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Google Feed Analysis and Other News

Jun 23, 2011

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.

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