Optimizing for Google Onebox

Where does the name “Onebox” come from?

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There’s been some confusion over this name, not only from newbies, but also among some experienced SEO’s and marketers. You see, Onebox results have nothing to do with the little “Box” drawn around them (imaginary or otherwise). In fact, the name isn’t from those results at all. It all goes back to the page before your results - the search page. These results come about from a single search box (one box) on the Google homepage, presenting you with options without having to search in any different manner than you’re accustomed to.

September 10th, 2007 Posted by Brian Mark | General, podcasts | 4 comments

WebProNews Interview Posted

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David and I were interviewed in New York by WebProNews. You can view it here.

April 23rd, 2007 Posted by Brian Mark | General | 12 comments

Announcements coming soon…

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I’ve been busy developing some stuff on the backend of BaseOp, so I haven’t had a post here in a bit. I’m hoping to make several major announcements after I return from SES. Stay tuned… I should have 2 - 3 pretty big announcements over the next several weeks.

For all my readers / listeners, I apologize for the lack of activity lately. It will get better shortly.

April 6th, 2007 Posted by Brian Mark | General, podcasts | 2 comments

What all can you post in base?

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Google seems to think you can post just about anything into Google base. They list the following on their site:

Examples of popular item types:

• Events and activities
• Hotels
• Housing
• Jobs
• Personals
• People profiles
• Products
• Reviews
• Recipes
• Services
• Vacation rentals
• Vehicles

Examples of other interesting item types:

• Reference articles
• Business for sale
• Wine and food
• Book descriptions
• Company profiles
• Jewelry
• Software
• Games

March 13th, 2007 Posted by Brian Mark | Beginner, General, podcasts | no comments

New Video Demo

Thanks to David Brown, I now have a demo video available on the site. Just use the “What is Onebox” link to the right, or use this link to go to the OneBox Demo video. Hopefully, anyone that has been wondering what this is all about will find the video useful.

March 5th, 2007 Posted by Brian Mark | Beginner, General | 4 comments

What is the difference between organic optimization and OneBox optimization? 1000 Miles.

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I got this question last week, and it actually made me stop and think. The difference between optimizing for SERPs and optimizing for OneBox is actually quite a bit, but how do you really put that into words?

First, organic optimization is much more work. You not only need to get your content, title, headings, meta tags, site structure, and page cross-linking done correctly, but you’ve also got to worry about getting IBL’s with the proper anchor text pointed to the right page.

February 26th, 2007 Posted by Brian Mark | General, podcasts | 3 comments

OneBoxer.com weekly recap for Feb 19th - 23rd, 2007

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The weekly oneboxer.com podcast for the following topics:

• Base podcast listings
• Google checkout
• One blog post could cost Yahoo their $20M / the MBL controversy
• Shoemoney’s new “Most Viewed Photo” - are they kidding?
• The OneBoxer.com podcast got listed in iTunes
• The site skin - coming soon
• Podcast advertising - podcasts [at] oneboxer.com
• Comments / Suggestions also to podcasts [at] oneboxer.com

February 24th, 2007 Posted by Brian Mark | General, podcasts | no comments

What is Google getting out of Checkout?

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Obviously, Google Checkout transactions are costing Google money. Regardless of volume, they can’t process credit cards for free. Their initial percentage of ad spend towards processing fees seemed like it’d make sense as a motivation, but when they changed to free transactions for the rest of 2006 and then through 2007, I started to wonder. Especially when they added the $10 incentive.

What is Google really up to?

On my way home from Nebraska People Making Money Online (it was cool - thanks Jeremy), it suddenly struck me.

February 23rd, 2007 Posted by Brian Mark | General, podcasts | 4 comments

Weekly Recap - Feb 6th - 16th

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I missed last week, so this week’s is longer.

Special guest: Robert Garcia (rumblepup).

Links discussed: enefem.com, rumblepup.com, his interview of me.

February 18th, 2007 Posted by Brian Mark | General, podcasts | no comments

What did Google do right when starting Froogle?

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As most of you know, Froogle is what started the products portion of Google Base. Starting something like this from scratch and getting it to catch on isn’t an easy task, so they must have done something right. But what was it that they did right?

For starters, Google used their crawlers to pre-populate their new service. This showed some immediate value to the user, and it wasn’t awful. If you want an example of awful, MSN’s new product service is a good example.

February 14th, 2007 Posted by Brian Mark | General, podcasts | 4 comments