Google Base has finally launched and is ready to help you let the world find your content. You can store pretty much anything (free) from recipes, reviews, jobs, vehicles, you name it and allow anyone to come across it. I went to TechCrunch and saw the latest headline saying Google Base has launched. I took a look around, found some interesting information posted by other people, and overall, I feel that Google has done an excellent job, although it looks kind of ugly. One thing that caught my eye was that your items may even get published on other Google products instead of only Base. Google Base says, “In fact, based on the relevance of your items, they may also be included in the main Google search index and other Google products like Froogle and Google Local.” I will keep an eye out and see if I can spot any of them coming up in results on Froogle and Google Local. But lets go take a look.

(View the Cars for Sale page)

The first thing I noticed was the when going to Google Base was the form to post content. It allows you to select an item type or even create your own. But before I went ahead and did that, I wanted to get an idea of what Google Base can produce. On the left of the form, it lists some items that others have posted. I first clicked on the “Cars for Sale” link and it opened a page like what you see above. I was very happy to see that all listed vehicles were actually plotted on a Google Map. The map is positioned to your location (assuming if you are logged in) and shows the nearest vehicles. You can then refine your search by make, model, color, price, etc.. When you click on a vehicle, it will send you to the website that you can purchase it from, outside of Google. So at this point, I am very impressed to see all these cars and even plotted on a Google Map. Now I wanted to find out how adding your own information to Google Base works.

The adding of your own items into Google Base is fairly straight forward. I did find the form to be a little intimidating at first, but I would imagine once I use it once, it shouldn’t be a problem anymore. I noticed a few interesting areas and features as I was filling out the forms. First, they have auto-completion using Ajax on fields with basic information, such as a selection for a review type (movie, book, music, etc..). Another thing was that it looks like you even get your own email address for Google Base in the format of random characters then followed by, “base.google.com.” Right below this, depending on the type of information you are submitting, you may see a form for payment information. It simply asks for credit card types and some notes, although I haven’t come across any information posted into Google Base that shows this information or why it would be recorded because when adding something worth value, Base would just send you to the items site, it seems. Once you add your item, you can then manage the in the Item Management area, which has the usual layout style of Gmail and Google Reader.

Overall, Google Base does seem like an excellent service and it probably will be successful, because, well… it is Google. I do feel that the interface could have been designed a little better for the item details and adding of items though. The search results come up in a basic format showing a picture on the left, if any has been included for the items that are returned. I am going to give Google Base some time before I make any final judgements, but for now, im going to search through some reviews and food.

View Google Base.

Update: Darren Rowse has been providing some informative updates in his review of Google Base. He has mentioned some concerns, such as HTML not being allowed, no RSS feeds for tracking, and that some words are even banned when submitting items and may require changing. It also appears that the tagging system is very sensitive with spelling and what is in Google’s dictionary of words. More information on the banning of words and tagging at InsideGoogle.