30 November 2005

NSIDC Testing Google Base

NSIDC is working with Google in the testing of Google Base, a free extension of Google's existing content collection efforts.

"We hope that helping test this new product will lead to increased discovery of our scientific data by data users and others," said Clark Judy, NSIDC Deputy Director.

Google Base is similar to a database, allowing content owners to describe and assign atrributes to the information they submit. Google uses this meta-data to better target search results to what users need. NSIDC has already submitted meta-data for a number of datasets to Google Base and plans to monitor the resulting traffic.

Nature recently published an article about Google's new effort. To view the article, visit http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7067/full/438400a.html. Visit Google Base at http://base.google.com.