Google Merchant Center Feed Processing Errors April 22nd, 2010
If you received an email from Google today stating something along the lines of “No items inserted”, you’re not alone. It appears Google is having some feed processing issues today (4/22/10). The reality isn’t quite as bad as the email makes it sound, though. If you had products that were live and searchable yesterday, they will be live and searchable today, they just won’t include any updates that you may have had in today’s feed. We’ll keep you apprised of any developments as we learn more…
UPDATE 4/24/10 – Google notified us and indictated that the status of the feeds has been resolved. Looking at a few Google Merchant Center accounts, it appears that feeds are now processing fine.
Shopping Engine Success Webinar April 22nd, 2010
Join SingleFeed next Tuesday for a Webinar on Shopping Engine Success. You only have so much time in the day. And Shopping Engines are just one piece of your online marketing puzzle. So if you’re going to spend time improving your data feeds, let us give you the simple and straightforward advice on what to concentrate on and how to get it done right.
Register for Top 5 Tactics for Shopping Engine Success today.
Support Ticketing System Failure Between 4/5/10 – 4/9/10 April 9th, 2010
We recently experienced an issue with our support ticketing system that may have caused your request to not be received. If you filed a support ticket via the Support ticket form (https://www.singlefeed.com/services/support) between 4/5/10 and 4/9/10, and have not yet received an email response confirming the receipt of your request, please resubmit your request with “SSP2″ in the subject line. We’ll keep an eye out for your request and get you a speedy reply!
We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.
In case you missed the webinar this week with Miva Merchant on how to use the shopping engines with SingleFeed we’ve put up a recording here for you.
Thank you to Rick Wilson from Miva Merchant for joining us on the webinar to share how the SingleFeed module works within the Miva Merchant interface.
- Why are the shopping engines important
- Setting up your store for shopping engine success
- How to use SingleFeed with your Miva Merchant store
- Data Feed Optimization tips and advice
- Industry best practices from the experts
Q: What versions of Miva will the SingleFeed Module work on?
A: SingleFeed’s Miva module will work with 5.x stores. This will support the future release of Wombat.
Q: How much does the module cost?
A: The SingleFeed Miva Module is free. You can find the module in Miva Central or contact us for details.
Q: How does SingleFeed differ from other data feed management solutions that offer 50+ shopping engine feeds?
A: SingleFeed differs in many ways over other data feed management solutions. Regarding the number of shopping engines we support- we are only working with the highest quality shopping engines that will actually drive traffic and revenue. There are several other reasons that makes SingleFeed a unique solution, ask us today!
Q: Does SingleFeed integrate with any other solutions or sites besides the shopping engines?
A: Yes. SingleFeed currently works with PowerReviews Express. We are exploring on other tools like Search Spring, Amazon Marketplace and Buy.com Marketplace.
Shopzilla Merchant Account Center – No Data Since March 20th March 23rd, 2010
A quick note to let everyone know that Shopzilla’s “Cost and Performance data processing is currently delayed and is only available through March 20.” There’s a small note at the top of the merchant center when you login, but it’s easy to overlook. They’re working hard to fix the issue.
In case you missed the webinar or had to leave early, we made a recording it is now available online.
Thank you to Tom Funk and Andy Dunn of Timberline Interactive (part of CV3) for joining us and demonstrating our integration tool.
We covered the following topics:
- Why the shopping engines are important
- How to use SingleFeed with CV3
- Setting up your CV3 store for shopping engine success
- Industry best practices
- Data Feed Optimization tips and advice
I apologize for the long intro and poor audio quality at beginning of the audio track- it does go away.
Amazon Product Ads Webinar March 15th, 2010
Are you looking for a new way to drive traffic to your website? Amazon Product Ads is hosting a free webinar that SingleFeed merchants might be interested in attending. Learn about Amazon.com’s CPC advertising program that puts your products in front of millions of Amazon.com customers. Register today to discover how you can begin making Amazon.com customers your customers!
Introduction to Amazon Product Ads
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
10:00-10:45 AM Pacific Time
As a Product Ads seller, SingleFeed will upload your product catalog and you set your cost-per-click bids and daily budget. Amazon.com will then display your ads in highly targeted placements throughout the Amazon.com site. When customers are interested in buying your product, they click through to your website and purchase the product directly from you.
Reserve Your Seat and learn:
- What is Amazon Product Ads?
- What’s the benefit?
- How does it work?
- How to get started?
Yahoo! Shopping no longer accepting feeds March 11th, 2010
Yes, it is true. As of March 11, 2010, Yahoo! Shopping will no longer be accepting feeds via Yahoo! Product Submit. Instead, they will be receiving all their product data from Pricegrabber.
If you already have a Pricegrabber account, your products will automatically be sent over to Yahoo! Shoppping, as of 3/11/10.
If you do not already have a Pricegrabber account, you can set one up here. For a limited time, you can choose to submit to Pricegrabber and their network of sites, including Yahoo! Shopping, or you can choose to submit only to Yahoo! Shopping.
Due to this change, you’ll notice that Yahoo! Product Submit is no longer an available engine in your SingleFeed account.
In your SingleFeed reports, bear in mind that historical traffic data antedating 3/11/10 will still be attributed to Yahoo! Shopping. Any Yahoo! Shopping traffic postdating 3/11/10 will be attributed to Pricegrabber. This is because all Yahoo! Shopping traffic is being fueled by your Pricegrabber feed. However, Yahoo! Shopping will likely be extending a grace period with their feeds as merchants run-down any remaining funds in their Yahoo! Product Submit accounts, and as merchants continue to migrate over to Pricegrabber. For that reason we suspect that you’ll still see some traffic post 3/11/10 being attributed to Yahoo! Shoppping.
As far ramifications to your overall CSE campaign performance, there are a few considerations. As Brian mentions in his post, Pricegrabber will gain more click-share as it appropriates all Yahoo! Shopping traffic. But this could be a mixed bag. Yahoo! Shopping is a popular engine, and it does bring in quite a bit of traffic, but not as much as we all would assume, considering its big name cache. On top of that, conversion rate at Yahoo! Shopping is lower than that of Pricegrabber, according to aggregrate SingleFeed statistics. So you may likely see traffic for Pricegrabber go up, but conversion rate may actually go down. But if you’ve been live on Yahoo! Shopping for a while, and you are happy with the performance, then there’s nothing to worry about. Not much will change, except how your product data gets to Yahoo! Shopping.
Upcoming Webinars with CommerceV3 and Miva Merchant March 10th, 2010
We have two upcoming webinars this month with some great ecommerce platforms/shopping cart solutions. If you are a merchant using either of these platforms we encourage you to sign up and learn more about how to submit to the shopping engines and increase traffic and revenue.
CommerceV3 – Thursday, March 18th from11am-12pm PST. Register Now
Join CV3 and SingleFeed and learn the following:
- How to use SingleFeed with CV3
- Setting up your CV3 store for shopping engine success
- Industry best practices
- Data Feed Optimization tips and advice
Miva Merchant – Tuesday, March 23rd from 10am-11am PST. Register Now
Join Miva Merchant President and COO Rick Wilson and SingleFeed and learn the following:
- Why are the shopping engines important
- Setting up your store for shopping engine success
- How to use SingleFeed with your Miva Merchant store
- Data Feed Optimization tips and advice
- Industry best practices
Both of these webinars will be recorded in case you can’t attend. We’ll link to the recordings from this blog.
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Google Merchant Center appears to be sending erroneous emails March 3rd, 2010
Google has been sending out emails recently that appear to be partially in error. The subject reads: “Google Merchant Center problem with data feed file: storefeed.txt”. I say partially in error because from what we’ve seen the feed filenames are in fact registered with merchant’s Google Merchant Center accounts, but the file delivered on or around March 2 may have failed import on Google’s side. It does appear that merchant’s products are still published and searchable. If you have been live on Google Product Search for a while, and haven’t changed your feed filename recently, this email is probably not much to worry about. We still recommend logging into your Google Merchant Center account and doublechecking that you DO have a feedfile name there, and that your products are currently searchable. The body of the email reads:
“Dear Google Merchant Center user,
On March 2, 2010 3:59:44 PM EST you uploaded to Google Merchant Center via FTP a file named “mystorefile.txt”, but you don’t have a data feed registered with this name. Please verify that you provided the correct file name, including correct capitalization.
This is a computer-generated email. Please do not reply…”
We’ll keep you posted here as we learn more…
UPDATE: On 3/3/10 we received notification from Google that they experienced an error with FTP uploads, but they now believe they have it resolved. No action is required on your part.