Google Base, which some people got an early glimpse at last month, is now live. So what's in it, and what's it all mean? Google Base allows people to list anything they want. Want to create an entry for a recipe item? An event listing? A job posting? A book review? You name it; you can pretty much post it. By default, some existing item types are suggested: Course Schedules, Events & Activities, Jobs, News & Articles, People Profiles, Products, Reference Articles, Reviews, Services, Vehicles and Wanted Ads.

Select any existing item type and you're sent to a form to fill out with some fields already set that you may want to use. For instance, the Product form has areas to enter a price, quantity, brand, condition and payment options. Did the form miss something? You can easily add new fields. If none of the existing item types work for you? Then you've got an option to create your own custom item type.

The disadvantage of Google Base is for job search Google Base gives you one single box that's it. Perhaps entering something like advertising jobs in New York City will ultimately work to get you a listing of all jobs appropriate to that. But it might come back with false matches, as well, since no one is required to use predefined forms or a predefined category structure.

One example of this was where Google Base brought back a matching job for a model agency because the job description mentions that models do print advertising work.

In contrast, look at any other job search website like ‘Monster’. It's more user friendly to start. While searchers generally don't make use of search options and drop-down boxes, I think that vertical search engines are an exception. Monster asks you to be specific. What type of job do you want, one drop down box asks (Advertising/Marketing/Public Relations). In the next box, where do you want the job (New York City). The results that come back after making these two choices look good and really shouldn't have any false positives.

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