We've received some feedback from Google Product Search merchants asking for more direction on which values to include for the product_type attribute . We listened to your feedback, and today we're unveiling our new categorization system that you can use for describing the product type of your items. Product_type is an optional attribute that you can use to indicate the category )or categories( of the product being sold.

Posted by Gilbert Dietrich, German Google Base Team Many of you have been asking for a way to easily upload and publish items for different countries to Google Base from the comfort of your account. We listened to your feedback and have created an international dashboard within your Google Base account, which lets you select different target countries for your feeds. This means that you no longer need to log in to three separate domains ).com .co.uk, and .

Posted by Dimitris Meretakis, Product Manager To keep your items in Base current, you should send us a new data feed as often as your item information changes. The great news is that you don't have to send us your file manually anymore. Now Google Base can download your data feed from your website. Here's how to get started: Make sure your updated data feed is available on a fixed, externally accessible URL on your website.

Posted by Dimitris Meretakis, Product Manager The Google Base data API is used to manage and publish all kinds of data. Some of this data is particularly time-sensitive, like news or events that will expire in a matter of hours. Other data has more value over the long term, such as recipes that are intended to be used and shared indefinitely. To streamline the publishing process and make sure that time-sensitive items appear in the snippets feed as quickly as possible,

By: Dimitris Meretakis, Product Manager You may not be aware of the steps your uploaded data goes through on Google Base. Here's a snapshot. First, you upload your file; next, Google processes your feed; and third, after processing is complete, users will be able to see your data in their search results. And starting today, you have the option of receiving a notification email after we've completed the processing )the second step(, which will summarize the results.

By: Chris Azalde, Google Base Support We've been listening to your feedback, and we recognize that our terminology 'bulk uploads' isn't necessarily jiving with the way that you refer to your large content submissions. In light of that, we've recently renamed our multiple item submission method to 'data feeds' because, well, we just want to speak the same language as our trusted content providers. This is only a terminology change,

By: Chad Hancock, Google Base Support One of my responsibilities on the Google Base team is to help determine which attributes to create for which verticals. In light of that, I'm pleased to announce the triumphant return of one of my favorite attributes: model_number . Back by popular demand, a model number is a unique number or ID code assigned to a product by the manufacturer. This code is sometimes equivalent to MPN )Manufacturer's Part Number(,

By: Dimitris Meretakis, Product Manager Be it products, housing, jobs or vehicles, we want to make it easy for you to upload and manage your content in Base. A number of useful features are underway, starting with today's release of a new dashboard for bulk uploads. The new dashboard provides a better overview of the status of your bulk uploads and your items. New dashboard: Old dashboard: We'll keep you posted as new features develop. And as always,

By: Jessica Ng, Product Marketing Manager Today, I'm thrilled to announce the launch of the Google Product Search Partner Program . The idea behind partnering with data feed providers is to give merchants like you an additional resource to support you in uploading your products. Our partners can help you in many ways when it comes to getting your products onto Product Search, including submitting your feeds with all required attributes, uploading catalogs daily,

By: Jessica Behling, Google Base Support We're currently conducting scheduled maintenance on the Google Base site and expect maintenance to continue through Wednesday, July 18th. During this time, you'll be unable to register a new bulk upload file or upload your file to Google Base either through your account's dashboard or by using FTP. Of course, this will not affect your existing items or listings in any way.

By: Chris Azalde , Google Base Support We recently added UPC, MPN and ISBN to the list of required attributes for bulk uploads of the Products item type. Providing this information will help us rank items better and allow us to deliver more relevant results to our users. Starting today, we're asking everyone submitting items to Google Base US whose items are in the category of products and use these unique identifiers to begin including them for their items.

By Stephen Salinas, Google Base Support As a Base user, you're probably well aware of the increase in traffic that Base listings can deliver to your online business. Now you can convert more of that traffic into sales with Google Checkout, a fast and convenient checkout process that allows customers to buy from you quickly and easily with a single username and password. If you currently list individual products on Base-hosted pages,

By: Jassim Latif, Google Base Support Here on the Google Base support team, we're always trying to find new ways to provide you with fast and efficient answers. Here are a couple of suggestions to quickly connect you with the information you're looking for: Use the Search Box If you know what you're looking for, use the Search box on the top, right-hand side of the page to search the entire Google Base Help Center .

By Brett Crosby, Google Analytics Do you know how much traffic you're getting from Google Base? Google Analytics is a free and easy way to monitor all traffic coming to your site, including traffic from your Google Base listings. At first glance, it would seem tracking listings from Google Base would be simple. However, since Base listings often appear within the regular search results on Google, it can be tricky to differentiate traffic from the two sources.

By Marc Scaletta, Google Base Support Heya, I'm Marc, and I've been working on the Google Base team since February 2006. Up until a couple years ago, I spent the majority of my life in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. Then my wanderlust finally overcame my rational side and I moved to the Bay Area. When I got here, I heard great tales of the Google culture )and food!( and decided that it seemed like the perfect place for me. Given my background in e-commerce,

By Jessica Behling, Google Base Support We're always excited to share our ongoing efforts to improve the search experience. Today we announced some updates to Froogle that simplify the user interface and make it more consistent with web search. At the same time, we renamed Froogle to Google Product Search. For more on this, please see our post on the Google Blog , and feel free to share your thoughts on Google Groups .

By Naureen Kabir, Google Base Support With Google Base, as with Google search more generally, our goal is to connect people with the information that is most relevant to them. Last month, Roshan wrote a post about maintaining the quality of your items so that they remain live in our search results. One of the things he mentioned that can help achieve this is the product_type attribute.

By Naureen Kabir, Google Base Support We're happy to let you know that Google Base is now accepting tab-delimited )or TSV( bulk upload files formatted using Google Spreadsheets . Most spreadsheet programs allow you to export data into a TSV file, and Google Spreadsheets is no exception. For instructions on converting your Google Spreadsheet to a tab-delimited file, click here . More details and information about tab-delimited files can be found here . Don't forget,

By Jessica Behling, Google Base Support Hi, I'm Jessica, and I'm quickly approaching my one year anniversary with the Google Base team. A few days before I started with Google, I drove across half the country with my sister, two cats, and anything I could cram into the leftover space in my car. I've spent most of my life in Wisconsin and was more than happy to leave the snow behind! Outside of work,

By Clay Bavor, Product Manager A few months ago, I wanted to share some recipes I'd uploaded to Google Base with friends, but there wasn't an easy way to do it. So over a few weekends I used the Google Base API , the Google Gadgets API , and a lot of JavaScript to create Google Base Gadgets . Google Base Gadgets are a simple and configurable interface for searching Google Base data from your Google Personalized Homepage or, using a Syndicated Google Base Gadget ,