for the buyers to arrive.

The seller is also invited to create AdWords ads for their offers. That’s the real aim of Product Search, since search advertising is virtually all of Google’s revenue.

Something that we aren’t seeing at press time is Product Search results appearing in regular Google searches.

Doing a query on Google for something showing up as an item "recently found with Google Product Search" doesn’t bring up a OneBox of shopping results. We expect that will change as Google finishes the switch away from Froogle.

The session, simply titled "Shopping Search Tactics," featured presentations from analyst Brian Smith of ComparisonEngines.com, and from Brian Mark, chief technical officer at Toolbarn.com.

Smith opened his portion with a gloomy warning: This will not be as easy as Google AdWords. If you’re submitting your product information to a shopping engine, read the directions carefully – each engine has its own guidelines for data feed submissions.

There’s no optimal automated XML solution (though some circles are pushing for an open standard), so for each feed, you’ll have to hand key the information, adding as much as possible in the spaces provided. 

There are lots of engines to submit a feed to, but an important one is Google Base. "There is an amazing opportunity to get a lot of sales through Google Base," said Smith, "because if you get to the top of these results you appear in Google’s main results."

But also, he teases, Google Base offers custom attributes, and the Mountain View, Calif.-based company "is going to announce something very soon that will make this more advantageous."

Until then, Smith gives this nutshell full of advice:

There is an opportunity to do great SEO work through your data feed. Look at the data feeds for blank fields.

If you don’t have a title that is unique you are in trouble. Make titles that are more specific for search engines. There is an opportunity to really get out there and show the user what they are searching for.

No matter what people say search engine optimization is still about the content on the page. Make sure your product pages have good content.

Don’t use image links with the shopping engines.

Say exactly what you sell in the one-line description in your data feeds.

Just how important is it to establish your presence in the shopping search engines? Brian Mark says it’s about 40 proof worth of important.

"The shopping engines can offset drops from organic search results," said Mark. "We are getting over 20% of our customers from shopping engines. From AdWords, 4%; MSN, 6%; Yahoo, 9%; and 22% of our customers are repeat customers at toolbarn.com."

Google News Played by Foreign Sources?

Google News has made a point of linking to authorative sources which is why many blogs aren’t included in the news engine. Google’s algorithm doesn’t seem to apply this formula to its foreign based sites. At the time of this writing there are at least 10 U.S. based stories on their front page of Google News U.S. linking to non U.S. news sources. Possibly more concerning is the quality of the sites being linked to.

For instance…

– The site Playfuls which is based in Cyprus seems to have 5-10 stories Google+Search&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&as_nsrc=playfuls+com&as_nloc=&as_occt=any&as_drrb=q&as_qdr=&as_mind=29&as_minm=1&as_maxd=28&as_maxm=2″ title=”Playfuls gaming Google News?”>linked to on the front page of Google News at all times. They currently are linked as the top story in the entertainment section covering Paris Hilton driving on a suspended license. Amazingly, Playfuls has nearly Google+Search&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&as_nsrc=playfuls+com&as_nloc=&as_occt=any&as_drrb=q&as_qdr=&as_mind=29&as_minm=1&as_maxd=28&as_maxm=2″ title=”Google News listings”>8,000 listings in Google News, more than even the New York Times.

– News site SpiritIndia is linked to as the top source for an article called, "Low fat dairy foods may increase infertility risk". This was based on a study by Harvard University.

Interestingly, both of these news sources have a high concentration of Google Adwords on them. SpiritIndia goes as far as hiding the bulk of text in their articles in order to display ads at the top and bottom of stories without the content interfering. Both sites are clearly going after Google News traffic juice to fuel Google Adwords clicks.

Aren’t there any news sites on the scene of these stories. For instance, TMZ.com should be the top link covering the latest Paris Hilton or Britney Spears story … not Aljazeera, Xinhua, or Playfuls.

Don’t forget this is Google … people assume the top links on story groups to be the most relevant link to an article.

I know Google wants to appeal to a worldwide user base but constantly linking to obscure foreign sites rewriting U.S. based stories in order to promote their Google Adwords is probably not a great idea.

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• Brad discusses how the thank you page is the most under-utilized page on the web, tips us off to Google’s retail specific knowledge base for adwords, and how to find your quality score.

• Matt disects Google local’s algorithm
• Jim talks about why new sites suck for search
• 11 Ways to increase your conversion rate – great stuff from T-bo

• 5 ways to promote your local biz for $888 a year – plus a local gold mine from Mr. Gray. He also asks – are you a baiter or a flasher?

• Is the world out of good ideas? – if you haven’t found this yet, Brant writes some nice stuff including posts on valuation for an exit, and how to handle an NDA

• Jarrod drops his definitive guide to blogging

• Joe has a nice roundup of Google filters

• Darren Dalasta tells us how to know if your friend is an SEO

• Brian coins the Paris Hilton rule, shows us how to drive traffic without SE’s, and illustrates competitive webmastering (aka SEO) for Jason Calacanis

• Andy explains how to escape Google’s supplemental results

• Shoemoney is a genius, and provides the goods with the Adwords arrow trick

• How social media impacts SEM from one of the guys who would know best.

• Searchviews and reprise media gives us the superbowl ad scorecard (curses to whoever dropped Rand’s ad)

• Muhammad Saleem has joined up with Pronetadvertising, and is writing some fantastic stuff on social media including a post on digg narcissim among others (see ego hook)

• Loren’s guide to link buying rocks

• I could probably link just about anything Kathy Sierra writes – favorite recent post – Inspiring your user-evangelists=

• Brian Clark advises differentiate or die, and gives his usual great ideas on titles (note to self – listen to his podcast with Neil and Cameron on Rush Hour)

• Aaron talks about using scraper to improve relevance and probably some other awesome stuff I didn’t read:)

• Congrats to Duane on an SEO book deal (please educate the masses!!) – hat tip to Bill

• 50% off Reviewme -sweet! (no aff)

• Everyone involved in search marketing should thank their respectful Gods that we have Danny around to defend the reputation of SEO (cause the rest of us are too damn lazy or busy to try to convert those who don’t "get it") – Thanks Danny!

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About the Author

Todd Malicoat aka Stuntdubl made his first horrible looking website full of animated .gifs in 1997, and after fours years of failure and experimentation ended up in the world of SEO and internet marketing in early 2001. He is currently an independent marketing consultant from the SEO school of thought. Todd earned a bachelors of business adminstration from Northwood University in 2003 while running an web design and consulting firm Meta4creations, LLC. Todd is a speaker at both Webmasterworld and Search Engine Strategies conferences.