As noted in a previous post, Google Base will be making some changes to its required attributes on June 30th. While this won’t effect Yahoo! store – FeedPerfect users, it may be an issue for Legacy store users not on FeedPerfect.
If you are not yet using FeedPerfect and you have a Yahoo! Legacy store, please take a closer look. The now required “condition” attribute can cause some issues for you without the help of FeedPerfect.
Legacy stores do not have catalog manager, and therefore the merchant cannot easily add a new attribute like “condition”. In Legacy stores, only objinfo.xml is available for pulling catalog data. It does not include that field as of yet. So there is a chance Google Base will reject products that do not include the “condition” after June 30th.
What’s a Legacy store owner to do?
1. Upgrade in Yahoo! to Merchant Solutions.
2. Try FeedPerfect. FeedPerfect is designed to overcome these limitations and provide all Yahoo! store owners the ability to overcome the constant changes in feeds requirements. Legacy store owners can import their store, and use FP’s default condition to circumvent the limitation.
FeedPerfect is currently available with a 14 day free trial too. Just visit FeedPerfect.com and ensure that you don’t lose visibility on Google Product Search any time soon.
On June 30th, Google Product Search will make some minor changes to the feed format it requires. If you are currently using Google Product Search, you recently received an e-mail detailing the changes to come. You will not need to alter any data for June 30th, though you will be able to take advantage of the new “compatible with” attribute.
The “condition” attribute will become required. The “condition” has always been required in FeedPerfect for optimal results. By default, the attribute is set to “new”.
The “product type” attribute will change to recommended. The “product type” attribute was previously required. It will be made recommended in FeedPerfect on June 30th, but no changes will be necessary from our users’ end.
Finally, Google Product Search is introducing a new “compatible with” attribute available June 30th.
The new “compatible with” allows you to specify what products your item is compatible with. For instance, if you’re listing an HP 74 (CB335WN) black ink cartridge, you can use this attribute to tell us that it’s compatible with the HP Photosmart C4480 and HP Photosmart C4580 printers. Using this attribute will help you avoid listing the same item multiple times with different compatibility information. For more information, please visit
http://base.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=73932#optional
From Become.com:
Valued Partner,
Time is almost out to take part in Become.com’s free promo text offer in June*!
This offer is available only to merchants who install the ROI tracker during the month of May, so grab the code from the Become.com merchant dashboard and get it installed today!
What is it?
Become.com’s ROI tracker is a campaign optimizing tool we offer free of charge to our retailers to help them achieve the BEST performance on Become.com. The code will only track sales generated by Become.com.
Why should I use it?
This data helps us know if you convert best on X products over Y and make informed suggestions and campaign improvements together based on this feedback. It is also a great tool to review performance on Become.com–on a category or overall basis. In a tough economy your performance goals are more important than ever, and greater visibility into your Become.com campaign will help us work with you to optimize and rev up to meet your requirements!
Account data will be visible to the specific account only. We do not share this data with competitors or partners.
What kind of information does it track?
Become.com’s ROI tracker tracks sales generated by Become.com clicks (30 day cookie credit). When a buyer reaches the confirmation page, the code will automatically send the necessary information back to our reporting. We do not retrieve sensitive data or sales made from other sources.
What is PromoText?
PromoText allows you to add customized messaging to your product listings on Become.com, alerting online shoppers to specials deals and discounts on your site (ex: ‘Free Shipping!’). You can find more information on PromoText here.
To qualify for the promotion, please install the ROI tracker this month and contact your account manager or email merchanthelp@become.com.
Best,
The Become.com Team
* PromoText charges will be credited back to the account dashboard at the end of the month
Shopping.com is excited to announce 2 new pricing programs, beginning May 15th, that will enable you to add low priced inventory and advertise your brand to millions. This is another step to sustain your cost of sales and profitability.
- Introducing Tiered CPC Pricing – We are introducing a tiered pricing model where the CPC rates will be based on the product price in all categories.This innovative pricing model enables you to advertise low priced items and match consumer demand, while maintaining profit. We recognize some tiers will see an increase nevertheless the methodology we used to develop the tiered pricing model is based on meeting a sustainable cost of sale.
Click here to view the new rate card.
- Launching Tiered Logo Pricing – Shopping.com is making brand advertising more affordable by changing the logo rate from a flat $0.10 CPC to a tiered cost structure based on the item price. The new rates allow you to economically advertise your brand in front of millions of consumers. These new rates should not exceed 25% of your overall spend.
Additionally, we recently completed the full roll-out of our international click filtering program. You will continue to receive international traffic but Shopping.com will not charge you for these clicks, ultimately improving your campaign’s conversion to sale.
Learn more on how to take advantage of these new prices and features.
For a limited time, Priceleap.com is offering unlimited clicks on unlimited items for a flat monthly fee for the the life of an account when you sign up for a $39.95/month plan or for ten bucks more you can have your logo displayed as well (100×30 pixels and no more than 2k in size).
Here’s a link:
http://priceleap.com/signup_pl/signuppl.htm
You might also want to check out their priceleap merchant agreement
Basically, you just sign up, activate the feed and set it up in Feed Perfect like any other CSE. When you push your first feed, it takes 3-5 days to process the first time and typically 24-48 hours to go live any time you update your feed after that.
Happy Feeding!
Many of the sorting, filtering, and other routines having to do with data in Feed Perfect were recently updated and optimized for speed. If it’s been a while since you have gone through your items, or if you have a larger number of products on your store, check out some of the query functions – assignment, filters, mapping categories… Some of the operations are faster by orders of magnitude!
Some of these engines are Cost Per Click (CPC) this means that you must keep the account funded for your products to appear on the engine and any time a shopper clicks on one of your products listed on the engine you will be charged a fee. This fee is determined by the engine. You can increase the fee to help your positioning on the search results pages for the engine. Each engine has different rules and charges that apply to them. We recommend that you research the engines when choosing those to which you will submit. Remember no one knows your store like you do.
- Google Product Search – Free
- Shopzilla – CPC
- Shopping.com – CPC
- Yahoo! Shopping – CPC
- MySimon – CPC
- NexTag – CPC
- PriceLeap – CPC
- PriceSaving – CPC
- Smarter – CPC
- Price Grabber – CPC
- Become.com – CPC
- SortPrice – Monthly Fee
- Pronto.com – CPC
- StreetPrices.com – CPC
- Amazon Product Ads – CPC
- buySAFE Bonded Shopping Network™ – CPA (Commission %)
- Bing Cashback – CPA (Commission %)
Engine types updated! Thanks for the feedback!!
Taken from: I’d like to get my store’s products listed on mySimon. How can I do that?
“Our non-tech listings are powered by Shopping.com. Our tech listings are powered by CNET.”
So if you have non-tech products listed on Shopping.com and someone searches for them on mySimon, your listings may appear on mySimon.
-MM
We have recently updated categories on Shopzilla. Take time to go into your account and look at how your categories are mapped up. You may have some categories that aren’t the best for your products. This should be a common practice at least a couple times a year. I like to go into my accounts after they are all setup and start to categorize the products individually. For example: You have an appliance store with a category titled small appliances, and under small appliances there are a bunch of different brands. Within the brands you have many different categories: toasters, blenders, rice cookers, etc… When you initially categorize you can’t see all of the different products, this will have to be done individually. Take the time to do this, it will help your sales out immensely.
When you shop on a CSE you see that the products are grouped together by parent category’s, that’s how items are found. If you aren’t categorized properly, the end user will have a hard time locating you. So, rather than risking that, make sure when you set up the engines, they are set up right.
Sell smart this holiday season with FeedPerfect. J
As you advertise on the CSE’s you will find out how each and every one has different requirements for your data feed content. Most of them have the standards: UPC, Name, Description, SKU, MPN, Image URL, etc…
On Shopzilla, they have all of them including an optional Promo Text field. This allows you to add promotional text above your website name on your products that are displayed on Shopzilla. For example: say some of your products have “Free Shipping” and others dont, you can add Free Shipping to the products that do with the Promo Text.
When you sign into your Shopzilla account, go to this page: https://merchant.shopzilla.com/pp/resources/us/OA_feed.doc And you will find the information regarding promo text and how to add it to your prouduct file.
Hope this helps!
Monday, June 15th, 2009 
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