Have you heard of Google Base?

It's Google's new database. Get it? Google Base.

It went live in mid-November. Just in time for the Christmas holiday period.

What's interesting about Google Base is that you can upload just about any kind of information into it - for free.

Google database has categories, and creating an item for upload is much faster than generating your average eBay auction. If you have a lot of entries you'd like to upload, Google Base has a bulk listing capability.

Sound familiar?

The reaction to Google Base has been incredible among the PowerSeller community. Always seeking new selling channels, many PowerSellers have taken to this new opportunity like ducks to water.

Within hours, with the help of auction management services company ChannelAdvisor, PowerSellers uploaded tens of thousands of items.

As you probably know, you're not permitted to include a hyperlink to an off-eBay site within your eBay auctions. There's no such prohibition with Google Base listings. Link away! So within their product listings on Google Base, PowerSellers have included links to their web stores, where transactions could be completed.

What kind of traffic can you expect to drive to your stores (or your eBay auctions for that matter) through your Google Base listings? It's a little early to tell but the potential is tremendous.

Considering that in August, Internet users conducted 448 million local searches, and Google sites captured about 44 percent of those. That's a lot of people searching on Google. If Google Base listings show up on Google.com and Froogle, as is the plan, all those eyeballs can be yours.

QuikDrop International, the chain of eBay drop-off stores, started listing its sellers' items almost immediately on Google Base, and reported "Google Base and Froogle are driving several thousand new potential buyers to our listings every hour." Given these early estimates and the tremendous potential, why wouldn't someone use Google Base to drive customers to their listings, whether they reside on their own ecommerce sites, on eBay, or some other auction venue?

Whilst the potential is there, Google Base is not quite ready for prime time. There are some bugs to be worked out - porn showed up within hours and security breaches were reported too.

If Google is going to allow transactions right from Google Base, it's going to have to address trust and safety issues. PowerSellers wonder how Google sellers will be identified, verified, and vetted. Without vetting, PowerSeller Mowery said, "reputable sellers could be lost in a sea of frauds."

You can be assured that Google will resolve these weaknesses. And Google Base will prove to be a great way to drive traffic to your auction and/or websites.

Maybe even eBay will have to watch out! After all, why pay to list an item on eBay when you can advertise it for free on Google Base?