Google Subscribed Links

I have been digging around Google Coop recently primarily trying to get a custom search engine to do a bulk upload automatically no such luck will need to find an alternative custom search system :(

However while on the Coop site I noticed Subscribe links[, I have in fact come across them before but never gave them much thought. Google describes a subscribe links as

In layman terms you can add your own links in to the personalised results of visitors if you can convince them to subscribe to your "personalised subscribe link" service. Now what your links say and point to is irrelevant, each link can only be targeted at one keyword, so lets take you through an example.



Click the above big button to be subscribed to my "expertise" its just an example so once you have gone through the hoops, visit google search and make a search for "webdigity"
at the top of the page before the main SERP you will see the sponsored link. Now a couple of questions spring to mind...

• Is it useful?
• How can you convince users to make you their expert?

I think the answer to the first is yes, it could be a very clever marketing tool, the answer to second is much much harder, you can't hide the fact of what it is, or what it does, and you can not at first look monitor usage, or even identify which users have joined so how do you convince people to subscribe... over to you guys

Hi Tim,

I played a while with Google Coop, but I can't say that feature is it worth, subscribed links are cool if you get listed in their featured list (like digg).

Next I created a custom search (www.finalwebportal.com) with the result of a few searches and a few $ by adsense. I think the custom search is cool as site search for a whole network...

I like Google CSE (custom search engine) and have written a couple of basic integration tutorials but it does have a few flaws, there is no way to automate the updating of sites, this really prevents its use as a truly integrated engine and so if your adding lots of domains it can be time consuming. I would have like a nice API hook for adding to the engine so I could easily upload based on submission of links for instance. I've never really used it for making money with adsense I might look into that for a project we are working on. As for subscribed Links I think its such a cool idea but I have no real way to implement them, If only Google would provide at least some hint at a way to track using them.

I will agree with Olaf. I don't think that subscribe links really worth your time. It is very difficult to convince a user to use something like that.

I mean is like "please let me spam you with my sites any time you search the web".

The co-op search engine on the other hand is very useful as it is a very good way to connect all your sites together.

Regarding your update problem, maybe you should try to CURL the submission form :) Curl is like an API when there is not an actual web service for what you want ;)

Funny that was what I was up to last night when I wrote the piece, however Google are not very helpful and it would appear from the mailing list people have been trying to automate the process for some time now.

you can use some xml to update/replace the pages you have submitted or just the "Google Marker".

But you're right there is not so much you can do and their "labels" are not very useful, actually you need to create your own application to make it work :(

check also this feature:
http://www.google.com/coop/docs/cse/cse_file.html

but it looks to not really usefull since you have to write the XML or create an application to add content

The XML markup is what I currently use, I already use a class to generate rss feeds so its not so hard to modify that for this, unfortunately the getting it on Google part is the problem rather then the generation itself. Its got to the point where I just want it to work or I will find an alternative.

One use for subscribed links that I did not mention is when combined with CSE, because people searching using your CSE are presumed to have your expertise you can provide subscribed links without going through the rigmarole of authentication. So they have a use on your own CSE at least...