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 Bing's free 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
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
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?
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.
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:
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.
We have added support for data feeds to Onewayshopping.com. See our supported data feeds page for more information on Onewayshopping.com.
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.
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.
We have added support for WholesaleCentral.com data feeds. There are WholesaleCentral data feed setup instructions in our support site.
We have also added instructions on how you can download all your Yahoo store images using our system.
Google recently sent an email to merchants with the subject, Action Required: Verify Google Merchant Center Website URL. This is a legitimate notice and represents a welcome change in the way Google verifies that you have control over your domain name. The process is now fully automated, and does not require contacting Google.
Nevertheless, there are quite a few steps, so to ease this process, we have put together a step-by-step tutorial with screen shots. Google is giving you two months to verify your URL. Otherwise, after May 18, 2010, Google will disapprove your listings. The procedure should take 5-10 minutes. Website URL Verification Tutorial for Yahoo Stores
We have received good response to our updated TheFind data feed. For those who are unfamiliar with it, TheFind is a shopping engine with about 5 million unique visitors per month, on par with Shopping.com and Shopzilla. (See Comparison Shopping Engine Traffic Statistics ) The best part is that just like Google, there is no charge for their merchant program. You would only have to pay for an additional Basic data feed on our system. After April 15th, that will be $4.50/month if you already have other data feeds. This is a great way to promote your Yahoo Store products. See our TheFind Setup Instructions
TheFind just released their new Merchant Center, where you can now submit your data feed file as you do for Google Base. Previously, TheFind was not accepting data feeds via their Merchant Center unless you had special arrangements with them.
We have updated the TheFind data feed template to their revamped specifications. Unless you were contacted separately, we have deleted all the old, TheFind, data feeds from our system, which were not being used. If you would like to submit your products to TheFind, please follow our step-by-step instructions to set up a new feed: TheFind Setup Instructions.
This was just released, so please expect delays with TheFind, and there may be more adjustments and changes ahead.
In order to simplify our pricing structure, we are eliminating per-submission charges and changing to a flat-rate, monthly pricing for our data feed services. These pricing changes will enable us to continue to improve and enhance our system, as well as provide superior phone and email support. The new pricing will take effect on April 15, 2010.
Google is currently having an issue where some data feeds uploaded by FTP are receiving the data feed file name error. Google is aware of the problem and is working to resolve it. You can follow the status in the Google Merchant Center Forum: Known Issue: Data feeds uploaded via FTP receiving the data feed file name error.
In the meantime, you can ignore the emailed error messages, which look something like this:
Subject: Google Merchant Center problem with data feed file: "googlebase.txt"
On March 3, 2010 5:00:00 AM CST you uploaded to Google Merchant Center via FTP a file named "googlebase.txt", but you don not have a data feed registered with this name. Please verify that you provided the correct file name, including correct capitalization.
You do not need to take any further action. Our system will upload your feed according to the submission frequency you have selected. If you have infrequent submissions and you need to update your listings, you can run a manual submission via our website once Google resolves the issue.
We now have a Become.com data feed template customized to their specifications. You no longer need to use the Shopping.com feed for Become.com. Please see our Become.com Support Page for step-by-step instructions on how to set up your data feed.
Retrieval tasks are no longer consider as 'activity' for the purposes of determining whether or not an Advanced data feed is active. Therefore, you can run retrieval tasks and review results for an Advanced data feed without incurring the Advanced feed service fees. Once a submission or data feed file task is executed, whether manual or automated, the feed will be considered 'active'. Fees are suspended after 30 days of no activity.
We have added dynamic menu bar to all account pages. The menu bar will help you quickly navigate your account, and understand the heirarchy of available functions. It will also remember the currently active data feed, and let you switch between feeds easily. Below the menu bar is a new bread-crumb style navigational aid. This will show the page title, helpful links, and/or the name of the currently active feed. We hope this new interface saves you time.
We have added a bi-weekly submission frequency, which will submit your data feed twice a week on Tuesdays and Saturdays. Shareasale feeds can benefit from this option, because Shareasale can only receive feeds up to twice per week.
We now offer express setup and data feed optimization packages for a fixed price. Express setup includes feed setup and optimization. Optimization can be purchased by itself for customers with existing data feeds. Feel free to submit your request online via your account.
The Search Products page now allows you to find a product by item or line number. This can help you quickly troubleshoot feed errors that reference an item or line number.
As we had mentioned a few weeks ago, we have dropped the expiration_date attribute from all Basic and Advanced data feeds. This field is no longer required by Google. All products will automatically be listed for the maximum number of days (30) by Google. If you were using this field in a feed for non-Google purposes, please be aware that the column order has shifted now that the expiration_date column has been removed.
We have also deleted all old "Live Search Product Upload" feeds. This has been replaced by Bing Cashback.
We will be dropping the expiration_date attribute from all Basic Google data feeds after December 15th. This field is no longer required by Google. All products will automatically be listed for the maximum number of days (30) by Google.
If you are using the Basic Google feed for non-Google purposes, please be aware that the column order will be shifted when the expiration_date column is removed. If you want the change to take effect immediately, you can disable the field from the Define Fields page at any time. We will not be changing any Advanced feeds, except on a case-by-case basis.
Some accounts with large feeds have had internal system errors the past few weeks due to the routing issue. We have been manually resubmitting those. This has been due to the routing issue between our server and Yahoo Stores. That issue seems to be resolved today, so all feeds should be back to normal processing times without errors.
The recent slow task processing and internal system errors were caused by routing problems between our server and Yahoo Stores. We have implemented a temporary workaround as we monitor and try to resolve the issue.
On another topic, Google has begun to prohibit items with words like 'Free Shipping' anywhere in the product listing. We strongly recommend you to check your Google Merchant Center account to make sure that all your items are active. If you are affected, see How do I deal with items prohibited due to shipping terms? for possible workarounds.
Here are four, new features of our system:
Finally, Yahoo has recently released a series of Yahoo Store Webinars chock full of optimization strategies by leading experts. We highly recommend these.
We added a new Monitus Category Data Feed that contains your monitus-category and product id columns in a CSV format. You can use this to update your categories for the Web Analytics Connector for Google Analytics.
We added a new option to hide or suppress fields from your data feed. This is available to both Basic and Advanced feeds. This feature allows you to remove fields from your Basic data feed without needing to upgrade to an Advanced feed. You can still filter out products based on the data in a disabled field.
A handful of feeds had tasks with internal system errors due to a system bug over the past several days. This issue was resolved today and the feeds were resubmitted for no charge.
We have posted detailed instructions on setting up a Bing Cashback data feed for your Yahoo Store.
As you may know, Bing Cashback does not charge fees for listings or click-throughs. Instead, merchants only pay a commission when they make a sale. After a one-time, tracking pixel code installation, which can be purchased for $99.00 from YourStoreWizards.com, you can use our system to submit your data feed to Bing Cashback. This may be a low cost avenue for you to promote your products in an up-and-coming shopping search engine.
There are a few minor site improvements. You can now set your time zone in your profile. Also, the site will redirect you back to the last page you were working on if your session times out.
We discovered a bug where the expiration_date attribute for Google Feeds was not being updated if the Yahoo Store had not been published in a long time. This caused a handful of feeds to be submitted today with an expiration date in the past. We refunded the submission fee for those affected customers, fixed the bug, and manually resubmitted those feeds.
We have added a 'merchant sku' attribute to all Shopping.com data feeds to conform with their new feed requirements effective August 30, 2009. You may need to update the mapping in your Shopping.com merchant account. You may also need to supply a value for the manufacturer field. You may be able to use your store name as the manufacturer if you do not have product-specific information in your Yahoo back-end.
We have added a 'weight' attribute to all Google Base data feeds, because it is a recommended attribute. The values will be blank by default. If your Yahoo Store catalog has a field like 'ship-weight', then simply go to Define Fields and enter the field name as the Catalog Field Name for 'weight'. The 'weight' attribute has been inserted after the 'product_type' attribute, so if you are using this feed for non-Google purposes, you may want to review the column order for compatibility.
We instituted the following new pricing policy on August 21st. The Advanced data feed daily maintenance fee will be suspended if the feed has more than 30 days of inactivity (i.e. no processing tasks). This will allow you to preserve your advanced feed settings during times when you are not using the data feed.
In addition to continual refinements, we have a several new features on our site. We have redone the support section of our site with a find-as-you-type question search. There are multiple ways to view the support topics, and we have added and updated many topics. We have also revamped the 'Add Feed' page to make the user-interface much easier to use.
Press Release - Launch Advanced Data Feed Service
We now support the following data feeds for your Yahoo Store:
For a complete list, with links to merchant sign-up pages, please see our Supported Engines page
The new engine includes a data quality improvement for the Google Base data feed. First, instead of appending product options to the end of the product description, product options are submitted in a new, custom field called c:options:string. Also, the text of the product options is filtered to remove reserved words and pricing information, which reduces irrelevant keywords.
The Google Base ‘condition’ attribute will be required beginning June 30, 2009.
One of the three values, ‘new’, ‘used’, or ‘refurbished’ must be supplied for each product. Your Google Base data feed already contains the ‘condition’ attribute, and you can configure either a default value or catalog field. In order to accommodate this change, we have changed the default value to ‘New’ where it was currently undefined for all Google Feeds.
If you only sell new products, then no action is required on your part. If you sell any used/refurbished products, we recommend that you supply a catalog field name so that item-specific condition values can be supplied. Go to “Manage Feed > Define Fields” to set the catalog field name.
Please check out our newly updated Optimization Tips For Google Base page for instructions on how to add a ‘condition’ field to your Yahoo store.
As a reminder, our pricing was updated on June 1, 2009. Also, since Microsoft’s Live Search Product Upload Beta has been discontinued, we have disabled image hosting on those data feeds. We will be deleting those data feeds soon.
Finally, we now support the following templates for your Yahoo Store:
If you have any requests, please let us know.
We have improved the way character-encoding issues are handled in the system. Special characters, and especially Windows CP-1252 characters, are correctly processed and output in the LATIN1/ISO-8859-1 character set. Previously, they were being converted to spaces. This should result in more accurate data feed output, and potentially, better search engine ranking.
Microsoft recently sent email notifications that their Live Search product upload beta has been discontinued. As such, all data feeds to MSN Live Search Product Upload have been set to disabled. We recommend that you delete those feeds from the Manage Feed page.
If you are interested in Microsoft’s replacement program, please review the following link: Live Search Cashback. If you need assistance in setting up a data feed, please send us the specifications and we can help you set up the data feed.
An internal system error (caused by failed domain name lookups) caused some submission and alert tasks to fail on May 15th. These tasks were manually resubmitted today if they had not already been automatically resubmitted.
This is just a reminder that our fee schedule will be changed on June 1, 2009. See our Service Pricing page for details.
All data feeds have been migrated to the new data feed engine now. The change occurred transparently and did not require any interaction on your part. We will be adding more documentation and features in the coming months, so stay tuned.
We are pleased to announce the availability of our new data feed engine. This new engine is fully customizable. It will allow you to submit your products to more comparison shopping engines (CSEs), and submit them in a more optimized way. Additional CSEs will be announced as they become available.
The new engine allows you to select the desired CSE template and a feed type, ‘Basic’ or ‘Advanced’. Basic feeds have all the features and configuration options of the current system. We will be converting all Google and Shopping.com data feeds to ‘Basic’ feeds over the next few weeks. ‘Advanced’ data feeds are fully configurable and can support custom-programming, for an additional fee described below. (We have already notified customers who need Advanced feeds.)
The new feed engine comes with the following website enhancements:
We have not changed our pricing for two and a half years. To keep up development and provide superior support, we will be implementing the following changes, effective June 1, 2009:
See our Service Pricing page for details.
Google’s FTP server returned to normal operation sometime yesterday. All scheduled feeds were processed correctly this morning.
Those of you with feeds that do not run daily may want to manually submit your feeds due to the missed submissions over the weekend. You can review your feed’s submission history under Manage Feed -> View Results.
Google’s FTP server has not been responsive since approximately March 21st. Submissions since then have failed with the error, "Connection reset by peer." Our system does not charge you for failed submissions. Unfortunately, there is nothing we can do to upload your data feed(s) until they restore service. You can follow the Google Base discussion forum here for updates.
We will post another announcement once they have restored service. People with feeds that do not run daily may want to manually submit their feeds once service is restored. Otherwise, you do not need to take any further action.
Due to an XML-processing bug in an external library, a small number of feeds were submitted with missing image links or incorrectly parsed descriptions from Feb. 17 through the morning of Feb 19th. We found and corrected the bug on Feb. 19th. All of the affected feeds have been resubmitted yesterday and today for no charge. We have further refunded all submission and bulk upload fees during the period, even if your feed was not affected. Sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused.
Shopping.com data feeds are now tightly integrated into the system. Other screens have also received a face lift. You may notice some superficial differences, but otherwise, the changes should be seamless.
Many Google submission tasks failed with the error, "connect() timed out", when connecting to Yahoo stores. These tasks were resubmitted later in the morning, and fees for these tasks were refunded.
After performing some upgrades to the system on Thursday/Friday, a system error occurred where your Google feed may have been submitted even if it should not have been. Due to this error, we refunded all charges for automated Google submissions submitted on Saturday morning (Dec. 13th, 2008). The error has been fixed and the system is back to normal now. Sorry for any inconvenience that this may have caused.
Google Base recently added the ability to define tax and shipping settings for your data feeds. Their announcement is here.
It is strongly recommended that you configure account-level default values in your Google Base account. This is the easiest way to set up your tax and shipping settings. Just follow this link: Tax and Shipping Settings
Just a reminder, to get the best placement in Google Base, it is recommended to refresh your data feeds more frequently. According to Google Base: "Refresh your bulk uploads to keep your data up to date. Our algorithm will demote items that are not refreshed regularly." (Source)
To get the maximum exposure, you can set your feed’s submission frequency to ‘Daily’ and set the ‘Ignore Published Date’ setting to ‘Yes’ in your feed settings. While there will be extra submission fees, those may be offset if you obtain higher rankings. (Note, we can not guarantee ranking.)
Our system now posts your payment instantly when you purchase credit using Google Checkout.
Google feeds now support up to ten custom fields (up from five).
On Sunday morning, August 3rd, data feeds to Google Base/MSN Live had an error where all the fields were being single-quoted. This error was fixed, and all feeds were resubmitted later that day for no charge. You may see an email with subject "Data feed upload failure" or "Catalog Rejected" for that upload, but you can ignore this. Check your Google Base account for the latest status of your feed if you want to confirm. Sorry for the inconvenience.
The error was caused by some code changes we made to improve performance of the data processing. On the plus side, data processing is now about two times faster.