Google co-op topics - annotating web content

:
In May of 2006, among other announcements, Google announced Google Co-op. This article is a follow-on article to a previous article, "Google Co-Op Overview", which provided a high-level overview of Google Co-op. This article will go into one of the components of Google Co-Op, Topics, in more detail than was covered in the previous article.

Google Co-Op is important to users for several reasons. Google Co-Op allows users to contribute information that will help Google to improve search results for everyone. In addition, Google Co-Op allows an end-user to customize their own search experience so that information that is more relevant and trusted will appear at the top of the user's search results. Users accomplish this by subscribing to "trusted" sources of information. Information from those trusted sources will appear at the top of a user's search results for relevant searches.

Google Co-Op is a beta-test service now being offered by Google. Anyone with a Google account may participate. While still in its infancy, Google Co-Op represents Google's efforts to embrace social web and social search concepts in a major way to help improve Google search results. Google Co-op consists of two things:

1. Topics, which are simply a means of labeling web content
2. Subscribed links, which are a means for users to subscribe to a particular web site's content

Topics can further be sub-divided into two things:

1. The ability to create an entire categorization or labeling scheme
2. The ability to simply provide labels for web content, which Google calls annotations

The remainder of this article will focus on the annotations aspect of Google Topics.

Annotations to URLs

Annotating URLs is perhaps the easiest part of Google Co-Op to understand. It also requires the least amount of technical expertise to implement. A "topic" is simply Google's way of saying "area of interest". Topics are a labeling or categorization scheme. Topics allow users a way of providing labels (which may also be referred to as tags, or categories) for information on the web (represented by URLs). Labels may be provided for an entire web site, portions of a web site, or even a specific web page. These "labels" provide some indication of the topic or topics for a given web site or page. In essence, they provide additional information on what the web site is all about.

Anyone with a Google account can label web sites. Google refers to the process of providing labels for web sites as "Annotating URLs". An annotation is simply the association of a label, or multiple labels, with a URL. For example, a travel site might get the label "destination_guide".

Users may use labels for topics that Google already has under development, which include: health, destination guides, autos, computer & video games, photo & video equipment, and stereo & home theater. Users may also develop their own labels for topics. For example, if a user has an interest in "wine" they may develop labels for the topic wine, which may include "wine_regions", "wine_types", etc. They can then use these labels to annotate sites that deal with wine.

An end user may submit their annotations to Google in one of two formats: 1) in a tab-delimited format (which can be created using Microsoft Excel or any spreadsheet); or 2) in an XML file. Perhaps the easiest format for most users to deal with is simply to create a spreadsheet where the first column contains a URL or URL pattern, and the subsequent columns contain labels, one label to a column. Further information that may be associated with a URL in subsequent columns includes:

• Score - a ranking of relevance from 0 to 1 (0 to 100%)


• Comment


• Attributes - user defined attributes which may only be included in the tab-delimited file format

Annotation Examples

A few examples will go a long way to illustrate annotating URLs. If I were using a tab-delimited file to annotate a travel related web site it might look something like this:

URL                                                     Label            Label         Label        Score Comment

travelsite. com/*                   sightseeing    museums    shopping   1         Detailed destination information


If I were using an XML file to annotate the same travel related web site it might look something like this:

<Annotations>

<file>travelsite-annotations. xml</file>


<Annotation>

<about> travelsite. com/*</about>


<Label>

<name>sightseeing</name>

<score>1</score>

<Comment>Detailed destination information</Comment>

</Label>


<Label>

<name>museums</name>

<score>1</score>

<Comment>Detailed destination information</Comment>

</Label>


<Label>

<name>shopping</name>

<score>1</score>

<Comment>Detailed destination information</Comment>

</Label>


</Annotation>


</Annotations>


Conventions for Labels

There are some simple conventions that should be followed when labeling content. First it is important to understand that labels may be applied to URLs or wildcard URLs. Using wildcards makes it much easier to label a lot of content with a few statements. For example:

• Labels applied to mywebsite. com/ would only apply to that specific page of the web site


• Labels applied to mywebsite. com/* would apply to all URLs that starts with the URL " mywebsite. com"


• Labels applied mywebsite. com/*tips would apply to all URLs that start with the URL " mywebsite. com" and contain the word "tips"

A single URL may have multiple labels. If using a tab-delimited file, each label must appear in its own column.

Labels should be all lower case with all punctuation and conjunctions (and, or) removed. For example, "hardware and software" would become "hardware_software".

Labels should be as short as possible and as unambiguous as possible. Watch out for words that can mean multiple things.

Additional Information

There are many good places to find additional information. The first is the Google Co-Op Site ( google. com/coop) where they have posted a Topics Developers Guide. The Google Co-Op FAQ is also helpful. There is also a good article entitled "How to Use Google Co-op" at Google Blogoscoped (blog. outer-court. com/archive/2006-05-11-n40.html).

Why is Labeling Content Important?

The process of labeling content will benefit everyone in several ways. Labels will provide Google with a vast amount of information about web sites, potentially down to a very granular, or individual page level. If an individual's annotations are found to improve the quality of the search results, they will be shown to everyone. In essence, over time, Google will use annotations and other aspects of Google Co-Op to improve search results.

Conclusion

Annotating URLs is a relatively low effort task for individuals that can reap benefits for everyone - better and more relevant search results. While still in its infancy, and going through the growing pains that are normal for services that are in beta test, Google Co-op clearly has a lot of promise to enable Google to provide much more powerful and relevant search results to users.

Have you ever heard of an ebook

Dear Friend,

After browsing the internet, I came across an interesting article that grabbed my attention. The main concept was discussing how you can personally sell information on the internet. One of the fascinating ways of sharing and selling information is by an e-book. First of all, have you ever heard of an e-book? If your answer is no, well don't feel bad because I too didn't know what an e-book was before reading the article. An e-book is just like any other hard or soft covered book except it is completely digital. This is attracting and convienent for computer lovers for the obvious reason that they are able to read it on their computer. There are many advantages of learning how an e-book works. An obvious reason is knowing that you as a seller are able to profit and see results faster than if you were to publish a traditional book. For example, you can publish an e-book in a couple of hours or at most by a few days in comparison to a traditional book which obviously takes longer time. You can also satisfy your customers; because you don't have to worry about shipping the book to the customer rather they can download their book and be instantly satisfied. You save tons of money by avoiding time, postage, printing cost, and packaging materials. Another great feature of an e-book is that it is completely versatile. You can create anything you want! An e-book is just one of many ways of selling information via internet. The internet has after all taken over the majority of businesses, ways of communicating, sharing information, and most importantly making big bucks! Now if you're like me and enjoy learning cool techniques to benefit you and your future and on top of that you can learn this on the internet well then I know you'll take advantage of this grand opportunity.

Wish you the best success! Thank you, Stephanie Martinez

This is one of the many remarkable techniques taught at: EasyMoneyBigSecrets. com

Don't forget your FREE 12 hour video course and other amazing tips.

Learn how use the power of words to sell more of your products on line

So you have this great web site, and now you want to sell a ton of products on line. How can you kick up your web site's performance and double your sales? The answer you must kick it up with some hype. The hype is how the best on line marketers make a fortune on line. If you don't believe me have a look at some of the smoothest on line salesmen. See the ad they use to promote their products, and buy the product. If you do that you'll find yourself believing that hype sells more.

Who are the masters of hype? Those people you see on infomercials they sell products by convincing people that the product they are selling is the best product in the world. When the product is bought, what you really have is just another set of knives. They might be nice but they are not that great.

What do all the best Internet marketers have in common? They all use the power of words to sell their products. For instance is it better sell more products on line, or is it better to sell products like crazy on line? Do you want to see profits on line, or do you want to see massive profits on line? Can you see the difference in the two lines? Is it better to increase your sales, or is better to double your sales? Okay now I think you are starting to see the picture. The next time you see an ad on line that has you thinking I want to buy this, take a deep look at the description words that are used in the ads, you will see that the best written ads have powerful words that sell the products, or services. The real Gurus learn how to kick it up a notch and sell like crazy using nothing more than power selling words.

Selling on line is a lot different than selling at the store. The visitor has only words to go on, and maybe a picture, or two. So if you are a web site owner do a better job to describe the products use powerful descriptive words.

What kind of words did I say to use? Powerful descriptive Words.

Here is an example of how to kick your sales letter up a notch. There are 2 site both of these sites are offering to build web sites for their customers.

Site one writes: We'll build you your very own web site for 65$ guaranteed to satisfy!

Site two Writes: We'll build you a professional custom made web site for 85$ To your Guaranteed satisfaction! For a limited time we will also take off an additional 20$ dollars.

Do you see how the descriptive words has jazzed up the offer? Site 2 has convinced me to buy from them. The fact that they will build me a "professional custom made" web site as opposed to my very own web site. Means all the difference! They are also giving me a deal, 20 dollars off the price of 85$. WOW I am in Sign me up! When ever possible make your customers feel happy about getting a deal. Almost every one I know loves a bargain.

No matter what you are selling you can make or break a sale with words. At every cost use power selling words. You will see that your offers will stand out, and that more people will want to buy from you as opposed to your competitors. Here are a few techniques that I use.

1. Ask yourself what are people looking for when they buy a certain product.

2. Write down as many descriptive words as you can think of. (these should be words that sell the product)

3. Write down a general offer.

4. Plug in your your descriptive words before the product remember to use words that are powerful, and that sell the product!

5. Ensure that you make you buyer feel that they are getting a bargain.

Alright now it is time to put those words into action starting with step number 1 the product: web site I will build you a web site.

What do people want from a web site. They want it to look good, sell the products, deliver a certain message, look a certain way, find bargain prices. etc..

Step 2 description words: professional, customized, content rich, etc...

Step 3 the offer: we'll build you a web site for $65

step 4 Plug in descriptive words: We'll build you a professional customized web site for the low price of 85$.

Step 5 Give them a bargain: "We'll Build You a Professional Customized web site for the low price of $85. Your Satisfaction is Guaranteed. If you act now we will take of 20$ from the $85.

Okay so now you have it. Next time you find yourself trying to sell another product on line try to describe it's most valued traits, and send it home with the buyer!