Archived News for 2011
- Bigcommerce Platform Support and Other News - Dec 3, 2011
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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... Read More
- Improved Validation Report - Nov 26, 2011
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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... Read More
- Shopping.com Feed Upgrade Completed - Nov 2, 2011
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All Shopping.com feeds were successfully upgraded today, as announced earlier.
- Shopping.com Feed Upgrade - Oct 28, 2011
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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... Read More
- ShopMania and Pronto Updates - Oct 22, 2011
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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)... Read More
- Product Tagging Tool Improvements - Oct 16, 2011
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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... Read More
- Daily Plus Scheduling Option Now Available - Oct 13, 2011
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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... Read More
- Excluding Incomplete Items from Google - Sep 21, 2011
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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... Read More
- Updates to 'manufacturer' field in Google Feeds - Sep 13, 2011
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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... Read More
- Continuous Feed Updates Now Available - Sep 10, 2011
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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... Read More
- Google Feeds Update - Sep 7, 2011
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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,... Read More
- Lower Pricing for Magento and AspDotNetStorefront Feeds - Sep 5, 2011
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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... Read More
- Improved Google Feed Analysis Tool - Aug 18, 2011
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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... Read More
- Bing and Shoptab Status Update - Aug 10, 2011
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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... Read More
- Latest Status Update - Aug 2, 2011
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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.
- Magento and AspDotNetstorefront Feeds Released - Jul 31, 2011
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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... Read More
- Bing FTP Errors and New Magento-Pronto feed - Jul 29, 2011
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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.
- Google Feed Analysis and Modification - Jul 27, 2011
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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... Read More
- Magento to Pricegrabber Data Feed - Jul 24, 2011
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We now support a PriceGrabber data feed for Magento stores. We have also standardized the process for requesting optimization services for your feed.
- Google Product Category Updated - Jul 23, 2011
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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... Read More
- Google Sep. 22 Update - Jul 18, 2011
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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... Read More
- New Google Requirements - Jul 12, 2011
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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... Read More
- Updated Minimum Purchase Rule - Jul 10, 2011
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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... Read More
- New Logo - Jul 9, 2011
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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... Read More
- Google Feed Analysis and Other News - Jun 23, 2011
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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... Read More
- Changes to Google 'price' Attribute and Other News - May 13, 2011
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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... Read More
- Faster Task Processing - Apr 15, 2011
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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.
- Google images and robots.txt - Apr 12, 2011
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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... Read More
- Google Feed Error, Legacy Stores, and Perpetual Sales - Apr 11, 2011
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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... Read More
- Mandatory Changes to Google Feed - Action Required - Mar 30, 2011
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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... Read More
- PepperJam Data Feed Support - Mar 15, 2011
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We now support a data feed to the PepperJam affiliate marketing network.
- Update Instructions for GoShopping Feed - Mar 12, 2011
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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... Read More
- Google Feed Errors Resolved - Feb 18, 2011
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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... Read More
- Google Feed Errors and Settings Change - Feb 17, 2011
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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... Read More
- ShopMania Data Feed Support - Feb 15, 2011
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We now support a data feed to the ShopMania shopping comparison engine.
- Oodle Data Feed Support - Feb 14, 2011
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We now support a data feed to the Oodle marketplace.
- Change to Feed Format - Feb 5, 2011
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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... Read More