Hi Annej, well I must say this googlebase stuff has been bugging me, and at the forefront of my mind for at least 2 weeks now - brainstorming how to use it.

I have informational sites too, and no products. If they say that we will have "better" traffic than the serps, how is this possible?

The only way that we could get better traffic is by using googlebase pages as sort of "pre-sales" pages, which in turn links to our site for either more information or to make a purchase? I can't imagine anyone buying anything directly from a googlebase page.

The first page I uploaded to googlebase was a recipe, just to test it out. It was a pain trying to figure out the editor, with all the attributes and stuff. Then I just pasted the recipe and uploaded a picture. It took me about an hour to figure it out. I added a link to my cooking site on the page, but if people already found the recipe, why would they click to go to the website?

The other recipe pages I looked at on googlebase, were like bulk uploads of already popular (big boys) cooking sites.
All very nicely done, and well laid out, so my page actually looks like cr*pola. Ha!

I wonder if Goog slaps rel = "nofollow" on the links you put up? If not, it might be good for a few backlinks, if nothing else.

Not anymore. It seems when it first came out you could submit your url along with your page. Now it appears you get a googlebase redirected url (if you use the individual addition form) It seems googlebase discovered it's mistake, and is trying to correct it by getting more publishers to add content, but the new page urls will be a googlebase url. Make sense?

The bonus for using the individual form is you get a picture in googlebase by your title. If use use bulk upload, you get your website url.

I also read the program policies, and affiliate pages are not allowed. So you can't just build a page for a product and link it to the company.

So if you don't have your own product or service, what do you do?

Re: "So if you don't have your own product or service, what do you do?"

You may have to stick to AdSense and/or AdWords, and let those of us who have real products and services to offer the public use Google Base. I have no problem generating my own GB entries, and no problem having to refresh them every 30 days or so. Those of us with real products and services will be able to get them exposed to the general public without being pushed aside by affiliate sites and others who are nothing more than aggregators/publishers.

That said, information can be a real product, as long as you have a way to charge for it, so if you use GB as "tickler" for your larger information store, that may help you figure out how it can benefit your business.

[edited by: RonnieG at 3:54 am (utc) on Nov. 4, 2006]