Google Attributes

Yesterday I logged on to the eCrater account and saw a new button next to all the items in our inventory - the unmistakable G of Google. eCrater supports a certain number of Google Attributes, which are like keywords that describe your stuff that's for sale, and that the Goggle search engine will look through first when someone types in a search.

Here's a great article from the Search Engine Journal, from February 2007, that explains them really well. The upshot is that the more attributes you assign to describe something, the more particular you can get about your search, and the easier it becomes for your potential customer to find their exact match with your product.

I must admit that when I first started to read about attributes and how to assign them, my heart fell - I had already put 53 things into my store without knowing what an attribute was or that it was a good idea to assign them to each one! And it wasn't a matter of doing one record, and copying and pasting it into the rest of them; I had to go into each record individually and put the criteria that described that particular item itself. I tried to take plenty of breaks to give my eyeballs a rest (I tend to not blink often enough when looking at the screen), and also to stretch my back out. After about a day's work, I'm all caught up. And from here on in, when I add anything else to the store, I can select a similar item, copy that record, and the attributes will also be copied, for me to fine tune as necessary.

Once again, I am learning so much by doing this all myself. I guess there are plenty of people out there who hand over the running of their internet stores to a Web Master - and also hand over the money to do it - but this way I am gaining a real sense of ownership, and a depth of knowledge that I never would have imagined acquiring a year ago. Such a richness! And there's still room in my brain for more stuff!

The Google Help Base Center - a place that's dry as burnt toast, highly technical, crammed with information but not exactly geared for low-tech klutzes like myself, is also a good bookmark to have, because every single attribute that Google supports is listed, explained, and an example given.

Now I'm feeling slightly more in control of how the website is developing. I did write a Squidoo lens, though ya got me as to how those really work (maybe I'll have to do another one to get the hang of it?).

Today's picture is of another piece of Wedgwood Jasperware. This one is a commemorative pin dish made to celebrate Canada's centennial, in 1967. The applied white relief is a stylized maple leaf - no mention of Canada or the year anywhere on the piece. If you didn't know what it was or what it represented, you'd think it was a Star of David gone wrong! But in our house, mom had even made a needlepoint chair cushion using this motif. When I spotted this piece at the estate sale last week, I got all excited (that's a Canadian living in the United States for you!). Enjoy - and look forward to many more souvenirs celebrating that year in history.