Google announced last month the creation of something they call Google Base. This seemingly useful new tool allows anyone with an account to upload a database of products. I have a client that has an online hardware store so it seemed logical to upload his product database and see what happened. What happened was that about 2000 items started showing up at that top of the results to product specific searches. That got my attention.
So I revisted the Google Base site and found that they are taking posts for events, course schedules, want ads, cars for sale, coupons, recipes, reviews, rentals and housing. Oh, and these posts need to be made using XML files. The interface for posting is a big too geeky for me but even I was able to muddle through.
Here’s the thing I’m wondering. At what point does Google take all these ever-changing XML files and create Google Cars, Google Help, Google Recipes, Google Rentals? Once they own the aggregating and filtering of data they will have no reason not to offer these services, free of charge, in order to sell the advertising and premium listings throughout the data and the feeds.
Look out Monster.com and Cars.com
So, get over to Google Base and get your products listed.