Google Real Estate? Google Autos? Not?
Steve Rubel, in two seperate posts, links to new types of searches Google is serving, from auto searches to real estate searches. But is this really news? Last week, job searches were showing up in the regular search results, served via Google Base, and the auto and real estate results are built off the same model.
In fact, the Google Base homepage lists twenty seperate types of specialized search Base offers, including blog search, podcasts, recipes, tickets and content for mobile phones. Some are more featured than others: the recipe search has criteria for main ingredients and ethnic cooking, while clinical trials search has types of diseases, trial stages, and testing centers.
Now, we all made fun of Google Base when it was introduced as being too vague. “Upload anything”, they said, and many were just confused. Now, Google is looking brilliant, as usual. Google is builting specialty search engines, simply by having users and companies do all the work for them, loading the info into the Google dataBase, and building a simple search engine front-end around it. As soon as they have a critical mass of data, they add the search as a OneBox result in regular Google search, and thus, they’ve added a brand new targeted search engine, with a minimum of effort.
F-ing brilliant.
I always shake my head at those who think google has no plan. If you observe the company patterns seems to emerge. And they seem at times to purposely want people to think they don’t know what they are doing.
For example, take Google Web Accelerator, why are they advertising it for download, after all the criticisms it received. I mean, it does not seem like an important product. Why don’t they just drop it? Why do they continue to release new versions? Well, I think because it serves as some kind of test for something more important they have up their sleeves.
Why google pack? I mean, don’t the google folks realize like the rest of us that its an unnecessary product. I say, forget the story they gave about how the idea came about, its really a test for something more.
Google likes to test things first. Bill Gates makes big announcements: “we will be better at search in six months”, and then prove it to people, persisting (even beyond the deadline) until people are convinced. Google likes to test things in small steps, see if it works,(and test, test, test, test, if it don’t) and then let it speak for itself — but there really was an internal big announcement/plan behind it.
Comment by or | April 5, 2006
Can Google Sell Anything?
Is Google Base a Trojan Horse? Sure, it attracted a lot of attention when it was unleashes as being a rival to eBay, Craigslist, etc. But the oh-so-quiet move into real estate may be a huge wake-up call about Google’s master plan: by leveraging its se…
Trackback by Mark Evans | April 5, 2006
Google Update: Still Releasing New Betas
It’s been a few days since we’ve updated you on Google’s new betas and features. And let’s face it, in Google time, that’s almost forever + infinity. The Search Engine Watch blog reported this morning that Google AdWords has worked up a new Positi…
Trackback by Bruce Clay, Inc. Blog | April 5, 2006
Here is a Google Map + eBay Motors mashup that was just released.
The new MotorMapUSA.com mashup website displays all eBay auto auctions on a Google Map. Now using the map we can find our dream cars close to home.
eBay sell a car a minute with over 35,000 vehicles for sale every day.
Check it out… www.MotorMapUSA.com
Comment by Ted Bailes | June 10, 2006
I think those will still come, but the current moves that underscores what I’ve been saying to marketers for ages now — pay attention to vertical search.
Comment by john becks land | November 8, 2006
I thought Google just pulls data from craigslist.com, or does it pull data from more sources?
Comment by Peter Pang | January 30, 2007
Google is always on the leading edge and it seems most of the stuff they come up with is useful.
Comment by David | July 4, 2007