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Well, that makes it pretty clear that affiliate links are not allowed. But it doesn’t go into the reasoning. For that, you need to rewind your SEO memory about 3 years.
A lot has been made recently on various forums and on various radio programs about how feed optimization isn’t SEO and it’s not going to get you a lot of sales. I disagree with both of those personally, and I’ll tell you why.
This blog isn’t even 1 month old and it already passed 2000 visits. Thanks to everyone that have told people, blogged and written about what I’ve got going on here. Yes, that means you - Brian, Todd, Lee, David, Robert, as well as many others I’m sure I’m forgetting or don’t personally know. Also, many thanks to the regular readers. I’ve never had a blog take off quite so quickly on a brand new domain, so all the attention has been quite unexpected.
At times, onebox results won’t show if only one site is showing a particular product. We’ve got a second site that we’re starting, and I’m thinking this might be an opportunity to get some of those “Unique” products to pop up a onebox result. This would be a unique entity, unique pricing structure, and a different mix of products. We’re not creating ToolBarn version 2 or anything.
Weekly recap without David, discussing each article from the week, and an explanation of why I gave out the “Golden” tip on Monday.
While doing some research last week, I came across some rather interesting information about base feeds appearing in the OneBox. You can view it here.
Google – Items may appear on Google under the following conditions:
Google Blogoscoped recently posted screen captures of all of the onebox options that are available. No need to repost it, just check it out.
I’ve had a few people question if we really did $1M in sales from a Google Base feed. Yes, we did indeed get over $1M in sales from our Base feed in 2006. What might be even more impressive is that Base resulted in over 100,000 visitors during that same timespan to one site, and those converted to sales at above a 5% rate. In the power tool industry, that’s pretty high. I don’t have those same figures easily attainable for the other site, though.
The quick answer is their slogan of “Do no evil”. Charging for something ranking by algo would be evil IMO. Some could argue that AdWords is charging by algo, but in the end it’s whoever will spend the most money and has reasonably good content goes to the top. It’s called advertising, so it’s a cash algorithm. 
But what about OneBox, or Google Base, or Froogle?
If you’ve submitted a Google Base feed and your product doesn’t show up in the Google OneBox, you’re sunk, right? Not necessarily.
The main thing you want to do if nothing shows up is give Google a helpful hint. This especially works if you have something brand new that they don’t necessarily know is a product yet. It’s comprised of a few simple, yet effective steps.
Brian Mark is a forum regular around the web and a speaker at Search Engine Strategies. He has worked at ToolBarn.com since 1999, taking the online retailer of power tools from a few orders per week to an Internet Retailer Top 500 company.
