Getting started with onebox optimization
When you’ve got your onebox optimization down to a science, you’ll of course be sending out automated feeds every day with every product on your site included. But that’s the end result, not the means of getting there.
- To get started, just go do some searches on Google. See what competitors are coming up under each search phrase in the onebox area. If nobody is showing up, move on to another phrase. The more specific it is to a product, the more likely something will show up.
- Once you locate a phrase that a product shows up for, click on the link for product search results. This will give you an idea how many people are targeting that phrase. Don’t let the numbers scare you, this is just to get an idea of the number of results now so you can track your progress later.
- Make some notes while you’re there. What do these products have for names? What can you see in the description? Are there any patterns you see emerging? Click on a few and see what URL it takes you to. What information do they have on that page? Does the product information displayed there agree with what was shown in Froogle?
- Now that you know what you’re up against, head over to base.google.com. We’re not going to submit a feed at this point. We’re going to manually add a few products. Pick a few products that you could target that phrase with and create a few variations. Try something a bit like what the other sites were doing with the first one, something slightly different with the second, and radically different with the third. Submit each of them and then go do more research on even more phrases.
- After a while (could be a few hours to a couple days), see where each of those products ended up. Whichever is ranking the highest, take a look at why you think it’s ranking where it is. Did you use that phrase more in the listing? Did it just naturally fit the query better? What was it? Come up with a theory or two, then edit the other products to see if you can prove or disprove any of the theories.
- Keep experimenting until you find the right formula with one or more of those products, then start developing your strategy for making a feed that looks like that product. You may need to bring a programmer in at this point, but at least you’ll be able to accurately describe what you need the output to look like.
- The first step towards automation will be building the file through a manual run, then examining the results to make sure they look correct and FTP’ing them manually. Once you know that worked as expected (hopefully by the sales you’ve generated from it), work on automating the FTP process as well, then schedule it to run.
- Now that you’re into it a little and have something working at least marginally, it’s time to tweak things until you find exactly the right mix. When you get really good at this, you can make onebox results appear where they didn’t before. But for now, it’s going to be your goal to climb to the top of the list, or at least into the top 3, for those queries you can see onebox already showing up for.
I’m not going to insult your intelligence and say this is easy, but the total time involved is minimal on any given day. It won’t come overnight, but it will come with persistence and experimentation. This guide should at least get you started, then you’ll be able to use the rest of the tips located around this blog to start expanding your reach. In what will seem like no time at all, you’ll have sales flowing in the door from your onebox optimized feeds.
Comment by SlingShot | January 10th, 2007
“If nobody is showing up, move on to another phrase”
- What if none of my target searches, even very specific product types and part numbers, aren’t showing up as one-box? (OK, 1 out of 100 did, but it was a very low-$$ feature.)
Is it worth trying to add non-listed features??
Comment by Brian Mark | January 10th, 2007
If nothing is showing up, target as specific of a phrase as you can and then branch out from there. With practice, you’ll get a lot more showing up than what was originally there, but it takes going from very specific and moving out to the general stuff.
Pingback by Blog Ryan » Ryan’s Radar Jan 12 ‘07 | January 12th, 2007
[...] Optimizing for Google Base: [OneBoxer]. The concept of optimizing GoogleBase for Google OneBox results is new to me, but worth a read for any that have a chance of showing up in OneBox results. [...]
Comment by Tom | March 2nd, 2007
I see where the OneBox results SHOULD be on a Google search, but I just never see any results there for ANY of my searches. Is there a preference I’m missing? Can you give me an example. I went to Google Base and see competitors are using it (at least a few). I just don’t see where the top three results are coming up in the regular Google search.
Comment by Brian Mark | March 2nd, 2007
You’re not seeing them for anything relevant? Try the tips I gave out in this post. Try searching some skus (makita hg1100 if you need an example). They do indeed show up, but only if Google has a fairly high confidence that the search is product related.
Comment by steve | March 3rd, 2007
Hi Brian,
Im just trying to get my head around this onebox as its the first time ive heard about it this week.
I have a couple of dumb questions.
Is the oneboxer a seperate product from google normal search queries or is it just the process of submitting products to froogle & google base? If it is a completely seperate product where do I make my search for onebox results?
You mention to do a search for “makita hg1100″ to get started and i can see you have some pages returned in the top five for tool barn. If you hadnt used oneboxer are you saying these pages would not show up in google results? Its quite a specific term (I think) and I would expect that there is not a lot of competition for that term and therefore I would have expected something like this to show in google results anyway.
By using oneboxer does the oneboxer allow YOU to submit all your products basically to google through your database which would not appear without it?
Comment by Brian Mark | March 3rd, 2007
I believe David Brown is doing up some videos to show exactly what we’re talking about here. It has nothing to do with organics. This is the “Product results” above the organics. Once the video is done, it’ll probably make a lot more sense.
Comment by steven | March 4th, 2007
I look forward to seeing it. I have been having a good luck through all the posts on this site and from what i understand it looks good and we will hopefully be taking advantage through our new database site we are having built.
Look forward to seeing David Browns video.
Comment by Jim | March 7th, 2007
Have you noticed that lately some DCs do not display the OneBox?
Comment by Brian Mark | March 7th, 2007
Yes I have, and I’ve been hoping someone had an answer I could post as to why. So far, just more questions. Worst case, I’ll be asking in New York next month.
Comment by Jim | March 7th, 2007
The results seem to be very inconsistent. Do you think that the attribute minimum might have something to do with it?
Comment by Troy | March 9th, 2007
In regard to why onebox is not showing on certain DC’s nobody seems to have an answer. What’s going on in New York?