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What does it mean when you see “Published, Searchable Soon” in your Google Base account? 

This question crops up a lot… and for good reason. Your Google Base account doesn’t do a good job of telling you what’s going on here. When you see this message it means that your most recently uploaded Google Base feed is being indexed for search on Google Base. What it neglects to underscore is the fact that your previously uploaded (penultimate) feed IS still searchable on Google Base. So if you see “Published, Searchable soon”, your items (from the previously processed feed) are still live and searchable on Google Base. 

Sometimes merchants complain that their feed is in a perpetual state of “Published, searchable soon”. Their concern is that if their items are in this state constantly, they are never searchable on Base. If you see this message continually, i.e. for more than 24 hours at a time, it is likely because you upload your feed on a daily basis and: 

1) You have a very large feed (50,000+ items) and/or 

2) Google is experiencing slowdowns with feed processing. 

If you upload a feed on a daily basis, either of the above points could cause your Google Base account to perpetually display the “Published, Searchable Soon” message as Google’s feed processing overlaps into your upload schedule. Some merchants first reaction is to simply stop uploading their feed daily. This is not advisable for a couple of reasons. First, as mentioned previously, even with your current feed in this “Published, Searchable Soon” state, your previously uploaded feed is still searchable, so there’s no reason to stop delivering your feed daily. Second, by sending Google base your feed on a daily basis, you’re allowing Google to make sure your data is fresh. 

As a Google Product Search Approved Partner, SingleFeed recognizes that daily feed submission is optimal. 

I don’t usually regurgitate what others have said, but in this case, it seems needed. SingleFeed has supported the Product_Type field since well before it was required. And for some reason this is the field we get the most questions about. I like to describe the field as exactly what the product is. Google goes a little further, and I thought this might help merchants. From the Google Base Blog:
“The product_type attribute is used to categorize items so that we can match them to search results. Entering product types that are too general or that are incorrectly formatted causes our system to categorize your item incorrectly, and we won’t be able to connect your product with the right searchers. So when you enter the product_type attribute, you should think specific and relevant. For example, if you’re selling keyboards for computers, you should include “keyboards” as the product_type and not “computers.”

If your product doesn’t fit with the exact values on the example product_type page, you can include some variations; the most important thing is that the product_type be relevant and that it distinguish between an actual product and the accessory for the product. For example, for the above keyboard example, the product type “usb keyboard” is also acceptable. If you’re selling Ipod skins, the values “accessories” or “mp3 accessories” are fine.

One strategy for figuring out your product_type is to take the last breadcrumb from your categorization tree. So if your product page has the categorization Camping-Hiking > Sleeping Bags, it’s a pretty safe bet (although not a sure thing) that the product_type is sleeping bag.

If all else fails, try using this list provided by Google Base.

There seemed to be a lack of information and understanding about Google Base, so I wanted to share some of SingleFeed’s learnings and expectations.

The post over at SingleFeed covers Google OneBox, Google Base Custom Attributes, and Data Feed Optimization.

Key takaways:

-Most people are submitting to Google Base through an automated XML feed which is not optimized

-Adding more information to your Google Base feed (bulk upload) might help you get exposure through Google OneBox results

-The more information Google Base gets through feeds which contain Google Base Custom Attributes, the more likely I think Google is to display OneBox results for related search engine queries as the data provided through the feed will be more relevant than what Google can crawl.