- How long does it take for my products to be listed?
This service allows you to submit your products immediately. Google Base will process the submission within twenty-four to forty-eight hours. The steps are are listed below:
- Submission - Our server uploads your data feed file to Google's server (via FTP file transfer)
- Pick-up - "Data Feeds" tab shows "Processing..." and time of upload.
- Processing complete - "Data Feeds" tab shows number of items inserted or an error message
- Items Inactive - Items will listed in the "Inactive Items" tab as "Published... searchable soon"
- Items Active - Items will be listed in the "Active Items" tab as "Published and searchable"
- Statistics and Quality - Available in "Data Quality" and "Performance" tabs (always delayed one to two days)
- Image Thumbnails - thumbnail images will appear as image not available until Google’s server fetches them
- How does this service categorize my products?
- This service leaves the product categories exactly as they are defined in your Yahoo! store. You can define a default category for uncategorized products. Google Product Search will map your categories onto their own categories. You can also specify a value for the product type attribute.
- Will my images be submitted to Google Product Search?
- Yes. The image link for each product is correctly parsed out of the XML data and submitted.
- How often can I submit my feed?
- You can schedule your feed to submit daily, weekly, bi-weekly, tri-weekly, monthly, or never. The submissions are executed in the early morning hours.
- How are item options submitted?
- Product options are automatically recognized and submitted. They are added as a custom attribute for Google Base feeds in a readable format, e.g. "Smily Face T-Shirt - Options: Size: S, M, L - Color: White, Black". More keywords in the description help your search result rankings for longer, multi-term queries. Longer queries tend to have higher conversion rates.
- Is additional information for books, music, or videos submitted?
- Yes, you can add the information as attributes of your data feed.
- Is there support for extended information, such as availability, shipping cost, or quantity pricing?
- Yes, you can add any number of attributes to your data feeds.
- Is the service available for non-US stores or in alternate currencies?
- No. This feature is not yet available.
- Why don't product sections, products with zero price, or items marked non-orderable show up in the product list?
The following types of listings are filtered out automatically by our feed system, and will not appear in the product list.
- Product listings with zero price or no price
- Product listings where Orderable is 'No'
- Section or category pages
Google, and most other shopping engines, require item listings to have a purchasable product on them with a minimum price of $0.01.
- How much additional traffic (or clickthroughs, leads, sales) will my store attract if it is listed in Google?
- You may or may not receive additional traffic. It depends on many factors including your product mix, pricing, Google's search algorithms, and buyer tastes. This service only manages data submission, and does not guarantee that your products will be accepted by Google, or that you will see a traffic increase. Please see the Terms of Service for details.
- I run multiple Yahoo! stores, can I set up multiple feeds?
- Yes, you can set up any number of Yahoo! stores from your account. For Google Product Search data feeds, you can request a multi-client account from them.
- I run multiple Yahoo! stores, but some products appear in more than one store. Is this a problem?
- No. Our service offers an exclusive automatic duplicate exclusion feature. You can set a priority for each store, and then products in multiple stores will only be submitted in the highest priority store. This ensures that all your products are submitted, and each is only submitted once.
- What should be my data feed settings in Google Merchant Center?
When you create your data feed, select 'Products' as the type, 'googlebase' as the format, and enter a file name ending in '.txt'. The default settings will work with our system, but if you need to verify them, follow these instructions:
- Go to your Google Merchant Center > Data Feeds tab
- Click "Edit" next to the data feed file name
- Verify the settings below:
- Filename: anything ending in .txt
- Feed format: googlebase
- File format: Autodetect
- Encoding: Autodetect
- Delimiter: Autodetect
- Use quoted fields: No
- Save any changes and resubmit from our site if necessary.
- Log into your Aten Software account
- Go to "My Account > Manage Feed > Advanced Settings".
- Set the the "File Enclosure" setting to "None" and click 'Update'
Disabling quoted fields is the default and recommended setting.
Note that attributes that consist of multiple sub-attributes, such as 'tax', 'shipping', and 'compatible with', do not work if enclosed in quotations. Therefore, we recommend to set this to "No".
- What is the difference between Google Base, Merchant Center, and Product Search?
- Google Product Search is Google's shopping search engine for end-users. Google Merchant Center is the site for merchants to upload their product listings.
Google Base is the site for uploading other types of listings to Google, such as real estate and job postings.
- I want to submit my feed to another product search engine, do you support it?
- Yes! We now support a multitude of different shopping engines.
- Is it possible to change my product descriptions before they are sent to Google Product Search?
- This is not possible. Our system passes your Yahoo store product description exactly to Google Product Search, after stripping HTML tags. Google Product Search requires that the description submitted match the description displayed on your site. In order to make changes, you must edit the product descriptions or store templates of your Yahoo store.
- My product listings now appear in Google Product Search, but not all of my images.
- Images thumbnails are shown after the products are listed. It can take days for their system to process all your product images into thumbnails.
- How can I get higher ranking in the search results?
Google has been giving higher ranking to more optimized item listings. In order to maintain and enhance ranking, merchants need to be proactive with their data feeds, and follow the Google's Best Practices for Product Search.
We offer a one-time data feed optimization service for a flat fee. We would go through and add relevant attributes to your feed, and then offer you tailored suggestions for additional improvement. In some cases, it can make a big improvement in your ranking, although this is not guaranteed. See our Data Feed Optimization page for details, or submit an optimization request.
You also have the option of optimizing the feed on your own by following our
Data Feed Optimization Tips for Google Product Search.
If you have a legacy store, you can add attribute data to your product captions. Our Advanced feeds have the capability to extract that information and submit the attributes to Google. See our instructions for legacy stores for more information.
- How do I get my store reviews or ratings to appear in Google Shopping?
Unfortunately, there is currently no way to control any aspect of your reviews in Google Product Search. Google does not provide any technical support for this, and they do not explain how reviews are gathered.
Changes are coming soon though. They are now accepting reviews from Bazaarvoice, and they hope to add additional partners, as well as a self-submission model. See the links below.
- What price is submitted for items with a minimum purchase quantity?
Google requires the following convention, according to Requirements for the "price" attribute.
If your items are sold in bulk, you must list the total price for the minimum purchasable quantity. For example, if a user must purchase a minimum quantity of ten items, you should include the total price for ten items (the minimum purchasable quantity).
Our system always submits the lowest sale price for your item. If the minimum purchasable quantity is always one, then submitting the sale price works fine. If it is greater than one, then we can program a workaround for this with an Advanced feed if the minimum quantity is available in your catalog.
- What are the requirements for Electronics, Books, and Media?
For items in the Electronics category, you must supply at least two of the following three identifiers in your data feed: UPC, Brand, and MPN. Listings of Media items (music, movies, video games) require UPC, and Books require ISBN.
If you do not supply the above attributes, your listings in those categories may be demoted or excluded from the search results. Please refer to the articles below for help on adding these fields to your data feeds.
References: