Surely they like the free content but there are a lot better ways to use youtube as a marketing channel than spamming them with crappy vids.

btw – Took you advice and activated the plugin. I am working on a redesign as time allows and just not sure how everything will work together when I port the content over to a different server.

Thanks for your input

You have to have a shopping cart application on the inventory item for listing to show in the search verticals.

Also unless you are setting the url to point back to the inventory item directly on your site you are sending visitors on your cars to another website and not your own.

First, while it is true that Google Base is in Beta, the fact is that it has been there in some form for over 5 years that I am aware of. Google has struggled finding a place and fuunctionality for Google Base as have many long term SEO practitioners such as myself.

Second, Google does say that it will take content, product listings, etc. and that they may appear in the standard rankings, but they do not guarantee it and the results have been very sporadic for even e-commerce applicable products.

Third, people do not tend to use Google’s vertical searches much at all, including the Shopping choice. This is why Google went to Universal Search Results to automatically serve the vertical search results in situations where it is helpful.

All in all, Google Base is something that I would utilize since it is free, but nothing that I would count on at the moment.

Also when I search autobase.com in Google Base I see thousands of listings. That would imply that autobase is already distributing it for them.

Now when I search for Honda Accord Phoenix AZ in the google shopping search which is powered by google base I do not see any cars for Bell Honda or otherwise.

http://www.google.com/products?q=Honda+Accord+Phoenix+AZ&hl=en

People shopping on Google are going to use the shopping engine not drill down into google base to look for that elusive car.

You can test all you want but until listings meet the guidelines they will not show in the search engine results pages or the shopping engine.

Get cars to populate like Axle Shafts then you have done something with value.

The cars we post in Google Base do comply and do get listed. We have a fully compliant XML feed into Google Base. No smoke at all and why you would claim otherwise is defamatory.

You can see many cars from Bell Honda listed and active if you go into Google Base Vehicles search and type “Honda Accord Phoenix AZ”.

As far as the benefit of Google Base long term, the jury is still out. Testing will continue.

Secondly, you seem very focused on the definition of Automotive SEO and you also seem critical of my use of the term.

To create an easier communication flor in our industry, I will start using the term Inventory Distribution when I speak about VAST, Craiglist and Google Base and not SEO.

Google uses google base to power its shopping engine. Right now they are scrapping ebay listings into the their shopping engine. The only way to get cars to show there are if the listings meet the guidelines ebay mets the guidelines.

The way you present it it looks authoritative and it is smoke. You like to do your case studies as a marketing pitch. Show me how much traffic dealers are gaining from this “exposure” from a reliable tracking source.

To submit items to google base is not rocket science and in fact almost ALL inventory providers export dealers inventory to the base. So it is inventory distribution not SEO and it does not require any effort at all for the most part for dealers.

Just like my dealers that see huge benefits from my craigslist service, they get tremendous traffic and leads, it is still not seo it is inventory distribution.

The only benefit they see seo wise is when their craigslist and back page listings show in the SERPS because the listings are only temporary the links have ZERO SEO value.

So is craigslist a SEO tool? Not at all it is a traffic and leads source.

Inventory distribution is marketing not automotive SEO.

Misinforming people and disguising what they are already getting from another provider as a service is as unethical as ripping off charities and calling it fund raising.

When I use the term “Automotive SEO” I speak of all ways in which car dealers can get their name and inventory presented on the Internet without PPC. Google Base, Vast.com and Craigslist all offer free posting of dealer inventory that are included in my definition of Automotive SEO.

This is what Google states on their website: “Google Base is a place where you can easily submit all types of online and offline content, which we’ll make searchable on Google (if your content isn’t online yet, we’ll put it there). You can describe any item you post with attributes, which will help people find it when they do related searches. In fact, based on your items’ relevance, users may find them in their results for searches on Google Product Search and even our main Google web search.”

At face value, this statement should interest any automotive marketing consultant. It interested us because Google claims eventually Google Base will appear in search results which would be free and to me that’s what SEO is all about.

The fact that some of these free services have live links and other do not is not a reason to say that they cannot effective. For Google Base it is too early to judge where this platform is going.

A year ago not many people were talking about Craigslist for selling cars and now it’s a hot topic. Google Base is still in BETA and if we can post cars into their system automatically and at little cost to see how things work for sale, why wouldn’t we add it when we are already loading their inventory into a few other systems?

So, it may be that the word SEO is bothering you when Google Base is not indexing their pages into Google main index during it’s BETA mode. However, people are using Google Base and searching their database.

If Google Base continues to grow in popularity, our clients will be there. If it does not amount to anything, at least we tried.

Automotive SEO is all about testing and measuring results and if Google Base is a bust, I’ll be the first to say it when the Google Base system matures.

Vast.com and Craigslist seem to be working well for many people so if we continue to test and measure, dealers will benefit.

Brian Pasch, CEO
Pasch Consulting Group