Google Base launched last Tuesday as a new repository of information for distribution across Google's network of sites including Google search, Froogle, and Google Local. You can add your existing content to the Google Base for broad distribution with only a few easy steps. I'll show you how.

• You need a Google account associated with Google Base to submit items. Sign-in to Google Base to get started.


• Complete your extended profile. Market yourself with your full name or the name of your site, a description up to 400 characters in length, your URL, location and contact information.


• Create a new feed containing additional elements from the "news and articles" information type. These additional elements include author name, tags and categories (label), and a publication date. I set the number of pages to 1 because all my posts exist on their own individual web page. I used the Atom template because both Google and Atom require dates in ISO 8601 format.
  
  
  • Do you use Movable Type or TypePad Pro advanced templates? You can use my Movable Type Google Base template to easily output your last 1000 blog posts. You may output up to 100,000 items but the resulting file must be under 10 MB in size.
  
  


• If the resulting feed is under 195 KB you can use the Feed Validator to test your markup.


• Download the resulting file.


• Register your bulk upload. Your item type should be Reference Articles until there is a better pre-defined category for distributing your content.


• Upload your file via the Google Base dashboard bulk upload.


• Wait a long while for Google to consume all of your content. They claim 20-60 minutes but in my experience the process takes hours.


• Search Google Base to see your newly created content.

I created my own Google Base template for Movable Type to make the process a lot easier. I think Google should index Dublin Core elements and other information in the feed other than its own namespaced creation, so I left some extra items in the feed that currently serve no purpose.

You can submit an image link (image_link) for each item to stand out in the search results. Logo images are not acceptable but Google does not seem to be enforcing the rule: I have seen many logos throughout their result pages.

Once your blog posts are successfully updated you can edit each post, view the description, and add additional labels and attributes by clicking "edit" next to the item title on your dashboard.

I also recommend creating a separate People Profile entry for yourself. Your entry will expire in 31 days but you will drive new traffic to your site for keywords and topics of interest.

Why should you go to the trouble of submitting your information to Google Base? You will be completely sure that Google has all your latest content complete with the appropriate link back to your site. Feeding the content directly to Google may help your posts place better in Google search results.