Knowledge Is King!

Below I present to you a list of the major ranking factors in Google Products, in no particular order. I’ve not done enough research to determine which are more important than others:

Title

Having your keyphrases placed strategically in your title tag can help you rank, just like with regular SEO.

Price

If you sell a product cheaper than your competition, you stand a better chance of ranking higher than places which sell it more expensively. Capitalism ftw.

Description

Having a well-thought-out and keyphrase rich description is important. As far as I can see, Google doesn’t crawl the URLs you submit to them for any ranking factors – they take all the information from your data submission, so a description can help you rank for long-tail phrases which you can’t cover in your title tag.

Data-Stuffing

Data stuffing is so the new keyword stuffing. What do I mean by data-stuffing? Well, in Google Base you have the options to upload data for all kinds of fields. Only the bare minimum are essential, and most are optional. In my experience, however, I’ve seen that adding more data-fields helps you rank higher and for more varied queries.

Fresh Data

This is actually a ranking factor which Google recommend to get higher rankings, so it would be remiss of me to not include it in this list!! Fresh data, as in updating your feed as often as possible or setting the scheduler to crawl your feed frequently, helps both your rankings and the accuracy of your data. Since Google doesn’t crawl your pages, it’s important to ensure your feed is up to date with the latest descriptions, prices and names.

Positive Reviews

Notice how I’ve not included pagerank (or mR) on this list? That’s because I’m not sure how important it is to have a trusted domain in the traditional SEO-sense. More importantly, I think, is having a trusted domain in the traditional sense of the word. How does Google measure that? With reviews. Getting positive reviews for your site helps a lot with Google Local, and it’s the same principle for Google Base. Although I’ve not listed these tips in order of importance, I think this is definitely one of the strongest ranking factors, particularly for competitive queries. So, to help you out with your Google Base rankings, I’ve listed below all of the sites which Google permits as review sites for use in Google Base. Before I list them though, I should point out that there’s one site which Google seems to favour above all others for trusted reviews. There’ll be no prizes for guessing who it is…. Yep, Google Checkout.

In my experience and research, Google Checkout reviews seem to count for more than reviews left on 3rd party sites. This does seem to make sense since these reviews are presumably more trusted by Google (since it controls the spam filtering and authentication) than 3rd party reviews. That said, it does mean you have to have Google Checkout enabled to profit from them!

An interesting aside here: it’s not something I’ve tested, but if I were building a ranking algorithm based on reviews, I would make the raw number of reviews count as a ranking factor, positive or negative. Why? Because this signifies trust and brand awareness. The more people that are leaving reviews about you, the bigger your brand is. Given Google’s shift towards brands recently, I wouldn’t be surprised if this was a factor so bear this in mind when getting reviews.

Anyway, if you can’t get Google Checkout reviews, try some of the sites on this list (separated by US and UK sites, as they’re different!).

US Google Base Review Sites

dealtime.com
pricegrabber.com
cashbaq.com
epinions.com
flamingoworld.com
mrrebates.com
readprint.com
resellerratings.com
shopzilla.com
rateitall.com
reviewstream.com
mouthshut.com
pricespider.com
dooyoo.co.uk
mtbr.com
viewpoints.com
merchant-reviews.com
couponclock.com

UK Google Base Review Sites

pricegrabber.co.uk
reviewcentre.com
shopzilla.co.uk
ciao.co.uk
dealtime.co.uk
truste-marketing.co.uk
webuser.co.uk
maxxsave.co.uk
dooyoo.co.uk
resellerratings.com

From analysis of the top sites across many different searches, these are the sites which Google is reporting as trusted review sites. I’ve reviewed over 50 Google Products searches and probably at least 100 domains, and this is a list of all the review sites listed. There are probably others but they’re either very small sites or aren’t particularly trusted. These are the major ones.

There are plenty of ways of gaining reviews for your site, and I’m not going to go into detail on them here, but David Mihm has a solid post on getting local reviews and the process is exactly the same for products. Check it out, he links out to some great sources there too.

In conclusion, if you’re selling something, you should definitely be investing some time in Google Base as it can bring some great results pretty quickly.

Random Musing: by the way, while researching Google Base, I noticed that you can submit all kinds of stuff to them, from jobs to recipes to events to cars. As far as I can see, most of these uploads won’t net you much benefit, but I think it can only be a matter of time before we see Google Base results ranking in the main results for job queries, events and all manner of other queries. How long before getting reviews for your site becomes an integral part of the SEO process?

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Why should we spend time optimizing products for Google Base?

Let’s start by discussing why we should even bother with using Google Base. First and foremost, let’s look at the placement of Google Onebox Results when compared to organic search results. OneBox results are actually placed above the organic search results. As far as page real estate goes, this is extremely significant in terms of the number of impressions and clicks you will get on your product listing.

It is also important to note that Google Base uses the information from Base listings for more than just Google OneBox results. This data may also be displayed in Google Product Search (previously Froogle), organic search results, Google Maps, Google Image Search and more. That adds up to a variety of exposure your site could potentially receive from a single Google Base listing.

How to Optimize your Data Feeds
Now we will get into some specific guidelines that will help you increase the effectiveness of your product listings and thus increase your product conversion rates.

Do Your Keyword Research: Before filling out any information on your data feed, use Google’s Keyword Tool External to find out what people are searching for. You can then optimize your product title and description accordingly. This is very similar to SEO for title and Meta tags. Limit your title to about 65-70 characters and your description to about 160 or so. Also be sure to include your desired keywords, about two or three of them, in both your title and description.

Automate Your Data Feeds: Schedule to have your data feeds automatically sent to and updated in Google Base. Create an xml or txt data feed on your website and then simply supply Google Base with the location of this file. You can then specify how often (daily, weekly, or monthly) you would like Google to update you product listings based on the information from this file. To create the xml or txt data feed for your products, try using shopping cart add-ons such as this one for Drupal or this for osCommerce.

Product ID: Each product in your data feed will have a unique product id. Be sure to keep this id consistent when updating your data feeds.

Product Type: Google Base uses product taxonomy to categorize your products. Be sure you use the correct categories and are as specific as possible. You can view the taxonomy structure here.

Include Relevant Information: Be sure to provide as much relevant information as possible. Google Base has three categories of product attributes; mandatory, recommended, and optional. Include all of the mandatory and recommended attributes and as many of the optional attributes as possible.

Important Attributes: There are a few product attributes that are very important to include in your listings. The first is tax and shipping information; Google Base will often give better listing placements when these two attributes are clearly defined. The second is a quality picture for the same reason. Do not include a general picture or company logo. Finally, include the Manufacturer’s Part Number (MPN) or Universal Product Code (UPC) when possible. This will assist people who search for a very specific product.

Target Country: Make sure you select a target country for your listings. This will both increase the relevancy and quality of your traffic as well as lower your bounce rates.

Custom Attributes: This is extremely important for achieving good results on Google Base. You can define any custom product attribute you want that will help customers find your products. For example, if you are selling an LCD TV you could define the following attributes; model number, screen size, resolution, aspect ration, brightness, response time, etc. That way when someone searches ‘LCD TV 52” 1080p’ your product will have a better chance of coming up versus other listings that have not included this information.

Data Feed Format: Make sure your data feed is formatted correctly. Simply review Google Base Help for formatting guidelines to be sure you don’t have any errors in your data feed.

Track Your Listings: Make sure you track your items through Google Analytics. You can then find out what is successful and what is not. Be sure to adjust your listings based on feedback from Google Analytics. You can find information on tracking your products with Google Analytics here.

Build Up Your Seller Rating: Simply put, Google Base will give priority and higher rankings to products sold by a seller or store with a lot of positive ratings. One suggestion would be to encourage your customers to leave feedback for your store on Google. Offer them a small discount or free shipping on their next purchase if they leave a review.

Final Thoughts:
By providing Google Base with a lot of specific and quality information, your products will tend to rank for longer tail keywords, such as ‘Samsung LCD TV 52” 1080p.’ When searchers are typing in these longer tail and highly specific keywords, they are more likely to be in a position to buy the product rather than just browsing. This is what will separate product listings that do ok from the ones that absolutely kill it with very high conversion rates. Now that you have a basic guideline, you are ready to optimize your Google Base data feeds.

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