Google Book Search may be one of the most exclusive properties in the Google Universal Search portfolio. You have to be a published author to have a shot at appearing. Books results do occasionally appear within the regular web results, so it deserves a mention in our series on optimizing all the channels included in Google’s Universal Search.
Designed for publishers and authors, Book Search allows users to upload their content to increase its visibility, potentially increase sales, drive traffic to the book’s site and share in the revenue generated by contextual ads next to the book’s content. In fact, many of the Google Book Search operations are located in my hometown of Ann Arbor, MI (and what a nice looking office it is, from the outside).
To take advantage of these opportunities for your published content, head over to the Partner Program page. Once you register, you can upload your content in PDF format or partner with them to scan and submit entire libraries. From there you can determine what level of access you want to grant searchers: Limited Preview or Full View.
It’s not exactly clear what keywords or combinations of keywords will trigger Books results, but as Universal Search gains prominence I imagine that we will gain more insight into the cross-platform ranking algorithm and various trigger phrases.
Beyond that, your content will speak for itself. Google doesn’t need too many outside signals to rank the contents of entire books, although I would guess that they could factor in such things as the number of references to the book on other sites, news references or other publicity factors, search volume and potentially even click-through rates when the book appears in search results.
Does anybody have any more insight into Google Book Search optimization? I’m sure there are some good legitimate strategies for increasing the visibility of published content within this channel.
Updated list of categories covered:
7/31 – Google Maps
8/1 – Google News
8/2 – Youtube Video
8/3 – Google Images
8/6 – Google Blog Search
8/8 – Google Base
8/9 – Google Books
8/10 – Google Groups
8/13 – Google Code Search
Any others I’m missing? Leave a comment. Thanks!
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