Product Data Feed FAQs

There are a number of ways to include or exclude products from your Data Feeds, each with distinct benefits or uses depending on how you like to work. Here are step by step what you can do for the different options:

There are two levels of inclusion/exclusion options.

1. Is the rules based system which sets the minimum requirement for products to be included in the feed? Any product that passes the rules will be included in the feed UNLESS they are blocked at an item level.

2. Item level blocks can be done manually (checkboxes in the dashboard), or through uploading lists of product ids through the dashboard, or through our email block system.

By Default ALL items are included in a feed. If you’d rather that NO items are included and you instead want to submit a list of just the items to be sent, simply let the Feed Wizards know (send us your store and which feed) and we’ll switch your feed so by default NOTHING will get sent until you add some.

Product Inclusion Rules

In the feed wizards dashboard you can set up rules (most feeds have a few by default) that determine which products make it into your data feed.

To see and modify the rules for any feed:

1. Click on My Stores in the dashboard.
2. Click on a store name.
3. Click on Edit Rules next to the feed you want to modify.

These directions can’t go into every possible rule but basically any page that passes ALL rules may be included in the feed. You can add new rules, change rules, or even disable or delete rules (initial rules can be disabled but not deleted). You set each rule and depending on the rule, you may need to load up to 4 parameters. Simply save after adjusting and you’re good to go.

Manual Item Level Blocks

To manually add or remove products from a feed, for any items that pass the initial product rules:

1. Go to My Stores.
2. Click on your store name.
3. Click on View Products next to the feed you want to adjust. On this page you can go through the products that have passed the rules, change sorting, etc.
4. To exclude a product simply uncheck the checkbox on the left in the Include column (or check it to include it again).
5. Hit save and you’re done.

Uploaded Item Blocks

If you have a lot of items to block from a feed, just create a text file with your item ids (one id per line) and you can upload it.

1. Click on My Stores on the left.
2. Click on the feed.
3. Click on Edit Rules and at the bottom there is a link to Upload Feed Blocks/Inclusion File.
4. Select a file, choose whether it’s adding or removing these from the feed, and you can check if it’s to overwrite (or otherwise add) to the existing block data.
5. Click upload and it will get processed.

IMPORTANT: Be sure the exclusion list contains ALL the items you want to exclude from any particular feed. Our system replaces the list each time you upload so if you are sending small lists of exclusions, each submission is considered the complete list.

We hope this helps you trim your Yahoo! Store data feeds to include only the products you’d like.

If you would like to send the feed manually please follow the steps:

1. Log into your Feed Wizards dashboard.

2. Click on “My Stores” in the menu/left side navigation box.

3. Click on the store you would like to send the feed(s) for.

4. Under “Data Feeds” click on the “View Status” button of the feed you would like to send.

5. Towards the bottom under “Manage Service” you will see a link that says “Resend current feed now”.

6. Click the link to send the feed, and it will take an hour or so to send.

When managing product catalog data files and the legacy format, merchants have three options: Disable, Enable, and Enable but do not syndicate. When “Enable” is chosen, a link to your product catalog data file is sent to shopping comparison engines and other third-party sites, so they may download this file. When “Enable but do not syndicate” is chosen, your catalog of products is enabled and third-party sites can still access your data, but the links are not “auto-sent” to the various engines (namely Google).  Merchants who manage their own product feeds or who use a 3rd party for feeds should choose “Enable but do not syndicate” for this setting.  To adjust these settings:

1. In your Yahoo Store Manager click the “Search Engines” link, located in the Promote column. You will be taken to the Promote Your Site on Search Engines section of Store Manager.

2. Locate the “Enable and Submit your Product Catalogs to Shopping Comparison Engines” section of the page.

3. Choose one of the Disable, Enable, or Enable but do not syndicate options for your product catalog data file.

4. Click the “Done” button.

Our data feeds work immediately up being set up. We push your Yahoo store data to your recipient comparison shopping engines who list your items in their engines.

To optimize your product data for general search and in the comparison shopping engines, we have a helpful article at https://dashboard.feedwizards.com/articles/google/products/optimization

This article addresses Google feeds specifically, but the theory carries forward to most search engines and comparison shopping engines.

Online shopping feeds are sometimes overlooked by Yahoo! Store owners. Using shopping feeds on search engines opens online businesses to millions of shoppers who otherwise would never find merchant websites through basic searches. About half of the online shopping decisions are influenced by shopping feeds. Most online shoppers take time to compare prices, and most compare products on shopping feeds before they purchase them.

In this economy, shoppers are looking for the best deals. Shopping engines have specific areas where Yahoo! stores can market themselves using promotions, coupons and free shipping offers. Merchants who use these features can be separated out from a crowded marketplace.

Shopping search engines are influenced by feeds that are regularly updated. Also, the shopping experience and overall satisfaction will be greater if the feed has accurate product information.

Shopping feeds are a valuable part of an online merchant’s overall marketing effort. It is important to note that shopping feeds, along with email, search engine optimization and social media make up a solid marketing plan.
Shopping feeds offer a great opportunity to expand your online presence in a competitive world filled with selective consumers. Go to www.FeedWizards.com for more information about helping you to establish and manage your shopping feeds.

You can easily view your charges for your feeds by logging into your Feed Wizards dashboard.

The Feed Wizards dashboard shows the current monthly amount for your data feed service…whatever services and feeds you have set up currently. This changes every time you add or delete feeds or services.

Log into your Feed Wizards dashboard at https://dashboard.feedwizards.com/

Once logged in, if you click on the link “my stores” in the upper left of the screen, you will see your store. Clicking on the link/name of your store will show you all the services and data feeds set up on the store. There is a “billing” button you can click on to get a breakdown of the charges for the month as well.

1.  Create you product titles carefully.  Include brand, what the product is, and any distinguishing or unique feature

2. Focus on the free shopping engines first: Bing.com and TheFind.com.  Next list on Amazon Product Ads, then consider other pay-per-click engines with healthy profit margins.

3.  Upload your products every 24 to 48 hours, even if nothing has changed. Shopping engines like fresh data. Do this by publishing your Yahoo store or going to your Feed Wizards Dashboard.

4.  Include a minimum of 5 attributes for every product: title, description, price, image, brand, UPC (if applicable).

5.  Use easy shipping rules and configure your shopping engine accounts directly with the shipping information. Simple  rules help shopping engines accurately display your total checkout price. Simple shipping rules also help conversion rates.

6.  Configure your shopping engine accounts COMPLETELY. Give all the details about your store and give all the information you can. This will help the shopping engine identify your products and is likely to help your products rank on the shopping engine results pages.

7.  When you use pay-per-click shopping engines, have a way of measuring return on investment (ROI) to check for underperforming products.  You can remove these items from your data feeds.

8.  Categorize your products. Each shopping engine uses their own taxonomy – make sure you use the appropriate categories. If an engine doesn’t like Yahoo’s default categorization, you can individually categorize your products for better results.

There are a number of ways to include or exclude products from your Data Feeds, each with distinct benefits or uses depending on how you like to work. Here are step by step what you can do for the different options:

Product Exclusion Rules:

1. Is the rules based system which sets the minimum requirement for products to be included in the feed? Any product that passes the rules will be included in the feed UNLESS they are blocked at an item level.

2. Item level blocks can be done manually (checkboxes in the dashboard), or through uploading lists of product ids through the dashboard, or through our email block system.

By Default ALL items are included in a feed. If you’d rather that NO items are included and you instead want to submit a list of just the items to be sent, simply let the Feed Wizards know (send us your store and which feed) and we’ll switch your feed so by default NOTHING will get sent until you add some.

Product Inclusion Rules:

In the feed wizards dashboard you can set up rules (most feeds have a few by default) that determine which products make it into your data feed. To see and modify the rules for any feed:

1. Click on My Stores in the dashboard.

2. Click on a store name.

3. Click on Edit Rules next to the feed you want to modify.

These directions can’t go into every possible rule but basically any page that passes ALL rules may be included in the feed. You can add new rules, change rules, or even disable or delete rules (initial rules can be disabled but not deleted). You set each rule and depending on the rule, you may need to load up to 4 parameters. Simply save after adjusting and you’re good to go.

Manual Item Level Blocks

To manually add or remove products from a feed, for any items that pass the initial product rules:

Uploaded Item Blocks:

If you have a lot of items to block from a feed, just create a text file with your item ids (one id per line) and you can upload it.

1. Click on My Stores on the left.

2. Click on the feed.

3. Click on Edit Rules and at the bottom there is a link to Upload Feed Blocks/Inclusion File.

4. Select a file, choose whether it’s adding or removing these from the feed, and you can check if it’s to overwrite (or otherwise add) to the existing block data.

5. Click upload and it will get processed.

IMPORTANT: Be sure the exclusion list contains ALL the items you want to exclude from any particular feed.  Our system replaces the list each time you upload so if you are sending small lists of exclusions, each submission is considered the complete list.

As a rule image issues have to do with the images being sent with the feed which are the ones uploaded in the store. The key is checking the images in the feed for those items and compare against Google’s guidelines. Typical issues include text on the images, incorrectly sized images, too much white space, other items in the image, etc. You can download the feed from the google merchant center and you should be able to even see the image urls and images in the feed as well. It can also be related to encoding.  For more information see:

https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/6183365?hl=en

https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/6098289?hl=en

Some major search engines ask for 2 unique product identifiers to satisfy the GTIN requirement for brand name products sold by multiple merchants. Google Product Feeds must have GTINs, and tests the accuracy of the data provided. You may see errors or warnings about this in your Google Merchant Center account when viewing your product feeds.

The GTIN requirement is satisfied with 2 of these unique product identifiers which include UPC codes, Manufacturer Part Numbers (MPNs), International Standard Book Numbers (ISBNs) and brand names.

Yes.

We have a “Lite Feed Service” which does not include image hosting and only includes a feed to ONE comparison shopping engine. This service is $24.95 per month.

If you would like to add a data feed to your list of services please follow the steps below:

1. Log into your Feed Wizards dashboard.

2. Click on “My Stores” in the menu/left side navigation box.

3. Click on the store you would like to add the service to.

4. At the bottom of that page you will see a button called “Add Service”.

5. After clicking the button a list of feed services we offer will show.

6. Then simply click the “Add Service” button to the right of the feed you would like to add.

The Feed Wizards service is $44.95 monthly for stores with 10,000 items or fewer. This includes daily page data backup, true image hosting, and feeds to 3 comparison shopping engines.

Most feeds to standard comparison shopping engines each count as 1 feed for pricing purposes.

Affiliate feeds (eg: Commission Junction, Shareasale) each count as 3 feeds.

Stores with more than 10,000 pages are charged a nominal additional fee of $5 per 5000 pages over 10k.

If you only need one feed, we have a light service for one feed that is $24.95 and then $3 per 4000 pages over 10k.

Once you have decided to sign up for our data feed service, you will be taken to the Feed Wizards dashboard where you will create your account.  You will enter your contact information, store(s) information and payment information right in the secure dashboard.

The Feed Wizard dashboard is simple; you just need to fill in the requested fields. One thing you need to remember is to click SAVE CHANGES at the bottom of each page.

You will find navigation to be quick and easy.  You can click on the Feed Wizards logo at the top of any page to return to the home page of the dashboard.  The menu displayed on the left side of the pages makes it quite easy as well.

You have the ability to add, edit and delete services and information at any time.  The buttons for these functions are clearly visible on these pages.  Again, just fill in the requested fields and / or click on the appropriate buttons.

http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/smallbusiness/store/promote/tools/tools-97.html

http://www.feedwizards.com/index.php  Just click on the “Free trial signup” button. You will be asked to set up an account with us. Afterward, one of our feed specialists will contact you. We can establish the feed for you and send it up regularly to your Google merchant account for Google to pick up so Google can post your items onto google.com and google.com/shopping. Please note Google now charges you to list your products and requires you set up Product Listing Ads. Directions are here: https://dashboard.feedwizards.com/google/product/listing/ads

If you would like to view a feed please follow the steps below:

1. Log into your Feed Wizards dashboard at https://dashboard.feedwizards.com/

2. Click on “My Stores” in the menu/left side navigation box.

3. Click on the store you would like to view the feed(s).

4. Under “Data Feeds” you will see a link labeled “Download feed” to the left of the feed service’s name.

5. By clicking the link it should open a feed file which you can open in Excel to organize the data into columns.

Here are some things that Google considers for rankings.  (not an exhaustive list)

If you populate custom properties in your Yahoo store, please let us know the exact names of the properties and their “type” and we can retrieve that data for use in your data feeds.

Many custom fields will automatically get downloaded if you have Catalog Manager and have enabled the catalog.xml file. Some custom properties that aren’t part of the item type, or that are of certain types (references, ids, symbol), we must manually add to our export pages to retrieve.

Duplicate content can be a big issue with shopping engines and affiliates. You don’t want to spend time creating great content and then have Google or other engines think that another site is the originator. This could hurt you in their rankings, and bring users to the shopping engine first rather than your site. This will mean less traffic.

The solution is to provide alternative content to each of the engines. In order for us to feed alternative content to the different services, you have a couple of choices:

1. Load an alternative description in a new property and then configure the feed to use that field instead of the standard caption for the description. This has the one down side – it is a lot of work.

2. The more popular option is to install a dynamic content template. This is a two step process. The first to create the templated description and the second step is to apply it to the description field for each feed.

For step 1, login to the dashboard.

1. Click on My Stores.

2. Click on Edit Settings for your store.

3. Click the edit button in the Additional Settings area. Once there you can load your alternate description, inserting markers where we should insert price, name, and section name if you want it. See below for an example.

@name@ is in stock and ready to ship from XYZ Company. We stock @name@ for @price@ and we guarantee your satisfaction.

Basically our system will replace @name@ with the product name, @price@ with the price, and @section@ with the main section name. Now to apply it to any feed, go back to the My Stores list.

1. Click on your store, and then go to MAPPINGS for any feed.

2. Find the line that would include your caption (look for it in the fields or a field name that makes sense like description) and click on the M on the right under the Modifiers Column. This allows you to create content modifiers.

3. Remove all existing rules except one and change it to USE GENERIC DESCRIPTION.

4. Click save and you’re good to go.

If you would like to remove a feed from your list of services please follow the steps below:

1. Log into your Feed Wizards dashboard
2. Click on “My Stores” in the menu/left side navigation box
3. Click on the store you would like to remove the service from
4. Click on the button “Edit Settings” next to the feed you would like to remove
5. Click the check box “Cancel this service”
6. A window will pop-up for reason of removal, and click the “Save changes” button to remove the service

Yahoo uses the LAST section an item is added to as the category. This is true for both item pages and subsection pages. When you have an item that is in multiple sections, the LAST section you place the item into will be considered the PARENT section and that is what will show in the breadcrumbs trail. To reassign a parent section, go to that section page and “reset” the item as follows:

1. Remove the item ID from the contents and update.

2. Reinsert the item ID back into the contents property and update again.

Now your item will be re-categorized and your site’s main CONTENTS page will automatically update.

Your Feed Wizards data feed service will automatically push a refreshed feed to TheFind every 3rd day.  If you publish your Yahoo store more frequently, we will push the feed overnight whenever you publish your store during that day.

We’ve received reports from merchants using TheFind that TheFind is saying they need to submit a refreshed data feed.  This may be an issue with TheFind’s system not acknowledging the data file (unlikely) or it might be that TheFind’s reporting system has an issue and is sending an erroneous reminder to refresh your data file.

The quickest way to address this is to publish your Yahoo store or push a feed to TheFind directly by logging in to your Feed Wizards dashboard at https://dashboard.feedwizards.com

If you find this issue persists, please contact our office and we will happily troubleshoot.

You can set your tax & shipping settings in your Google Merchant Center by following the steps below:

1. Sign into your Google merchant account at https://www.google.com/base

2. Under the left navigation area on the page, click on “Settings”.

3. Click on “Tax and shipping”- there are several settings you can choose from.

4. Choose the settings that apply for both (you will see a couple of options).

*Shipping Information.
Since Yahoo does not export this information, you must set it in your Google Merchant Account on the ‘account level’.

*Tax Information.
Since this information is RARELY available in a Yahoo store, you MUST set it in your Google Merchant Account on the ‘account level’. You have 3 choices and will need to decide which you want to choose, either not charge any tax, set taxes by state, or set taxes by zip code. Either of the 3 is fine, you just need to choose one.

For the item that is inserted into your listings but doesn’t come up when you search, that is another issue for which you should contact Google.  The item is clearly inserted but somehow Google doesn’t think it is optimized for that search phrase.  If there is some sort of penalty Google is imposing on that item, they should let you know.  Could it perhaps be the item comes up in the search but Google has ranked it very low?

I hope this is helpful.  Please let me know if you have questions.

Google says in their document they do not allow weapons so you must remove all weapons from your product feed.

Both AdWords and PLA campaigns are managed through AdWords.

Product Listing Ads are cost per click (CPC) ads which online merchants purchase through AdWords. These ads appear on Google Search pages to the left, and top of results. They feature product images and are tailored towards products and product categories.

AdWords are text ads are also CPC ads that are purchased through AdWords. They are based on keywords (not products or product categories).  The ads usually have a highlighted background.

Both programs are moderated by what you bid on (adgroups for PLAs, or keywords for AdWords) and your daily budget.  Both click through to your site.

There are two sides to the Google Shopping listings (and google natural search listings for that matter).  Getting ON the listings at all, then rising to the top of search results.

Once your products are successfully inserted into Google’s system, typical SEO best-practices come into play.  Some practical pointers…

7.  IMPORTANT:  Use an SEO / SEM firm.  Get guidance from search optimization pros.  These folks keep abreast of all the algorithm trends and can guide you on ways to keep your content updated and your site code fresh.

Google Data Feed Errors

Do not get flagged, kicked off or rejected from your Google data feed.  Make sure you follow the suggestions below to avoid this sort of trouble.

Always make sure to monitor your Google Merchant account. Here you can find an in-depth breakdown of data feed errors and how to fix them. Any critical errors here have the potential to have some or all of the products in your data feed disapproved or rejected.  Suggested Optimizations, which are also noted on this page, refer to changes Google suggests you make, but won’t affect your data feed processing.

It is important to note that Google doesn’t list all of the products with each error on this page, just 3-5 examples per each error. It is likely more products have the same error, so be sure to check the whole feed.

Google’s Data Feed Specifications

Google data feeds have very precise requirements.  The necessary data, and how it is formatted, needs to adhere to Google’s specifications.  What your Google data feed contains and what it looks like are major determinates in why your products may be rejected.

If you sell unique items (antiques, bundled products), or products in specific categories (clothing), your data feed has different guidelines it needs to follow.

Google has a list of restricted products that do not follow Google’s policies.  It includes things like illegal drugs, guns and supplements with banned ingredients.  Keep in mind, Google may not know a “toy gun” is not a gun.

Once you’ve corrected your mistake and re-uploaded your data feed, make sure to let Google know.  Google allows one week to correct any feed violations, but Google is also notorious for suspect support.

If you’re troubleshooting an issue with Google customer support or trying to get your feed live, be persistent and courteous with support.

Helpful Resources

Data Feed Specifications

Policies for used and refurbished items

Restricted Products on Google Shopping

Account Warnings and Suspensions

Four Introductory Steps to Take

Troubleshoot Data Feed

First try logging into your Google Merchant Center and clicking on the data feed name. Google will often post the reasons for rejecting a data file here. If there are no specific reasons listed, use the following link to contact Google to get some information about the feed:

http://base.google.com/support/bin/request.py?contact_type=error&ctx=direct

Google is usually very good about sending a reply, but keep at them if you don’t hear back within a couple days.

As a rule image issues have to do with the images being sent with the feed which are the ones uploaded in the store. The key is checking the images in the feed for those items and compare against Google’s guidelines. Typical issues include text on the images, incorrectly sized images, too much white space, other items in the image, etc. You can download the feed from the google merchant center and you should be able to even see the image urls and images in the feed as well. It can also be related to encoding.  For more information see:

https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/6183365?hl=en

https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/6098289?hl=en

1. Go to: https://adcenter.microsoft.com/

2. Log in to your AdCenter account and click the “TOOLS” tab on the top right of the page.

3. Click on “Bing Shopping Account Management” link under “Management Tools” section.

4. Click on “Store Settings” in the top navigation bar, and fill out your store’s information and upload a logo. Be sure that the logo satisfies Bing’s image requirements and save the page.

5. Click on “Catalog Management” tab and set your Feed Format to “Bing Shopping” and set how to provide Feed Files as “Merchant Upload”.

6. Save feed filename as “bingshopping” without any extension.

7. Click on “FTP Settings” tab.

8. Set your FTP user name and FTP password. Make note of these because we need them to send your feed. (If you ever need to change your FTP login or password, be sure to let us know so we can adjust our system.

Bing Shopping Forum:
http://community.microsoftadvertising.com/forums/31.aspx