My Experience With Google Base
So, to properly experience Google Base, I submitted an “item”, namely my article on Google Base. You can read it here, and you can view all (one) of my Google Base “items” at my Google Base store page.
So, problems:
First, Google manages to keep banned items out of the system by banning any mention of them. That means that my article, by listing the banned items, was unfit for publication. Read it, and you’ll notice that I have changed a few terms slightly to fool Google’s system. “Mod chips” has been replaced by “modification chips”, “cable descramblers” is “cable box descramblers” and “fake documents” is “falsified documents”. Additionally, I had to remove the exclamation point from my title.
- Added clarification on edited terms @ 2:30 pm
This means submitting news articles through the automated process is going to be difficult, if not time-consuming. Google might want to consider eliminating these things for things like articles, where nothing is for sale, since articles about these things are not as much of a problem as the items themselves.
HTML formatting is out, completely out. Forget URLs, you can’t make things bold, add bullet points, nothing. It makes things a bit unreadable.
I can’t change my user URL. BIG problem if you want to keep your email address confidential, since any idiot can use your Google Account ID to figure out your Gmail address.
- UPDATE: Apparently, there is a way to avoid this problem. There is a page with a userid number, instead of the Gmail Account email address. Although this is better, you are still left with the more obvious email address URL, the fact that if you don’t enter a URL your Google Account is shown in search results, and the fact that item URLs without your Google Account are hard to figure out on your own. I’ve update my first paragraph to have the “safe” URLs, and I encourage everyone to do the same until Google finds a better way.
Also, you should be able to change your Base displayed ID. The choice is between revealing your Gmail address and a number, when you should be allowed to go with any available name.
The misspelling filter is moronic! I can’t use “insidegoogle” as a tag, or put anything not in the dictionary as a tag. If you have a brand name, it can’t be a tag. If you have a product category Google doesn’t have in its database, it can’t be a tag.
All that aside, it seems pretty easy to post items. Its easier than eBay or Craigslist. Now, easier than eBay you can expect, since it is less complicated, but the fact that Base is easier to post to than Craigslist is a problem Craigslist needs to solve. It can take twice as long to post a free item to Craigslist, in my experience, than to Base, and that is going to send a lot of people to Base.
Currently, my “item” is number one on a Base search for “Google”. Most of the rest of the results are people linking to articles. In a way, besides being a cheap, fast and easy marketplace, this is also the world’s worst implementation of del.icio.us. Since each item is listed seperately, if multiple people decide to post http://base.google.com/ to Google Base, they clutter the results, instead of adding depth to it.
One guy is trying to see if Google Base makes a good blogging tool (not without HTML or RSS it isn’t). One Googler is looking for love (preferably with a “Sizzling Yahoo”).
Search Engine Watch’s Gary Price appears to be having fun with the system, posting a profile of Santa Claus, a request for a new doctor, and a course apparently taught by Lindsay Lohan, Heavy D… and a plush dinosaur.
But seriously, won’t you help this kitten find a home?
Okay, here’s a serious item. This is an 18″ LCD monitor being sold for $250. Notice the excellent product photo and the Google Map. Also, notice that there is no way to pay for the item through Google Base. So, the product does some things better than Craigslist and some things worse than eBay.
I guess that’s my review of Base. It’s halfway in between “The World’s Marketplace” and the world’s classified ads, and it wants to be both. When Google Purchases (or Wallet) hits, this may be perfect.
The most important thing is that Google gets enough items to satisfy users and enough users to satisfy sellers, something Craigslist and eBay have in abundance. While having item feeds is a start, it won’t fulfill everything, but if anyone has a shot at rapidly growing a service, its Google. Good luck!
“I can’t change my user URL. BIG problem if you want to keep your email address confidential, since any idiot can use your Google Account ID to figure out your Gmail address.”
Actually, I don’t think this is a major problem.
When searching Base, you never seem to see your username anywhere - it’s only in the link *you* have given us.
Instead, you could have given the links Google Base redirects you to, like: http://base.google.com/base/search?authorid=1001596 .
Also interesting: since you put a URL on both your articles, you can’t get into your Google Base articles from the search results, instead, there’s only a link to the URLs you provided.
- Michael, the proud owner of the #1 “hello world” hit.
Comment by mscha | November 16, 2005
My take on it is that Gbase seems to have some potential, if they can quickly improve on it. Google’s blog post on base makes it clear that this is a real beta, an experiment. If they want this to work, they will need to respond quickly to user feedback.
There is not much content there now, so the search does not bring up much to properly judge how effective it is. In about a week (which is all google needs to get alot of people to submit content), another test of its search abilities should see how well they have it organized.
Things I like so far - maps for locations, search for local items defaults to places closest to my address, picture slide shows, ajaxy fillers when posting an item
It was pretty easy to post items, and quick to get familiar with.
They need to add much more features to make this more usable.
Comment by daley | November 16, 2005
Thanks, Michael! I’ve updated my post to include the safe URLs. I still don’t like it, however.
Comment by Nathan Weinberg | November 16, 2005
[…] Here’s an excerpt from Nathan Weinberg’s first impression: [The] fact that Base is easier to post to than Craigslist is a problem Craigslist needs to solve. It can take twice as long to post a free item to Craigslist, in my experience, than to Base, and that is going to send a lot of people to Base. […]
Pingback by Syndicator blog » Blog Archive » Google Base Arrives | November 16, 2005
[…] - html code is not possible. This means no formatting, no links etc. I guess this helps cut down on spam. - no RSS feeds to track tags. This would be a useful addition. - InsideGoogle reports that some words seem to be banned and are changed. They write: ‘That means that my article, by listing the banned items, was unfit for publication. Read it, and you’ll notice that “mod chips” has been replaced by “modification chips”, “cable descramblers” is “cable box descramblers” and “fake documents” is “falsified documents”. Additionally, I had to remove the exclamation point from my title.’ Filed under Blogging Tools and Services | Get the Free ProBlogger Newsletter […]
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Hi,
You can add another point. I tried Google base in Hebrew. it does not work (mispelled thing).
I checked the program policies and there it says that the base supports any language.
Still some work to do !
Dataneto
www.dataneto.com
Comment by Dataneto | November 16, 2005
[…] More information on the banning of words and tagging at InsideGoogle. Post at Del.icio.us Add to BlinkList LatestSolutions […]
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We, http://www.pagebites.com/, have had something similar to Google Base for a few months now. Yes, we don’t have the traffic that Google has, but we do have a few things they don’t.
1) We have a rich text editor where you can use bullet points, stylized fonts, links, images, etc.
2) Your postings do not expire. Google Base has a maximum expiration of 31 days.
3) You are free to format your posting in any way you’d like. We do not require you to fill out text boxes.
4) We let other people crawl our site. You might say that Google has so much traffic that they don’t need other people to crawl the data. But, you should realize that there are a significant number of people using other search engines like Yahoo and MSN search. Why would you want to restrict your data to Google users?
5) Your username is separate from your email address. This means the URL to your postings will not contain your email addresss. I realize you can do things in Google Base to prevent your email address from showing up in the URL, but with us you don’t have to do anything.
These are of course things that Google Base can and will improve on….
Just a note: At the moment, the postings on our site are restricted to job and resume postings.
Comment by Ralph Harik | November 16, 2005
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Trackback by keso | November 16, 2005
Google Base is a great new Technology!
Comment by jack | November 17, 2005
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Pingback by » My Experience With Google Base » InsideGoogle » part of the Bl... | December 12, 2005
There are plenty of resources to learn about how to progress with google.
Often times is the issue;
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Comment by Admin | December 25, 2005
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You can add another point. I tried Google base in Hebrew. it does not work
Comment by 虚拟主机 | June 29, 2006