Lay My Hat

Has anyone tried Google Base. Could it be a useful addition to owners' marketing?

It can be found at "base.google.com."

Alan

Alan,
Interesting, but their TOS prohibit:

"upload, post, email or transmit or otherwise make available messages that promote pyramid schemes, chain letters or disruptive commercial messages or advertisements, or anything else prohibited by law, these Terms of Service or any applicable policies or guidelines."

Using it to promote the sale of real property would fall into the "commercial messages or advertisement" category, wouldn't it?

Joanna,

Using it to promote the sale of real property would fall into the "commercial messages or advertisement" category, wouldn't it?

Could be but as you say it is "disruptive commercial messages or advertisements" they don't like. There are already some properties advertised.

It was just a positive thought, maybe going nowhere.

Alan

an update here....

Googlebase looks like its going to be an interesting resource for free advertisig.
I recently added my place here and with relatively few search terms it comes up.
see here I only used "safari golf south africa"

anyhooo... not sure how usefull google base is right now, but they do say they will be linking it to the googe product/shopping search sometime which I think will make it loads more usefull.

Thanks for this, Alan - there's already quite a big Vacation Rentals category, I see, with even a couple of entries for the Ile de Re - looks like my competitors are getting ahead of me!

searching for Bavaria produces masses of rentals in the US. The location bit seems particularly important but is tucker away at the bottom. A lot of people don't seem to fill it in.
And it needs renewing every 30 days?

I think the key thing to do is add your own custom "Detail aspects"

by using "Include additional details for your item" this seems to add additional searchable keywords to your item.

You get the standard ones like "Bathrooms" "Sleeps" "price" etc.

But adding your own seems to help narrow down more specific searches. I read somewhere this helps.

Before I added a "Feature" with value "safari"
and a "country" with value "south africa" mine was not coming
up at all.

try something similar like "Place" value "Bavaria" and "castle" value "neuschwanstein" and see if it helps.

There's some Swiss Chalet restaurant chain in the States or Canada which messes up our generic Google searches completely.

MG

My point exactly. I can configure my entry so that it has all the right words in it.

But from the point of view of people searching, they are going to be just irritated by lots of listings for properties in the US which have Bavaria in the name somewhere!

If you just search for Bavaria now, we are 4th on the site. But the 1st 3 are in the US, which would put me right off if I was searching for a holiday place in Bavaria.

Well it is in the Beta phase.... might be worth reporting a bug?

Thanks for the tip re Google Base. And all the info re features. I've just added mine - can't hurt, can it?!

Well, I just did a search to see if my newly-entered property came up - and it's there already! Entered by PerfectPlaces for that listing!

We are now top of the list if you search for Bavaria BUT there is no thumbnail photo showing. Everything looks fine on the full page, including photos. Does anybody know how to fix this? I tried emailing Google about the problem of US listings coming up on Bavarian searches but they didn't reply so I don't much confidence in emailing them again with this query!

Next search, we are No.3 and the thumbnail is now showing. Did someone say this was in its experimental phase!