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GOOGLE REVIEWS
Google Reviews Are RSS Feeds
Google is getting in on the review game. Reviews are now one of the information data structure types that can be uploaded to the Google Base database. One of the accepted formatting schemes for the upload file that Google accepts is RSS 2.0, which is currently the formatting scheme that Red Queen uses to create its RSS feeds. It is thus a simple, and intuitive, leap to go from standard RSS feeds containing a dozen or so reviews, to a monolithic RSS feed (potentially containing thousands of reviews) that can be uploaded to Google Base.
In fact, the format of the RSS file Google requires is somewhat different to the format of the RSS feed files produced by Red Queen. The latter are optimized for display on web sites and in the RSS readers of individual users. The Google RSS file is used solely to transfer review information into the Google Base database. So if you should examine the files closely you will see they are entirely different and the two types should not be confused (they are certainly not stored in the same place).
In order to create Google Reviews for upload, see the script named google_reviews.pl found in the /admin directory. You can run this script, say, once a month to produce 3 files:
/my/google/item_reviews.rss /my/google/member_reviews.rss /my/google/supplier_reviews.rss
If you are only collecting Item reviews, then only the first file would be produced. You can also run the file in verbose mode at the command line if you like (after moving to the Red Queen /admin directory):
perl google_reviews.pl --verbose=1
This will cause the script to output an ongoing count as it loops through reviews and writes them to file.
It should be noted that the reviews added to the Google Reviews RSS file contain at most the first 200 characters of the review. If Google formats one of these reviews it will link back to the review page on your site where the full review can be found.
Uploading Google Reviews
Once you have created a Google feed (each of these files contains ALL approved reviews from the relevant branch) you can upload them to Google from the part of Google Base that deals with reviews: Google Base Reviews
Google flushes these reviews every 30 days or so to keep its database trim and fresh, so you would upload your Google reviews every 30 days or so. It is not clear exactly how Google will be using these reviews in the long term, but visitors to the Reviews section of Google Base currently have immediate access to these reviews if they perform a search that matches the keywords associated with your uploaded reviews.
For an example of the kind of page a Google searcher will see when they click on a link for one of these reviews, see this example formatted Google Review. As can be seen in this example, the uploaded portion of the review is immediatedly available for reading, while the full review can be accessed on your site when the Google searcher clicks on the link marked URL of item reviewed.
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