As you may already know, on March 11th, Yahoo! will be discontinuing the automatic product submission in Yahoo! Shopping from within the Store Manager. Going forward in order for your products to show up on Yahoo! Shopping, you will have to submit your products through a PriceGrabber account.

Luckily, FeedPerfect has always supported both PriceGrabber and Yahoo! Shopping feeds and can help you. On March 11th, FeedPerfect will be combining the PriceGrabber with Yahoo! Shopping feeds into one. Here are some additional highlights:

• Automated product import for Yahoo! Stores.

• Manage one data feed for Yahoo! Shopping & PriceGrabber.

• Access your FeedPerfect account from anywhere.

• Hundreds of merchants already rely on FeedPerfect.

• Over 10 of the most popular comparison shopping engines are supported.

• Built in reporting and analytics for feed optimization.

• Hands-off feed management services.

• Plans as low as $49/month after you take advantage of a…

• Complimentary 14 day trial!

To ensure that your products continue to list on Yahoo! Shopping, sign up for FeedPerfect account today.

P.s.

Reaching over 17 million unique page views per week, FeedPerfect is now integrated into TheFind. The best part for you is that it is absolutely free to submit your products. TheFind joins Bing Cashback and the buySAFE Bonded Shopping Network (two prominent cost-per-action shopping engines) integrated into FeedPerfect. Yet another great reason to start using FeedPerfect.

TheFind is the world’s largest shopping mall: an online destination with 500,000 stores and sellers, 400 million products and 17 million unique monthly visitors. Utterly unlike anything before it, TheFind is built on multiple patents that make it possible and easy to shop any store and every store, all at once. With the inclusion of all matching coupons, reviews, and local store information, TheFind makes smart buying decisions easy.

According to the January comScore report, TheFind is now #3 in visits – with just Google Product Search and Yahoo Shopping on top – and is now larger than every well-known CSE.

Millions of shoppers use our site every month, clicking out to visit hundreds of thousands of stores. Here are some FREE ways in which you can make sure you’re fully optimized with us:

• Work with FeedPerfect to send us a product feed. Make sure you fill out as much information as possible as more complete product feeds will help you to rank higher in our results and ultimately get more traffic.

• Register and claim your store in the Merchant Center. If you’re not currently registered, you’re not maximizing the visibility of your products on our site. The more information we have about your store, the more relevant your results will be in our search algorithm and the easier it will be for you to connect with the millions of shoppers who visit our site every month.

• Once you claim your store, you should use the following features to optimize your presence even further:

o Join the UpFront Program. Thousands of merchants have already joined. On average, merchants have seen an increase in visibility/traffic of ~10% post joining the program.
o Upload your tax and shipping information.
o Submit coupons.

Thousands of merchants have already registered their stores and joined UpFront. So what are you waiting for?

To learn more, go to: https://merchant.thefind.com and http://www.thefind.com/upfront.

Stay up-to-date on the latest from TheFind’s UpFront Program and Merchant Center on our Merchant Blog and Twitter. We follow back!

FeedPerfect is proud to announce a new integration with TheFind! TheFind is absolutely free for merchants to submit products. That’s right, no Cost Per Click or Cost Per Action. Just free traffic for sending TheFind your product feeds. TheFind averages 17 Million unique page views per month! It’s not just free traffic, it’s a lot of free traffic.

As of today, you can find TheFind in your FeedPerfect Channel Settings tab. Just click to activate and get started! TheFind is now the third most visited engine behind only Google Product Search and Yahoo! Shopping. Did we mention, it’s FREE to submit your products?

FeedPerfect is proud to provide you with a cost effective channel to get your merchandise in front of customers. Go ahead and get started today! There’s no traffic like free traffic.

On March 11^th, Yahoo! will be discontinuing the automatic Yahoo! Product Submit from Yahoo! Store Manager. Yahoo! has now partnered with PriceGrabber to handle the population of Yahoo! Shopping in the future.

Yahoo! Shopping will continue as always to be a valuable channel for reaching customers with your products. The difference will be in how you, the merchant, get your product information into Yahoo! Shopping.

What if I am currently use FeedPerfect to submit to Yahoo! Shopping and PriceGrabber?

If you are currently submitting to Yahoo! Shopping and PriceGrabber you will not need to do anything to make the transition. As of March 11^th all PriceGrabber accounts will automatically submit products to both PriceGrabber and Yahoo! Shopping. PriceGrabber Cost per Click rates will apply.

What if I am currently use FeedPerfect to submit to Yahoo! Shopping but not PriceGrabber?

On March 11^th, FeedPerfect will combine the Yahoo! Shopping channel with PriceGrabber. By combining the channels we have minimized the impact on merchants using FeedPerfect. FeedPerfect will count both engines as one “feed” when calculating your billable usage.

You should make the conversion to PriceGrabber as soon as possible to prevent any lag time in product listings on Yahoo! Shopping.

1. Activate the PriceGrabber Channel in FeedPerfect.

2. Sign up for a PriceGrabber account through the Channel Wizard in FeedPerfect.

3. Map your products and complete the Channel Wizard in FeedPerfect.

4. After PriceGrabber has successfully received your first feed, deactivate your Yahoo! Shopping Channel in FeedPerfect.

FAQ

Q: Can I submit to Yahoo! Shopping without submitting to PriceGrabber?

A: Yes, you can. For a very limited time PriceGrabber is offering a “Yahoo! only” PriceGrabber account.

You can sign up at for a Yahoo! Shopping only account, or a combined Yahoo! Shopping/PriceGrabber account here.

Q: Can I submit only to PriceGrabber without automatically submitting to Yahoo! Shopping?

A: After March 11^th, but default all PriceGrabber accounts will submit to both. If you want to limit your products to appear only on PriceGrabber after March 11^th, you should contact your PriceGrabber account representative.

Q: Where can I see more information about the partnership between PriceGrabber and Yahoo!?

A: Yahoo! has sent several notifications to Yahoo! Merchant Solutions users in the past few weeks. If you missed the notification, you can view it here.

Q: Is there a deadline to de-activate my Yahoo! Shopping channel in FeedPerfect?

A: We recommend you make the change as quickly as possible to prevent any lag time in listing on Yahoo! Shopping. Officially the Yahoo! Shopping channel will be removed from FeedPerfect March 11^th. PriceGrabber will have many new accounts as they absorb the traffic for Yahoo! You should act quickly to give PriceGrabber as much time as possible to help you get listed.

On Saturday, January 23^rd 2010, Solid Cactus will be performing routine maintenance, beginning at 1:30 am ET and lasting until approximately 5:30 am ET, which will affect your FeedPerfect account.

While the maintenance is completed, scheduled feeds may not publish. All feeds will publish again as normal at their next scheduled publish time. Although, if you’d like your feed to publish sooner a manual publish can be done through your FeedPerfect account.

During the maintenance you may not be able to access your account. Please plan ahead for the temporary scheduled maintenance time on Saturday the 23rd.

We apologize for any inconvenience, and appreciate your cooperation.

Hello FeedPerfect Users!

I just wanted to report that the Google Merchant Center is having an issue recognizing and processing feeds that are being published to the FTP locations. The problem seems to have begun on November 2nd 2009.

What does this mean for you?

Google is generally quick to identify problems and resolve them, so most likely you will not have to do anything. This is not something that is cause by FeedPerfect so there isn’t anything that our support team can do right now. We are aware of the issue and I will be monitoring it closely.

I will update this blog with any instructions for a fix if necessary. but chances are you will not need to do anything except for wait while Google rectifies the issue.

Stay tuned to the blog for more updates on this issue…

EDIT::: This Issue Appears To Be Resolved. (11/4/2009 @ 17:00 EST)

All the best,
Matthew
Matthew.Major@solidcactus.com

With the holiday shopping season almost here; a lot of comparison shopping engines will be making changes to their category minimum bids. Here is a list of what has been reported so far:

Become - will not be raising their minimum bids this holiday season

Shopzilla - select categories will have their minimum bids increased from 11-16 to 12-27

Shopping.com - select categories will have their minimum bids increased from 11-15 to 12-31

Yahoo! Shopping - all categories will have their minimum bids increased by 25% from 11-2 to 12-29

NexTag - all categories will have their minimum bids increased by 25% from 11-4 to 1-06

I will be updating this list as more information becomes available.

All the best,
Matthew
Matthew.Major@solidcactus.com

As many of us know most shopping engines raise their CPC bidding rates during the holiday season. Become has decided to do something a little bit different!

Check out this update from Become:



Valued Partner,
Become.com is proud to announce that we are not raising our rates for the 2009 holiday season!

We recognize the need for retailers to make the most of this busy shopping season, and are happy to offer our partners our tools and features in order to help you optimize your holiday campaign. We encourage you to familiarize yourself with our dashboard and offerings in order to positively impact your listings!
But that’s not all! Become.com has one more gift for our merchant partners…

…a reduced CPC bid for logo eligibility! For the month of November, merchants who have uploaded a logo in our merchant dashboard and bid at least 5 cents above the minimum CPC’s will have their logo displayed on Become.com*!

Take advantage of what Become.com has to offer you this holiday season, and let us know if you have any questions!

The Become.com Team

* Merchants already taking advantage of the logo program at normal rates can adjust their bids manually for November; however, decreasing bids will impact your ranking.

—–
Matthew.Major@solidcactus.com

On Saturday, September 19th Solid Cactus will be performing server upgrades which will affect your Feed Perfect account. Feeds will still publish on the 19th and Feed Perfect will continue to track events behind the scenes. However, you will not be able to log into your Feed Perfect for up to 24 hours beginning on the 19th. These upgrades are routine, and are necessary to ensure the highest standard of performance for your account.

Please plan ahead to make any feed changes relevant for that weekend on Friday the 18th.

We appreciate your business and support.

Best Regards,
Feed Perfect Support Team