Stock Availability will now be a required field. We will make this a required field in Feed Perfect beginning on 8/31/11.

The following fields will be not be supported after 9/1 and will be removed from Feed Perfect:

Subcategory Name, Style, Department, Sport or Activity, Team, League, Fan Gear Type, Software Category, Cell Phone Type, Cell Phone Usage Profile, Height Unit of Measure, Product Height, Width Unit of Measure, Product Width, Length Unit of Measure, Product Length.

If you are currently submitting a feed to Shopping.com, please switch to the new version Shopping.com v3.21 as soon as possible to ensure your listings stay active.

You can now categorize your items for Google in Feed Perfect.

If you are already submitting the “product type” attribute, please continue to do so. Google Product Category is included in addition to, not as a replacement for the product type attribute. The difference between the two is that product type attribute contains the category of the product according to your taxonomy and Google Product Type contains the category of the product according to Google’s product taxonomy.

If you have any questions about this, or anything related to the Comparison Shopping Search Engines, please feel free to email us feedperfectblog@solidcactus.com.

You can find their press release about it here: http://googlemerchantblog.blogspot.com/2011/07/important-changes-to-google-product.html

Summary:
These changes will take place on 9/22/11.

• A New Google Product Category – This is a new attribute field they’ve added in addition (separate from) to the google product type attribute.
• An Image for every product – One image is now required for every item, and Google can now accept up to 10 additional images per item.
• Availability is now required – Google will now accept your item even if its out of stock.
• Apparel Category – There are some changes to the apparel / clothes category where google is now asking that you include attributes like Size, Color, Gender, and Age Group for any item that comes in variations. IE Shoes that come in multiple colors.
• Google will be checking feeds for accuracy and have noted they will be taking action against accounts that violate their standards. The basic part I took from this is that the price advertised on the CSE needs to be the price on the page.
• Feedperfect is currently being updated to accept these changes.

If you have any questions about this, or anything related to CSEs please feel free to email me. feedperfectblog@gmail.com

The item my client sells are Enesco “Growing Up Girls” Figurines.  In the Google Merchant Center everything was correct:  All of his UPC’s were entered, he had all his brands populated, as well as all of his MPN’s. There were no tell-tale signs as to why this entire product line was not displaying for any of his shoppers.

After troubleshooting a bit, I figured out why no one was able to view his items: Google’s new SafeSite Search Filter.  Even if you are not logged into a Google account, by default, Google is now moderately filtering all search results.  This is for both product searches, as well as regular web searches.  This is why the items were not displaying.  It was because a “Growing Up Girls Blonde Age 14 Figurine” was enough to get filtered out.

I contacted Google to see if they could simply just turn the items back on. Here was their reply:

“If you feel that your item has been incorrectly categorized as adult, we recommend removing any mature language or content from your item. However, as our results aren’t biased by human intervention, we’re unable to provide guidelines for making specific items appear when SafeSearch is enabled.”

So this is something to be aware of if your items can be misconstrued as adult content.  In order to stay in front of the majority of Google Product Search users, you will need to reword your content to get around the Safe Search filters.
Google’s other suggestion was to turn off SafeSearch.

To turn the SafeSearch filter off:

1)      Hit the Cog Icon in the upper right corner of Google.com

2)      Click “Search settings”

3)      Scroll to the SafeSearch options, and choose “Do not filter my search results”

4)      Click Save at the bottom of the page.

Good luck, and if you have any questions on this, or anything comparison shopping engine related, please feel free to email me at  feedperfectblog@gmail.com.

1) First log into feedperfect, and click Settings to go to your feed settings page.

2) Click Edit on a feed you wish to see in google analytics.

*Today I am going to edit my Google Product Search feed as an example.

3) Past the following tracking Tag into the Tracking Parameters Field

&utm_source=Google&utm_medium=CSE&utm_campaign=FeedPerfect

That’s all there is to it.  For the other feeds just replace the word Google with which ever CSE it is.

For example:

&utm_source=Amazon&utm_medium=CSE&utm_campaign=FeedPerfect

Now I will show you where in Google Analytics your information will display.

1) Log in to your Google Analytics Account.

2) On the left side Click Traffic Sources

3) Now Click All Traffic Sources

4) Search by typing CSE and click Go

There is your Feedperfect Data.  You can adjust the date range in the upper right corner.  From here you can also sort it by all of google analytics filters.

I like to sort each engine by product (within each engine’s results), so here are some screen shots to show you your results on landing page (per product) level.

**One last note**

By doing it this way, you will also have the ability to look at all of your products across every CSE by looking in your Campaigns for Feedperfect.

Good luck, and if you need any extra help with this, or anything Comparison Shopping Engine related, feel free to ask me feedperfectblog@gmail.com.

-Steve

This is the first time Google has indicated that estimates are ok, and I am glad to see they understand that each merchant’s shipping situation is unique. For more information on the update to their tax & shipping requirement you can read their official notice on http://googlemerchantblog.blogspot.com.

If you missed my last blog post explaining Universal Product Identifiers, here is what Google is now requiring, it is really a combination of 2 out of 3 things:
1) UPC – the product’s exact 12 digit bar code number.
2) MPN – the products manufacture’s part number.
3) Brand – The brand of the product.

You can read more about Universal Product Identifiers here.
http://www.google.com/support/merchants/bin/answer.py?answer=160161

On June 6^th Google are also requiring you to send all tax and shipping information along with your product data too.  Ive found the easiest way to do this, is from the Google Merchant Center itself.  For more information on both of Google’s changes Check my last blog post about this. http://blog.feedperfect.com/2011/03/required-changes-to-google-product-search/m

This first post will be to show you how to create and import your own custom spreadsheet into Feedperfect.  Why would you want to?  You would want to do this so that your new data can work with, replace, or complement the data that you already have in feedperfect without altering, or complicating, your live web store.

Many of you might be populating comparison shopping engines (and Feedperfect) using the data that is written from your web store.  However, keep in mind that your comparison shopping engine campaigns do not have to contain the same data that is written on your live site.  Comparison shopping engines are populated with data that come from datafeeds (spreadsheets), and not websites.

The product titles and descriptions that you have on your live site might not necessarily be the best titles and descriptions to have on a comparison shopping engine.  After all, shoppers are going to these engines because they already know what they want, they just want to find the best store to buy it from.  Chances are you are marketing your products differently than your competitor.  For example, let’s say you were selling a Hershey’s Chocolate Bar.  What would you call it on your site?  Chocolate Bar?  Candy Bar?  What way would a searcher type into the CSE?  On these engines, the name of the game is to give the searcher an easy way to compare your items, rather than to set your self apart from your competitor.  The point is you would want an easy way to alter titles, descriptions, specifically for your CSE campaigns, without interrupting the text on your live site. This tutorial is for the method I use to do just that.

To begin, check that you have a ProductID already mapped in feedperfect. We’ll be working with a yahoo store today, so the ProductID that I have mapped from, are my yahoo ids.

The above list of existing mappings can be viewed on the Product Import screen.  (Product Catalog tab > Import Products button)

All you would need for your spreadsheet to sync up with your other Feedperfect data is to make your first column for your ProductID’s.  When making your column headers in your spreadsheet make the first one say ProductID.  Think of the ProductID as Feedperfect’s name for your item, so to supplement your Feedperfect data, you will need to first reference it by its Feedperfect name, its ProductID.

You can use this method to import any type of data, so just make sure your column headers are relevant to what you’re doing, so you know what the data is for later. Also, a good rule of thumb is to keep the headers of your custom spreadsheet data one word.

You can add as many columns as you want with your method, for my example I’m only going to import a column I called NewTitles.

Now in your ProductID column type the ProductID for the item(s) you wish to add data to.  In my case I would like to come up with a new title for ProductID Hershchocbar525. After referencing your ProductID add your data for your new column(s).

Do this for all of the products you would like in your spreadsheets data to.  If you would not like an item in your custom data, then leave it out.

Once youre done making your spreadsheet, save it as Text (Tab delimited) .txt (CSV works too).

Now let’s import your supplemental spreadsheet into feedperfect. Go back to the product import page.  (Product Catalog tab > Import Products button)

Click the add button on the right side, under your existing imports.

1) First you have to name your file.  I find it’s easier to call my file exactly what it’s named on my computer, so I can go back and edit it with out too much research.

2) Pull the type box to “File (CSV)”  txt works too.

3) Locate the file with the browse button.

4) For the Products drop down make sure its set to Update.

5) For the fields portion select Update If Empty.

6) Then Click save.

You will then see the name of your new file under your other import files.

Now the only thing left is to map the new columns of your new file, so Feedperfect will know where to accept your new data.

1)      Click edit in the lower right corner.

2)      Your new columns will be at the bottom, so just map your columns to an open Feedperfect Variable. (To Map highlight your new column name, in the left box called “your store”, and then highlight a free variable in the middle box “Feed Perfect” and then click the orange arrow to Map it).

Once you’re done, click Save.

Feedperfect recently added 10 custom variables, so those are available to choose from for your custom data.

Once you’re done, click save, and then import your new data into feedperfect by clicking the “import data button in the lower left corner”.

Once it’s successfully imported you have added your data successfully.  Now you can add your new data into your feeds. Since my custom data doesn’t include everything, my custom variables need to be called before the actual data.  This means that if there’s no data within your custom variable, then your alternative feedperfect field will be called. So put your custom data first.

I know it might seem like a difficult tip to begin with, but I will make use of these instructions in blog tips to come. Good things are on the way, Good luck.     -Steve

For more tips on making more comparison search titles and descriptions, check out one of my recent blog posts here: http://www.web.com/blog/ecommerce/google-shopping-tips-how-to-optimize-your-product-listings/