Google Data

By Steven De La O, Google Base Operations

Last week we migrated all Froogle Merchant Center accounts to Google Base. Doing this has generated some interesting commentary about our plans for Froogle, so here's what the migration means for you Froogle merchants. First off, we are not replacing Froogle with Google Base. All your product information will still be accessible at http://froogle.google.com/. The migration simply changes the place you go to submit and maintain your product information.

What Google Base does is provide several benefits compared to the Froogle Merchant Center, including the ability to:

- submit single products to Froogle without submitting a product feed
- edit your product details directly through your account
- submit feeds in additional formats such as RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, and Atom
- increase product details using custom and standard Base attributes

You can continue to submit your feed to Google Base without making any changes. And please note that by including Base attributes in your file, you increase the information you offer, and users get a more effective way to find your products. You can look at the available attributes for the Products item type here. You're also free to use attributes listed for other item types if they're applicable to your product, and create your own custom attribute if you can't find one that applies to some information you want to submit.

For more on the migration, please see our list of common questions. We also encourage you to discuss your thoughts and opinions about the migration and Google Base at the Google Base Help Discussion group.