http://www.atensoftware.com/ News and system status feed. en-us Copyright 2010 Aten Software LLC All Rights Reserved. 2012-05-07T00:00:00-07:00 noreply@spambucket.com Technology weekly 1 2000-01-01T00:00+00:00 http://www.atensoftware.com/p32.php#1336374000 If you have not already done so, please set up your tax and shipping rules in your Google Merchant Center Tax and Shipping Settings. Tax and shipping must be defined (for US sellers) or your items will be disapproved. google_product_category must also be valid and defined, or your items will be disapproved. Even if you had valid categories before, you should double-check because Google has changed many major categories. Use the Google Validation Report located in your account to quickly see if there are any errors with your feed. 2012-05-07T00:00:00-07:00 http://www.atensoftware.com/p32.php#1334473200 The hardware issue has been resolved and feed processing performance is fully restored. Also, our new pricing is in effect starting today. See our press release for more information. 2012-04-15T00:00:00-07:00 http://www.atensoftware.com/p32.php#1334386800 10:41 AM EST: We are currently experiencing a hardware issue on our feed processing server affecting temporary file storage. Processing tasks are not working. We are working on resolving the issue and hope to have everything fully restored shortly. 11:04 AM EST: Task processing is restored, although everything will run slower than usual. We are re-executing all scheduled tasks. We'll post again when performance is restored too. 2012-04-14T00:00:00-07:00 http://www.atensoftware.com/p32.php#1333177200 Bing Shopping is once again accepting new merchants! We encourage you to add feeds to Bing Shopping and TheFind, both of which offer free listings. Your cost for additional data feeds is $5.40/month (as of 4/15/2012). Bing Shopping D.I.Y. Setup Guide TheFind D.I.Y. Setup Guide Express Feed Setup - Additional Feed - (Setup service for $45 per feed) NEW PRICING REMINDER Our service pricing is changing on April 15th, 2012. Please refer to our emailed announcement on March 15th, which you can also read on our news page. For complete details, please see our pricing page. 2012-03-31T00:00:00-07:00 http://www.atensoftware.com/p32.php#1331794800 FREE GOOGLE MONITORING: Reduce lost sales with our product count monitoring service for Google Product Search, now available free of charge! Our system will check your product count of actively listed items each day, and send you an email if it drops below a threshold you specify. This will give you quick notice about any item disapprovals or errors, and help you reduce potentially costly downtime. See here for our new, simplified feed monitor setup instructions. NEW SERVICE PRICING: We have not raised our pricing for two years, and in that time, we have added essential features to your service. Here is a short list of enhancements: Google feed validation report Daily plus feed submission Revamped website Much faster feed processing Platform support for AspDotNetStorefront and Magento, with more on the way More data feed templates Source data analysis report 100s of other improvements As you know, Google feed requirements have gotten much more complex and demanding. Your monthly service charge includes automatic upgrades of all your feeds to the latest specifications. You are also entitled to email and telephone support, where we strive for same-day response. To keep up with the pace of change and continue improving our service, we are increasing our monthly feed pricing effective April 15, 2012. Also, our "Basic Data Feed" is now called the "Standard Data Feed", and "Advanced Data Feed" is renamed to "Custom Data Feed", to better indicate their purpose. First Standard Data Feed - $16.50 / month Each Additional Standard Data Feed - $5.40 / month First Custom Data Feed - $25.50 / month Each Additional Custom Data Feed - $14.40 / month Effective immediately, our pricing for optional/one-time services has also been modified, with lower pricing for data feed optimization and some additions to our service. For complete details, please see our feed service pricing page. 2012-03-15T00:00:00-07:00 http://www.atensoftware.com/p32.php#1330675200 Google has made some changes to the google_product_category, tax, and shipping attributes. You may not have to take any action, but we ask you to review the changes to make sure your feeds are up-to-date. 1. tax and shipping Tax and shipping must be defined (for US sellers). You need to do this even if you do not charge tax and/or shipping. If you have not already, you can easily set up account-level tax and shipping rules. Note that tax and shipping do not have to be exact. Google only requires that they be estimated, "such that the total cost in Product Search results is either correct or overestimated for the majority of users." For more information, see Tax and Shipping settings for Google Product Search. 2. google_product_category Google now requires that you use only the categories from their official taxonomy in the google_product_category attribute. You can no longer specify multiple categories, but you can still specify top-level categories. You may leave this field blank, unless your products fall into one of the following seven categories: Apparel & Accessories > Clothing Apparel & Accessories > Shoes Apparel & Accessories (Note that submitting this value for clothing and shoes is not acceptable) Media > Books Media > DVDs & Videos Media > Music Software > Video Game Software Note that once you specify 'Apparel & Accessories', the gender, age_group, size, and color attributes become required. For 'Media', ISBN numbers may be required. At a minimum, we recommend adding a top-level, default value for this attribute. However, according to Google, "you can increase the chances that your products will be included in relevant categories by sending us highly structured information for your items." Google has recently revised many of their categories by adding, removing, and changing them. Check your Google Merchant Account Dashboard, or go to Manage Feed > Google Validation Report to see if your items were affected. For more information, see here: Google Merchant Center Announcement Google Product Category and Product Type attributes 2012-03-02T00:00:00-08:00 http://www.atensoftware.com/p32.php#1329033600 We have enhanced the Yahoo Store to Google Product Search feeds to allow more configuration options for the 'product_type' attribute. By default, this attribute is set to the Yahoo Path. Now, you can override this value with the data from any of the fields in your store catalog by simply specifying the catalog field name. While it is not necessary to make any changes, a properly specified google_product_category and product_type may improve your results. For more information, see here: Google Product Category and Product Type attributes Did you know we can submit your feed Daily for no extra charge as compared to less frequent submissions? Did you also know that a daily submission may improve your ranking? If your feed is not set to run Daily, we recommend you change the scheduling using the instructions below. What is the 'Daily Plus' Update Frequency option? Did you know that if your Google feed has a large number of items with errors, all your listings could be suspended by Google? It is important to either exclude those items from the feed, or correct the errors. Our new Google Feed Validation report makes this easy. This will show you the errors and warnings in your feed, which if corrected, will boost the number and quality of your listings. See the link below for more information. Exclude or Filter Out Items That Do Not Meet Google Requirements 2012-02-12T00:00:00-08:00 http://www.atensoftware.com/p32.php#1322899200 We are planning to add support for stores hosted on the popular, BigCommerce platform. If you have a BigCommerce store, and are interested in being a beta tester, please reply for more information. Other News: We have dropped the 'is-google-acceptable' field from all Google feeds (Advanced and Basic). Any feeds that were using this for filtering purposes have been automatically upgraded to use the new 'item_errors' field instead. You do not need to take any action, but you may notice your item count increase or decrease slightly in Google. This is because the checks performed by the 'item_errors' field are much more accurate, flexible, and powerful. If you need to filter out your items with errors from Google, see the instructions here. We corrected a glitch on the 'item_errors' calculation where it was not detecting invalid Google Product Categories. We have added a Nextag feed template for stores on the Magento platform. 2011-12-03T00:00:00-08:00 http://www.atensoftware.com/p32.php#1322294400 We have vastly improved the 'Google Feed Analysis' report and renamed it to the 'Validation Report'. This new report summarizes all the issues (errors and warnings) in your feed. It currently only works for Google feeds. With each issue, there is a link to view all the items with that issue, or view information on how to resolve the issue. Additionally, the product list has a new drop-down to filter the list by item error or warning. When you view a product detail page, you can see all the detailed error messages and warnings that apply to the item. The new validation system uses two (disabled) fields that have been added to all Basic Google feeds, item_errors and item_warnings. If you want to prevent items with errors from being submitted to Google, please follow the instructions here. If you were using the 'is-google-acceptable' field for this purpose, you do not need to take any action. We will be deleting this field and replacing it with a filter on the 'item_errors' field in approximately one week. The 'item_errors' field is more accurate than 'is-google-acceptable'. 2011-11-26T00:00:00-08:00 http://www.atensoftware.com/p32.php#1320217200 All Shopping.com feeds were successfully upgraded today, as announced earlier. 2011-11-02T00:00:00-07:00 http://www.atensoftware.com/p32.php#1319785200 To our Shopping.com feed users, we are upgrading your Shopping.com feed (or feeds) to the version 4.0 feed specification. You do not have to take any action; this is simply a notice of what changes will be taking place. The upgrade will happen automatically next week, and then we will submit a request to Shopping.com to remap your feed as needed. The following changes will be made: All feeds will be upgraded to have 54 fields, and settings from previous fields will be carried over automatically. The file format will be changed to comma-separated value (CSV) format. The file name will be changed to 'shopping.csv'. The file will be zipped and uploaded as 'shopping.zip'. Feeds that are scheduled will be set to 'Daily Plus' submission frequency, as recommended by Shopping.com. If your Shopping.com feed has not been used for a long time (generally, over 6 months), we may delete your feed. In that case, you can simply create a new feed using the latest template if you plan to submit to Shopping.com again. Feeds from Magento stores and some customized feeds have already been manually upgraded, and you should have received an email. 2011-10-28T00:00:00-07:00 http://www.atensoftware.com/p32.php#1319266800 We have updated all ShopMania data feeds to the latest specifications. The following new fields were added: Shipping Cost, Availability, and GTIN We have also updated all Pronto data feeds to the latest specifications (version 3). Twenty-four optional fields were added, and two (unused) fields were removed. The 'Daily Plus' update frequency is now available and recommended for this feed. No action is required, but if you wish, you may configure the new fields from the "Manage Feed > Define Fields" page. 2011-10-22T00:00:00-07:00 http://www.atensoftware.com/p32.php#1318748400 We have significantly improved our Product Tagging Tool for Google Feeds. This tool allows you to very quickly enter data required by Google for each of your items, especially Apparel items. It is far faster than the Yahoo Store Editor, and easier to use than a spreadsheet. We can set this up for you as an Advanced feed for a one-time fee of $49. Check out our new Power Tips for Yahoo Store Merchants article for some ideas that could save you hours of time! 2011-10-16T00:00:00-07:00 http://www.atensoftware.com/p32.php#1318489200 We have renamed the 'Continuous' data feed update frequency to 'Daily Plus'. This option submits your feed a minimum of once per day, as well as submitting your feed within about one hour of publishing your Yahoo Store. We have extended this option to Shopping.com feeds, since they now support more frequent submissions as well. See the Daily Plus Data Feed Updates page for details. We were recently interviewed by Shawna Seigel on WebmasterRadio.fm, where we discussed Why You Need Data Feeds. Click the link to listen. Bing and Shopping.com are merging according to their email announcement. We will have more on what this means for your data feeds as soon as we find out. 2011-10-13T00:00:00-07:00 http://www.atensoftware.com/p32.php#1316588400 If your data feed is suspended by Google due to missing identifiers on some items, we have a simple solution for you to exclude these items and submit only the valid listings. For complete instructions, see here: Exclude or Filter Out Items That Do Not Meet Google Requirements To summarize, you simply add a disabled field called 'is-google-acceptable' to your feed, and then set up a filter to exclude the items where this is set to 0. This field is calculated by our back-end to either 0 or 1 depending on whether or not the item meets the unique identifier requirements and other basic requirements. As you add information to your store, the excluded items will automatically be included and submitted in the feed, giving you plenty of time to get your items into compliance. Product Tagging Feed The Yahoo Store Editor interface can be cumbersome. To get around this, we have created a new type of Advanced data feed that generates an HTML file that you can download to your computer. When you open this file in your web browser, you will see the main picture of each item along with a form to enter data such as brand, mpn, color, gender, etc. Enter the information and click a button to generate a CSV file that you can upload directly into your Yahoo Store. Refresh the feed and all the new information will be pre-populated and you can continue working on more items. This Product Tagging feed is in a pre-release stage, but we are announcing it immediately because it might save you a lot of time even as it is. For more information on pricing and setup, see here: Easy Color-Tagging for your Yahoo Store Products 2011-09-21T00:00:00-07:00 http://www.atensoftware.com/p32.php#1315897200 Google has deprecated the 'manufacturer' attribute. If it is submitted in the feed, it is ignored without any warnings or errors. Therefore, we have dropped the field from all Google feeds (Advanced and Basic) where it was set to the same value as 'brand'. If it was set different from 'brand', then we renamed it to 'c:manufacturer:string', so that Google may accept the values as a custom attribute. This change is automatic and no action needs to be taken on your part. 2011-09-13T00:00:00-07:00 http://www.atensoftware.com/p32.php#1315638000 We are excited to announce our new 'Continuous' data feed updates feature, included for free with your data feed service! This goes beyond traditional, daily feed submissions to submit your listings to Google as soon as you publish your Yahoo Store (within 1 hour). This free feature enables you to meet Google's new high-quality data recommendations and provide an excellent shopping experience to your shoppers. Enabling this feature is as simple as selecting the 'Continuous' option from the 'Manage Feed > Modify Settings' page for your feed. This option is currently only available for Yahoo Store to Google Product Search data feeds. See Continuous Data Feed Updates for details. 2011-09-10T00:00:00-07:00 http://www.atensoftware.com/p32.php#1315378800 We have updated all Google feeds (Advanced and Basic for all platforms) with new fields to support Google's new requirements. Any specific settings you had on your feeds have been carried over automatically. You are not required to take any action as a result of these changes. However, you should check your Google Feed Analysis before September 22nd to see if your feed complies with Google's new requirements. To view your free Google Feed Analysis, simply log into your Aten Software Account, click on 'Manage' for your Google feed, and then click the 'Google Feed Analysis' link. Here is a summary of the changes for the Yahoo Store-Google data feeds. The field order has been changed, and the following fields have been added. All of the fields below are optional. additional_image_link a new field where you can specify additional images item_group_id left blank; use only if you would like to submit variants material left blank and mapped to 'material' catalog field, if it exists pattern left blank and mapped to 'pattern' catalog field, if it exists gender left blank and mapped to 'gender' catalog field, if it exists age_group left blank and mapped to 'age-group' catalog field, if it exists The availability field was added to some Advanced feeds if it was not already there. It is a required field and it has been added with a default value of 'in stock'. If you were using your Google feed for non-Google purposes, please check that the recipient can process the new fields and field order correctly. Please see the new requirements for sellers of apparel items (including shoes and jewelry). Google's new requirements are set to take effect in just 15 days, and this is their biggest change to date. Please expect more announcements from us as we continue to work through this change. You can also read Google's latest feed guidance here. 2011-09-07T00:00:00-07:00 http://www.atensoftware.com/p32.php#1315206000 Effective immediately, we have lowered the pricing for our Magento and AspDotNetStorefront data feeds to be the same as the pricing for our Yahoo Store feeds. The new pricing is $13.50/month for the first Basic data feed, and $4.50/month for each additional Basic data feed. We have reviewed and downgraded all the feeds to Basic data feeds if possible, so that you can take advantage of the lower pricing. Note that as a Basic feed, your feed is still *identical* to the way it was before. The only difference is that a few options for specialized customization, which you were not using, will be unavailable unless requested. If your feed had customizations (e.g. custom programming or special fields) that were not supported by our Basic data feed, then we left the feed as an Advanced feed. The Advanced feed pricing remains the same, at $7.50/month/feed extra in addition to the Basic feed cost. Only a small number of feeds had to remain as Advanced feeds. Go to My Account > Billing Summary to see your current, monthly pricing. We are happy to be able to provide you with the same service for lower cost! Stay tuned for more improvements and announcements. We also updated all Magento and AspDotNetStorefront Google feeds to the latest Google feed specifications. 2011-09-05T00:00:00-07:00 http://www.atensoftware.com/p32.php#1313650800 Google's new data feed requirements are just around the corner, and are set to take effect on September 22, 2011. The good news is that we have enhanced our free, Google Feed Analysis tool to make it a one-stop source for compliance-checking your feed. Now, besides checking for unique identifier requirements, it also validates categories and analyzes apparel items. To access this tool, log into your Aten account, click 'Manage' for your Google feed, and then click 'Google Feed Analysis'. We have added a new field type that allows you to submit the first color and/or size option value. You can add this field from the 'Define Fields' page for your feed. Just make sure the main product image coincides with the first color/size option. 2011-08-18T00:00:00-07:00 http://www.atensoftware.com/p32.php#1312959600 Bing FTP submissions are back to normal after about a week of errors. However, Bing is still not on-boarding new merchants as they complete system maintenance. We'll post an announcement when they start accepting new merchants again. Our Facebook Shoptab feeds are now sorted by category and title for better display on your Facebook fan page. 2011-08-10T00:00:00-07:00 http://www.atensoftware.com/p32.php#1312268400 Magento Commerce and AspDotNetStorefront data feed services have been released from Beta today. See our press release for details. Bing is currently performing maintenance on their FTP server. The submissions may fail until they have completed the maintenance. 2011-08-02T00:00:00-07:00 http://www.atensoftware.com/p32.php#1312095600 Magento and AspDotNetstorefront Feeds Released Effective August 2, 2011, the Magento Commerce and AspDotNetStorefront data feed services will be fully released services. These services have completed a lengthy testing period and are sufficiently mature for production use. Due to their additional complexity, the feeds will remain Advanced feeds. These will have the same pricing as for our Yahoo Store Advanced feeds, which is $21/month for the first feed and $12/month for each additional feed. Bing FTP Server Down Bing's FTP server has been down over the weekend. You may be getting "User Cannot Log In" data feed error notices by email. We have contacted Bing and are hoping for a quick resolution. Follow us on Facebook/Twitter for the latest updates. 2011-07-31T00:00:00-07:00 http://www.atensoftware.com/p32.php#1311922800 We now support a Pronto data feed for Magento stores. Also, we set up a special Bing FTP Error support page for those experiencing occasional FTP errors with their Bing data feeds. 2011-07-29T00:00:00-07:00 http://www.atensoftware.com/p32.php#1311750000 We have enhanced the Google Feed Analysis so that it tells you if you are using categories that are not supported by Google. To access your free analysis, go to "Manage Feed > Google Feed Analysis". Also, all Google Advanced feeds have had the 'weight' column renamed to 'shipping_weight' to comply with Google's new specifications. 2011-07-27T00:00:00-07:00 http://www.atensoftware.com/p32.php#1311490800 We now support a PriceGrabber data feed for Magento stores. We have also standardized the process for requesting optimization services for your feed. 2011-07-24T00:00:00-07:00 http://www.atensoftware.com/p32.php#1311404400 We have updated all Google feeds (Advanced and Basic, for all e-commerce platforms) as follows: The 'product_type' field has been renamed to 'google_product_category'. The 'c:store_department:string' field has been renamed to 'product_type'. These changes were made to comply with Google's new requirements. Google Product Category Starting Sep. 22, Google will require you to provide a 'google_product_category' for every item in one of the following categories: Apparel & Accessories > Clothing Apparel & Accessories > Shoes Apparel & Accessories (Note that submitting this value for clothing and shoes is not acceptable.) Media > Books Media > DVDs & Movies Media > Music Software > Video Game Software For all other categories, it is strongly recommended. You can only provide values from Google's official taxonomy in this field. See configuring the google_product_category field for more information Product Type 'product_type' is a recommended field and you can provide your own, merchant-specific category in this field. It is pre-configured to the 'Path' field from your Yahoo Store. For any items without a Path, you can set a 'DefaultPath' by going to "Manage Feed > Define Fields > Edit product_type". Google Feed Analysis Go to "Manage Feed > Google Feed Analysis" to see which items are missing 'google_product_category' or 'product_type' information in your data feed. We will send announcements for more changes in the coming weeks. This and other useful announcements will be posted in our Facebook and Twitter pages. 2011-07-23T00:00:00-07:00 http://www.atensoftware.com/p32.php#1310972400 As you may be aware, Google announced a set of major changes to their data feed requirements last week, which will take effect on September 22, 2011. While the new requirements may be onerous for some merchants, we expect that they will allow for a vastly improved experience on Google Product Search for shoppers. We believe that this will lead to improved sales for merchants who invest the time to meet the requirements. By using our feed service, improvements to your catalog for Google can also be applied to your other data feeds. Google Feed Analysis To assist you with the new requirements, your service includes a free tool that will tell you what information (if any) is missing from your data feed. To access this tool, log into your Aten account, click 'Manage' for your Google feed, and then click 'Google Feed Analysis'. Read on for a detailed explanation of the changes. 1. Unique Product Identifiers (brand, gtin/upc, mpn) These are going to be required starting Sep. 22 for non-apparel categories. Your data feed is pre-configured to submit this data. Check your Google Feed Analysis to see if your feed is compliant. 2. Availability Your feed submits the 'in stock' value in this attribute by default. Your feed automatically filters out items with a zero price, and items with Orderable set to 'No'. Therefore, no change is required on your part unless you want to submit item-specific information. 3. Google Product Category We are going to rename the existing 'product_type' field to 'google_product_category', and 'c:store_department:string' to 'product_type', as required by Google. This will happen automatically without any action required on your part. Advanced feeds will be reviewed and updated individually. For more information, please see here: Google Product Category (google_product_category) attribute. 4. Images Google will now require an image for every item. Manufacturer logos, store logos, and 'image not available' images will not be accepted and may result in an account suspension. We have mechanisms available to help you filter out such items if necessary; please contact us for details. We are going to add a new field called 'additional_image_link' that will allow you to submit additional image URLs from your catalog for each item. We will announce more details on this once it is available. 5. Data Freshness Google now wants you to submit your product data as soon as it changes in order to provide a better experience for shoppers. We are planning to offer a "Continuous" update frequency option for your data feed. This option will submit an updated feed to Google shortly after you publish your Yahoo store (with limitations), as well as submitting at least once per day. Due to our continuous investments in feed processing speed, we are planning to include this option for no charge in your feed service. We will announce more details on this once it is available. For now, all Google feeds should be set to "Daily" update frequency with "Auto-Skip" disabled. Note that unlimited submissions are included with your current feed service. 6. Apparel The greatest changes are for merchants selling apparel. You will be required to submit the following information: color size material - if applicable pattern - if applicable gender - 'male', 'female', or 'unisex' are the only allowed values age_group - 'adult' and 'kids' are the only allowed values image_link - an image of the specific color/material/pattern must be submitted (size variations are excluded) item_group_id - your feed can handle this automatically See the Google support article, Submitting Apparel Products, for complete information. In order to meet these requirements, you have two options: A. Submit Only One Variant for Each Product You will need to add fields to your Yahoo Store catalog for color, size, material, pattern, gender, and age_group, or define default values on your Define Fields page. We will also create a way to submit the first color and/or size option value. In that case, just make sure the main product image coincides with the first size/color option. B. Submit All Variants of the Product We have the capability to submit all variations of your items based on supplemental data you provide to us. This service requires an Advanced feed and there is a setup fee of $299. For more information, please refer to our Product Feed Multiplication Service. Please consider our Data Feed Optimization Service for Apparel Merchants for $79. This one-time, flat-rate service, includes a review of your store data, configuration of your data feed, and a customized optimization report that includes a strategy for meeting the new requirements. Submit a request here. 7. Data Accuracy and Quality Please be aware that Google is planning to enforce quality standards more stringently. It appears that you will be notified in case there are issues. In case of repeated violations of their quality standards, your items will be suspended for at least one week after the second violation, and at least one month after the third violation. After the third violation, they may suspend your items for an extended period of time - potentially indefinitely. Legacy Stores If you have a Legacy Store, you can add the new attributes to your default item type and then populate the data via Store Editor. We can then install a RTML template in your Yahoo Store to export the data so that our system can submit it to Google. For complete details on this service, which costs $99 and includes optimization service, please see here: Legacy Yahoo Store RTML Template to Export Custom Attributes as CSV. Optimization Service for Non-Apparel Merchants If you are confused about all the changes and would like some assistance, we offer a feed optimization service for non-apparel merchants for a one-time fee of $59. We will review your store data, configure your feed optimally, and email you a customized optimization report outlining what steps you need to take to improve your feed. If you are interested, please see here for details on submitting an optimization request. Facebook and Twitter In order to improve communication with our customers, we will be cross-posting announcements on our new Facebook page and Twitter feed. If you would like to become a fan or follower, please visit our Facebook Fan Page or Twitter Feed. 2011-07-18T00:00:00-07:00 http://www.atensoftware.com/p32.php#1310454000 You may have received the email yesterday from Google Product Search with subject, "Important Changes to Feeds Specification and Program Policies", describing new data feed requirements to take effect September 22, 2011. We are currently studying these new requirements. We will send a general announcement once we come up with a strategy and some documentation on how to proceed. At first glance, the new requirements may seem like a burden. However, this is the direction Google has been heading for awhile now in order to create an amazing experience for shoppers. We believe that this will directly translate into increased sales for merchants who participate. Our number one priority is to provide you the tools, information, and guidance in order to be listed in Google Product Search and other shopping engines. Thank you for your patience. 2011-07-12T00:00:00-07:00 http://www.atensoftware.com/p32.php#1310281200 Effective immediately, we have updated our minimum purchase rule from a $10 minimum purchase to the industry standard of one-month of service charges. The one-month minimum purchase amount is equivalent to your current monthly service charges rounded up to the nearest ten dollars. You can view your current monthly service charges on our new Billing Summary page. As always, credit balances are fully refundable upon request should you choose to close your account. To stop service charges for a particular feed, you can simply delete the feed from your account at any time. Otherwise, feed service charges for a particular feed are automatically suspended after 30 days of inactivity. The My Account screen shows the 'age' of each of your feeds. Please refer to our billing notes for complete details. 2011-07-10T00:00:00-07:00 http://www.atensoftware.com/p32.php#1310194800 We have published our new logo on the Aten Software website. Over the next few months, we will be revamping the whole website with a new theme and better navigation. On another note, we have implemented a caching tweak to improve processing speed for feed submissions and other tasks. We hope you enjoy the faster service. Remember to try our new Google Feed Analysis tool to get the best results from our service. This is a FREE tool to help you quickly identify items with missing data and other issues. Just go to "My Account > Manage Feed > Google Feed Analysis". Make sure to read the support articles listed on that page to help you resolve any errors. 2011-07-09T00:00:00-07:00 http://www.atensoftware.com/p32.php#1308812400 Sporadic "connect timed out" Errors with Yahoo Store/Google This occurred this morning and on 6/20/2011 on a many, but not all feeds. Based on our investigation, this appears to be caused by a network failure (packet loss) in a third-party network outside our control. We have notified our hosting company. In the meantime, please ensure your feeds are scheduled for Daily submission, and remember that you can resubmit a feed for no charge via our website any time. This type of error is usually resolved by the third-party within a few days or weeks without any involvement on our part. The error messages you may see in your task history are: Could not read last-modified header from http://store.yahoo.com/objinfo.xml - connect() timed out!. Error connecting to FTP server 'uploads.google.com:21'. The connection timed out or verify that the serverr address is correct. Connection timed out. Sporadic FTP Errors with Bing Shopping You may have received the following email: Error logging in to FTP server 'feeds.adcenter.microsoft.com:21'. Check your credentials. E_WARNING: ftp_login(): User cannot log in. If this was a one-time email and your feed was previously working, please ignore this error as this is caused by sporadic failures of Bing's FTP server. We have been seeing this error infrequently for awhile now. You can either resubmit from our site or do nothing and let the system re-attempt on the next scheduled submission. New Feeds We have added the following new data feeds: Buy.com Marketplace and PowerReviews. To submit a Buy.com Marketplace feed, your products generally must have UPC codes and they must already exist in the Buy.com Marketplace. More data feeds and setup instructions are listed on our shopping engines page. New Google Feed Analysis We have created a new, free tool to help you quickly identify items with missing data and other issues. This tool mimics Google's Data Feed Quality/Status reports, except it actually provides links to the item details. Just go to: "My Account > Manage Feed > Google Feed Analysis". Make sure to read the support articles listed on that page to help you resolve any errors. Google Panda Update Here is a helpful article on optimizing your store content for Google: When Pandas Attack: Online Retailers Need To React, by Rob Snell Legacy Store CSV Export We are now able to export item properties (such as MPN, UPC, and brand) from legacy Yahoo Stores and submit them in feeds. You no longer need to embed the information in your product captions. This is achieved via a $99 RTML template installation. We highly recommend this for legacy stores. If you are interested, please see Legacy Yahoo Store RTML Template to Export Custom Attributes as CSV New Look for Aten Software We will soon be launching a fresh, new look for the Aten Software website, along with a new logo. We just want you to be aware that the change is coming. 2011-06-23T00:00:00-07:00 http://www.atensoftware.com/p32.php#1305270000 In order to ensure that your lowest price is always displayed in Google search results, effective immediately, we have modified all Yahoo Store to Google feeds (Basic and Advanced) as follows: Google's 'price' attribute is set to come from the Yahoo 'sale-price' field. If sale-price is blank, then the regular price is used. Google's 'sale_price' attribute is always left blank. The reason for this change is that Google does not seem to be displaying pricing from the 'sale_price' attribute in search results, even though they said those prices would be featured. After the modifications above, the pricing is back to the way it was prior to March 30, 2011. In the future, due to its ambiguous nature, we will not be using Google's 'sale_price' attribute, except upon your request. No action needs to be taken by you for this change. Your feed will be automatically resubmitted according to the schedule you have selected. (Advanced feeds with special pricing rules are not affected by this change.) Update on robots.txt issue from April 12, 2011 Regarding the 'robots.txt' file that was preventing Google from accessing your product images, this is no longer an issue. Yahoo Store changed the robots.txt file so that the images are no longer excluded from indexing by robots. No action needs to be taken. New ShopTab Facebook Data Feed We have added a new data feed to ShopTab for Facebook. To learn more about ShopTab, please visit http://www.shoptab.net/ For setup instructions, please see Shoptab Categories and Facebook Shoptab Data Feed Setup See our complete list of supported shopping engines. (Note that Amazon Product Ads is currently running a $75 free clicks offer.) New Source Data Analysis Under "Manage Feed > Analyze Source Data", you can now see the list of fields in your Yahoo/Magento/AspDotNetStorefront store. A graphical representation of blank values and distinct values is also provided. If you click a field name, an analysis of the data in that field is presented. We are planning many more enhancements to this analysis tool, with the goal of helping you understand your data and optimize your feeds. (Currently, this feature is limited to stores with under 10,000 items.) New Look for Aten Software We will soon be launching a fresh, new look for the Aten Software website, along with a new logo. We will send another announcement when the redesign is completed, but we want you to be aware that the change is coming. 2011-05-13T00:00:00-07:00 http://www.atensoftware.com/p32.php#1302850800 Our website was down from around 7:45 AM to 8:15 AM EDT this morning for a server hardware refresh. Please enjoy the ~50% faster task processing. 2011-04-15T00:00:00-07:00 http://www.atensoftware.com/p32.php#1302591600 You may have received an email from Google yesterday, April 11, 2011, with the subject: "Important information about your Google Product Search images" The email describes an issue regarding a 'robots.txt' file preventing Google from accessing your images. At this time, we believe this email was sent in error, and we are investigating the issue with Google and/or Yahoo Store. If there is any action that you need to take, we will send another announcement to let you know. Otherwise, please ignore the email for now. In the meantime, you can follow the discussion thread in the Google Product Search Forum. 2011-04-12T00:00:00-07:00 http://www.atensoftware.com/p32.php#1302505200 You may have received a "data feed file status" notification from Google saying "No items inserted" on April 10, 2011. Please ignore this error, as it appears that it was a temporary issue on Google's end. Feeds today were accepted by their system without issues, and our system has been operating normally as well. On another topic, if you have a legacy store and are wondering how you can comply with Google's new requirements for product identifiers (brand, upc, mpn), please review the following support topic for a workaround: How do I add custom fields to a legacy Yahoo store? Finally, if your items are on perpetual sale, please refer to the article below for instructions on configuring your Google feed. 'Perpetual sale' means your sale price is always lower then the regular price, and you have never sold items at the regular price. Configuring the price and sale price fields for perpetual sale items 2011-04-11T00:00:00-07:00 http://www.atensoftware.com/p32.php#1301468400 On March 14th, Google announced some major, new requirements for their data feeds. Today, we updated all Basic Google feeds to meet Google's new data feed specifications. We have added the new attributes, updated the field order, and carried over any and all of your customizations on the 'Manage Feed > Define Fields' page. Google will automatically accept these changes without any action on your part. However, starting in May/June, your listings may be disapproved unless you provide information for the attributes listed below. Please use the support links to help you add the data to your store: upc, brand, mpn STARTING MAY 3, 2011, GOOGLE WILL NO LONGER LIST PRODUCTS WITHOUT AT LEAST TWO OF THESE THREE VALUES FOR EACH PRODUCT (EXCLUDING APPAREL AND ONE-OF-A-KIND ITEMS). Instructions: What are Google's new requirements for unique product identifiers? tax, shipping STARTING JUNE 6, 2011, GOOGLE WILL NO LONGER LIST PRODUCTS WITHOUT TAX AND SHIPPING INFORMATION PROVIDED. These settings can be set at the account-level via the Google Merchant Center dashboard. Instructions: Tax and Shipping settings for Google Product Search online_only We have configured this to 'y' (Yes) by default. This tells Google that your products are only available online, and not through a physical store. If this is not true, then please refer to our support topic, Setting the online_only (online only) attribute. sale_price We have added this recommended field and no action needs to be taken on your part. If your items are on perpetual sale, please let us know, as you may be required to submit your sale price as a regular price instead. If you have an Advanced Google feed, please contact us if you would like your feed to be reviewed. Here is the link to Google's announcement. 2011-03-30T00:00:00-07:00 http://www.atensoftware.com/p32.php#1300172400 We now support a data feed to the PepperJam affiliate marketing network. 2011-03-15T00:00:00-07:00 http://www.atensoftware.com/p32.php#1299916800 GoShopping recently updated their feed format, and we have made the corresponding changes in our system to all existing GoShopping feeds. If you have a GoShopping feed, please take 5-10 minutes to update your GoShopping Merchant account as follows: Log into our site Click "Manage" for your GoShopping feed Click the "10. Download Data Feed File" link Click the "Regenerate..." link Click the "Data Feed File" button When the task completes, click "Download Feed File" Copy the "File URL" to your clipboard; it will look like this: http://www.atensoftware.com/p400_12345.php Log into GoShopping Click on the "Products" tab Paste the file URL into the "Enter your feed file URL" box. Click the "Add Feed File" button. You should see the following, green message: "Your feed file has been sent to validation. It will be revised and approved by our team in maximum 12 hours. Once approved you will receive a full report on this section." Important Notes - Please Read If you find your feed settings already updated, we may have done this for you. GoShopping does not require any FTP settings. They fetch the data feed file from our server via HTTP. Our server simply updates the file according to the update frequency. We set all the GoShopping feeds that were active to Daily update with Auto-Skip Enabled. There is no extra charge for Daily versus less frequent updates, so we recommend this setting to ensure up-to-date listings. Although GoShopping now accepts Google Base format data feed files, we do not recommend and can not support using your existing Google Base feed for GoShopping. Having separate feeds allows the flexibility for us to handle changes in feed specifications and engine-specific technical issues. If you are considering additional data feeds for your store ($4.50/month each), we recommend submitting to the free shopping engines first. The recommended order is below, along with the link to the setup instructions: Bing Shopping Setup Instructions TheFind Setup Instructions GoShopping Setup Instructions See our recommendations on fee-based shopping engines for more. In the last several months, we have added support for Wishabi-Canada, Pricewatch, Oodle, and Shopmania. 2011-03-12T00:00:00-08:00 http://www.atensoftware.com/p32.php#1298016000 Google is successfully accepting FTP uploads of data feed files now. The problem appears to have been on Google's end, and they resolved it by about 4:00 PM EST yesterday (2/17/2011). Feed processing was normal last night. There is no need for you to take any action and thank you for your patience. 2011-02-18T00:00:00-08:00 http://www.atensoftware.com/p32.php#1297929600 Google appears to not be accepting FTP uploads of data feed files since last night. You may or may not have received an error notice (e.g. "Corrupted data feed line") from Google saying only a small portion of your items were accepted. We are working with Google to resolve this issue. You can follow the forum for updates if desired. We will resubmit all feeds as necessary once the issue is resolved. In the meantime, in order for your feed to be processed more reliably, we have found the following settings changes to be necessary. Please update your settings as follows: Log into Google Merchant Center and go to the Data Feeds tab. Click "Edit" next to the file name of your feed. Set "Encoding" to "UTF-8" Set "Use Quoted Fields" to "No" Click the "Save Changes" button If "Use Quoted Fields" was not already set to "No", then you must also modify the corresponding setting in our system. Login to our site Go to "Manage Feed" > "Advanced Settings" for your Google feed. Change "Enclosure" to "None" and click the "Update" button. The above settings changes will ensure that your feed is processed correctly once the FTP issues are resolved. The above instructions are also on our site here: What should be my data feed settings in Google Merchant Center? We also strongly recommend that you review the following tips to improve your product ranking: What are Google's new requirements for unique product identifiers? What is the recommended update frequency for my data feed? 2011-02-17T00:00:00-08:00 http://www.atensoftware.com/p32.php#1297756800 We now support a data feed to the ShopMania shopping comparison engine. 2011-02-15T00:00:00-08:00 http://www.atensoftware.com/p32.php#1297670400 We now support a data feed to the Oodle marketplace. 2011-02-14T00:00:00-08:00 http://www.atensoftware.com/p32.php#1296892800 We have changed all our back-end data processing and feed formats to the UTF-8 character encoding from Latin-1. Most of the major shopping engines now require this format, which is backward-compatible with Latin-1 and adds support for extended (Unicode) characters. If you have manually set the character encoding in your Google Merchant Account to Latin-1, you should change it to "auto-detect" instead. Otherwise, no change is required, because "auto-detect" is the default setting when you create a feed. If you notice any issues with feed processing in other shopping engines, please feel free to contact us and we will investigate. 2011-02-05T00:00:00-08:00 http://www.atensoftware.com/p32.php#1292486400 We have added support for Pricewatch feeds. You can use this to set up a "file import pull" in the Pricewatch dealer website. 2010-12-16T00:00:00-08:00 http://www.atensoftware.com/p32.php#1292313600 We have launched the Beta version of our AspDotNetStorefront data feeder service. If you have an AspDotNetStorefront store, or know of someone who needs feed services for one, then we welcome you to try our system. To get started, simply select AspDotNetStorefront as the store platform when adding the data feed. For more information, see our AspDotNetStorefront Feeder Service to Google Shopping and Other CSEs page. We will keep you posted regarding support for Magento Commerce stores, which we hope to offer within the next month or two. AspDotNetStorefront feeds will be offered as Advanced feeds only. However, while this service is in Beta, we will waive all charges for these feeds. Please contact us if you are interested, and we can help you get started and answer any questions you may have. 2010-12-14T00:00:00-08:00 http://www.atensoftware.com/p32.php#1288940400 For the last several weeks, Bing's FTP server has not been accepting logins reliably, even though the FTP user name and password are correct. Each time the FTP login fails, you will receive a "Data Feed Error Notice" by email. Bing is aware of the issue and is working to resolve it. In the meantime, please ignore these error messages. For more information, please read the support article, I received a Data Feed Error Notice but my FTP settings are correct. You can also follow the Bing Shopping Forum post on Bing FTP Server Issues. 2010-11-05T00:00:00-07:00 http://www.atensoftware.com/p32.php#1287126000 We have made optimizations to the task processing to improve speed. You should notice faster execution times, up to 2-3 times faster in some cases. 2010-10-15T00:00:00-07:00 http://www.atensoftware.com/p32.php#1285052400 You can now configure your feed so that all products are excluded except those that match filters that you define. This allows you to more easily define a small set of products to include in the feed. To enable the setting, change the "Product Filter" mode on the "Manage Feed > Advanced Settings" page. Now you can configure products to be included via the "Product Filters" page or the "Product List". 2010-09-21T00:00:00-07:00 http://www.atensoftware.com/p32.php#1284793200 Bing Shopping feeds have been adjusted to meet the latest specifications. The data feed file is converted to UTF-8 and the MPID column is renamed to MerchantProductID. We have implemented a multi-processing task scheduler that gives priority to user-initiated tasks. Your wait time for tasks to be executed should be virtually eliminated, with the occasional tradeoff of slightly longer execution time. 2010-09-18T00:00:00-07:00 http://www.atensoftware.com/p32.php#1282719600 We have updated all Bing Shopping feeds to follow the new Bing Shopping feed format. (Previously, most feeds were still using the old, Bing Cashback feed format.) Your field settings have been preserved or corrected where necessary. We are coordinating with Bing to ensure that they recognize the formatting change. We strongly recommend that you take a few minutes to set the top-level Bing Category for your feed. Just follow the simple instructions here: How to Set Top-Level Bing Shopping Category If you have not already, you can submit your product listings to the free Bing merchant program by following the instructions here: Bing Shopping Data Feed Setup Instructions For a list of other free shopping engines, please visit: Free Comparison Shopping Engines 2010-08-25T00:00:00-07:00 http://www.atensoftware.com/p32.php#1280905200 To sign up for Bing Shopping, please visit Bing Shopping Merchant Sign-Up. For instructions on setting up your data feed, please visit Bing Shopping Data Feed Setup Instructions 2010-08-04T00:00:00-07:00 http://www.atensoftware.com/p32.php#1280559600 BING CASHBACK BECOMES *FREE* BING SHOPPING Microsoft has replaced Bing Cashback with Bing Shopping effective today. Bing Shopping will allow merchants to submit their product catalogs for free, joining Google, TheFind, and GoShopping in providing free traffic for merchants. Our current Bing Cashback data feed will continue to work as-is with Bing Shopping, and we have simply updated its name and logo. Currently, Bing does not appear to be taking applications from new merchants. Therefore, if you do not have a Bing Cashback Merchant Account, please be patient and we will send another announcement as soon we have additional details. If you have an existing Bing Cashback Merchant Account, we recommend that you review it and continue or resume submissions. In our system, we recommend you delete any exclusion criteria (a.k.a. filters) you had set up for these feeds, so that all your products can be submitted. Here is the official Bing Shopping Announcement and FAQ. NEW COMMISSION JUNCTION FEED We now support data feeds to Commission Junction. Commission Junction is a major affiliate marketing provider, where merchants pay a commission on each sale. How do I set up a Commission Junction data feed? For our complete list of our available data feeds, as well as recommendations and traffic statistics, visit Supported Data Feeds. FEED UPDATE FREQUENCY AND METHODS We have simplified the settings for choosing how and how often your data feed is updated. You can choose the frequency of the updates from "Manage Feed > Modify Settings - Update Frequency". You can choose how the feed is updated from "Manage Feed > Advanced Settings - Update Methods". This avoids the confusion of having two separate update frequencies for each update method. All feeds are pre-configured with the correct update method, so you do not need to do anything. But just for your reference, there are two update methods, "File" and "FTP", and you can enable any combination of the two. "File" will update the feed file hosted on our server, which can then be retrieved at any time via HTTP. "FTP" will send the feed file to the FTP server you specify. How do I schedule my data feed file to be refreshed automatically? 2010-07-31T00:00:00-07:00 http://www.atensoftware.com/p32.php#1279954800 We have simplified the settings for choosing how and how often your data feed is updated. You can choose the frequency of the updates from "Manage Feed > Modify Settings - Update Frequency". You can choose how the feed is updated from "Manage Feed > Advanced Settings - Update Methods". This avoids the confusion of having two separate update frequencies for each update method. Just for reference, there are two update methods, "File" and "FTP", and you can enable any combination of the two. "File" will update the feed file hosted on our server, which can then be retrieved by a third-party. "FTP" will send the feed file to the FTP server you specify. 2010-07-24T00:00:00-07:00 http://www.atensoftware.com/p32.php#1279090800 We now support data feeds to GoShopping. GoShopping is a smaller, newer comparison shopping engine. GoShopping does not charge any fees to merchants, and the setup process is simple. How do I set up a GoShopping data feed? Currently, the only other shopping search engines that are free for merchants are Google Product Search and TheFind. TheFind is a larger and more established shopping engine, so we would recommend signing up with them prior to GoShopping. How do I set up a TheFind data feed? You may have received a notice from Google with subject Important information about unique identifiers for your Google Product Search items. Please refer to our support article for our advice: What are the requirements for Electronics, Books, and Media? Your data feed now supports a new, free feature, direct download of the data feed file via HTTP. You can also schedule your data feed file to be regenerated automatically on the schedule of your choosing. This provides an alternative method of access to your data feed file in addition to FTP submission. How do I schedule my data feed file to be refreshed automatically? Finally, our support site is constantly being improved with new and updated information. To help you stay abreast of these changes, look for our new Support links for 'New' and 'Updated' topics: New Support Topics - Updated Support Topics 2010-07-14T00:00:00-07:00 http://www.atensoftware.com/p32.php#1276671600 This notice is for customers who are actively submitting to Shopping.com. We have added 'category id' and 'condition' fields to the Shopping.com feeds. You must remap the columns in your Shopping.com account for these changes to take effect by following a simple, 5-minute procedure as described in the link. The 'Conditon' field is required starting July 1st, 2010. By default, the value is set to 'New'. You can submit product-specific values by configuring the "Catalog Field Name" from the "Define Fields" page on our site. The 'Category ID' field is a better way to categorize your products in Shopping.com. This field is not required, but is strongly recommended. Please see our support topic for more information on how to use the Category ID field. We have updated our optimization tips for Shopping.com. Also, note that we have deleted Shopping.com data feeds from our system that were not being used for a long time (generally, over 6 months). You can simply create a new feed using the latest template if you plan to submit to Shopping.com again. 2010-06-16T00:00:00-07:00 http://www.atensoftware.com/p32.php#1273906800 We have added support for data feeds to Onewayshopping.com. See our supported data feeds page for more information on Onewayshopping.com. 2010-05-15T00:00:00-07:00 http://www.atensoftware.com/p32.php#1272438000 There was a glitch in our system that allowed scheduled and automated tasks to be processed even if the account had a zero credit balance. This has been corrected and we apologize for any confusion. Accounts must have a positive balance in order for any processing tasks to be executed. 2010-04-28T00:00:00-07:00 http://www.atensoftware.com/p32.php#1271228400 This is just a reminder that our new pricing schedule will take effect tomorrow, April 15, 2010. Since submissions will be free, we recommend that all Google feeds to be set to run 'Daily' with 'auto-skip' disabled. This setting can be changed from the 'Manage Feed > Modify Settings' page. Feeds to other engines may also be submitted more frequently if desired. In the next two weeks, we are planning to add more server resources to improve feed processing speed and capacity. Please note that our website will be briefly unavailable during the upgrade. Our server IP address will change from 198.173.85.161 to 76.75.210.45. This may affect customers using ShareASale and Become.com feeds. We will send specific instructions on how to update the IP address once the server is moved, and follow up on all feeds to ensure they are accepted. There is no need to do anything at this time, and we will keep you posted. 2010-04-14T00:00:00-07:00