Feeding Data

[digitalpoint]

I'm curious how many people are feeding data to Froogle, compared to just letting Froogle grab their product data naturally (via spidering).

- Shawn

[Such Great Heights]

I recently got the info on how (formating and upload) to feed to froogle and it looks like even if froogle spiders and indexes you that way, you can have more of an impact if you submit your own feed.

It looks like you will have more control over how people will find you (read: better keyword optimization) when you do the feed yourself. Because you can specifially specify the Title of the product, the description, catagories, image displayed, to meet the keywords you are targeting for that particular product.

And now froogle doesn't index all 50 or so of our products, this will make sure they do. Plus froogle is guessing on what the description is because it has to take some text as the description and that might not always be the best keyword rich description.

So I haven't actually done the data feed, but it looks like it will greatly improve your exposure if you do it rather than let froogle crawl your site and guess at it all.

- sean

[digitalpoint]

The reason I was asking is I was thinking of making a tool to make the feeding of Froogle data easy. The problem of course is all the different variations of source data to convert. But I was thinking about maybe doing it for a few "standard" formats like Excel, QuickBooks, etc. For example, and export of QuickBooks products could be pushed to Froogle directly without the end-user needing to do much.

- Shawn

[Such Great Heights]

The reason I was asking is I was thinking of making a tool to make the feeding of Froogle data easy. The problem of course is all the different variations of source data to convert. But I was thinking about maybe doing it for a few "standard" formats like Excel, QuickBooks, etc. For example, and export of QuickBooks products could be pushed to Froogle directly without the end-user needing to do much.

Sounds interesting. From my view it seems like it is already easy.

In my case we only carry like 50 products, so creating an excel spreadsheet with 50 products and 5 cells per each product isn't hard. Then exporting that to a tabulated text file takes seconds and uploading that file also only takes seconds, so I don't see right away where your tool would come it.

I guess if you carry something like 300 products and you have them all entered into a database (access, or whatever) being able to convert a large file to what froogle wants seems like it would be helpful.

Maybe for people who have yahoo shopping? (I don't know how their products are stored though) or a popular shopping cart that keeps track of your products? Does Miva Merchant, Paypal, OSCommerce, X-Cart, etc, have a database where all products, description, etc are stored and have the ability to export to a certain file type?

[digitalpoint]

Yeah, that's the reason I was thinking of it... that way people with no technical background that use any of the popular shopping charts or accounting software would be able to do it.

Of course, it's only useful if you have many products, or they change often.

- Shawn

[Such Great Heights]

Yeah, that's the reason I was thinking of it... that way people with no technical background that use any of the popular shopping charts or accounting software would be able to do it.

Of course, it's only useful if you have many products, or they change often.

- Shawn

well then, it sounds like it would be helpful to those who don't have the technical knowledge to do it otherwise.

we are in the process of setting up x-cart, but I don't think it is as popular as other carts out there.

i like the idea, just wouldn't know how to go about finding out what would be best and for which formats to find out how to convert first.

good luck if you do decide to do it.

[respree]

Greetings.

I've been using Froogle since its inception (little over a year now). I would agree that the feed, by far, is the way to go to get products indexed. The G bot just doesn't seem to do a good job crawling my site, but the feed has indexed more than 175,000 products, basically everything I fed it.
http://froogle.google.com/froogle?q=respree

While we can all see that the G index feeds the F index. I just wish it worked the other way around (which it doesn't, BTW).

I think a program that would assist non-technical store owners would be something people might be interested in, as Froogle catches on. G is only now starting to promote it a little (i.e. first three Froogle results on the Google SERP).

I don't think the program will be without its challenges though.

Two things come to mind. URL formation and product images locations. Two fields of the feed ask 1) where's your product URL at and 2) where's your product image at. For us, it was pretty easy to do in Access because these locations are static with the item number being the variable. For others, which I can't speak for, they may be all over the place, so I'm not sure how a program could predict those locations (especially when they may not be consistent).


Food for thought.

[digitalpoint]

True, I obviously didn't think it through completely... :) They would of course need to know the image location and/or URL. I guess I'll just put the whole idea out of my mind...

- Shawn

[rustybrick]

Didnt read the whole thread but I have set up two customers with Froogle data feeds.

[irish_ladie]

Shawn - dont give up...........I would love a tool like that.........however I suppose its quite easy for me.............I am just lazy and love your tools!

[EGOL]

I am sending datafeeds up to froogle. I build in excel and convert to .txt

Time consuming but easy.... and I am getting great rankings.

[ViciousSummer]

I've done a data feed for Froogle, although I am still waiting for my products to appear in Froogle. It is a bit of a pain, and it needs to be updated at least once a month or your products "expire" and drop out of Froogle. So, if Shawn (or any one else) can come up with a tool to simplify it, I think it would be benefical as Froogle gains popularity :D !

[expat]

Just a quick tip as most of the shopping sites I've come across have a similar format but not exactly the same sequence.

I've written simple sql statements to get the various formats out of the mysql which usually do run in the background.

Twice monthly or upon development I extract latest into various txt tab del into directories by shopping source.
Being lazy I've set up dreamweaver with all the FTP's which also keeps me up to date when I've done it last.

M
Also allows me to do tweeks like using Froogle character allowances to the max.

[sadcox66]

Shawn,

If your planning to write a generic froogle interface the following information may help you.

I use the EasyPopulate contribution (http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,500) to create the feed for my osCommerce shopping carts. It works really well. There is also froogle data checker (http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,2026) that you need to look at because froogle field sizes are smaller than the average title and description in many shopping carts and your data will get trancated without your knowledge if you do not use it. If you do not want to install osCommerce or want to get a feel of EasyPopulate your welcome to play with the demo shopping cart software (http://oscommerce.snappyserver.com/demo/MS2_SSL/catalog/admin/easypopulate.php) , use admin / password to get into the shopping cart administration section.

[chachi]

We have 5 sites that we upload froogle data for currently. Actually, I think that number is 6. We have our own custom backend that we have built up over the years that now exports the data via our own froogle module and then uploads once a week. This way if we make any description changes (or other mods) they will be reflected in our froogle results.

FYI, we have also signed up for yahoo's new shopping data feed deal. It has been a couple of months now and to the best of my knowledge, we have not seen one sale yet....what happened to Yahoo?

[expat]

FYI, we have also signed up for yahoo's new shopping data feed deal. It has been a couple of months now and to the best of my knowledge, we have not seen one sale yet....what happened to Yahoo?
Hi,
is that Y .com? They still don't want me as I'm UK .....
Y UK and AOL UK etc are via Pangora.com in case you're interested.
Good stats nice service good sales.
M

[Jay]

We have a few sites, one of them has a froogle feed setup with it. Yet, the funny thing is that the one with a feed to froogle gets lower listings than the others without the feed.

[Help Desk]

We have a few sites, one of them has a froogle feed setup with it. Yet, the funny thing is that the one with a feed to froogle gets lower listings than the others without the feed.

Are you saying that using Froogle lowers one's PR?

[expat]

We have a few sites, one of them has a froogle feed setup with it. Yet, the funny thing is that the one with a feed to froogle gets lower listings than the others without the feed.
Jay out of interest have you used the full text allowance on the feed?

M

[schlottke]

my cart osCommerce actually creates the whole feed for me- skipping a lot of the time consuming exercises of creating it by hand.

[North Carolina SEO]

True, I obviously didn't think it through completely... :) They would of course need to know the image location and/or URL. I guess I'll just put the whole idea out of my mind...

- Shawn

Have you thought about going XML? There may be a means to make it "flexible" while providing the required data and interface needed.

Just a thought...

[digitalpoint]

I haven't thought much about it at all to be honest, mostly because I have no products that need to be fed to Froogle, it was more an idea for a tool.

[EConcepts]

The best way to get listed high in Froogle is to send the data feed. It should be resent once a month ... every month.

We have set numerous clients up this way, and have shown that the "data feed" method is just abotu the only way you'll get listed in any position worth a darn in Froogle (and subsequently Google believe that or not).

Froogle also favors certain HTML page layouts, so even if they happen to "spider" your page (which I have yet to hear of happening unless you submit your feed to them), and it is not optimized correctly to display "Froogle" results, your efforts would be useless.

-- Eric

[T0PS3O]

The reason I was asking is I was thinking of making a tool to make the feeding of Froogle data easy. The problem of course is all the different variations of source data to convert. But I was thinking about maybe doing it for a few "standard" formats like Excel, QuickBooks, etc. For example, and export of QuickBooks products could be pushed to Froogle directly without the end-user needing to do much.

- Shawn

I've done just that. Because our shops are with a 3d party e-commerce provider, all product pages are standardized so grabbing all necessary data is peanuts. We have 3 shops with well over a thousand products which take a few minutes to re-spider and to create a feed now. Imagine having to do those manually every month.

But mine only works with our merchant service provider ecom system. A 'smart' one for acatalog and other popular catalogue systems would be easy enough to build.

[EConcepts]

There are a few tools out there that allow you to feed Froogle. There are another handfull of shopping carts that already have the ability to create a Froogle feed built into them.

The problem is, that is not the only thing you need to do to get list high in Froogle. Sure, submitting the proper data feed will get you listed eventually. But beinglisted withinthe first 3 results on Froogel is really where you want to strive for.

By being listed within the first three results, you have the chance of also being shown higher in the Google SERs. Froogle listing do show up on Google (within the varioius seraches). In fact, if optimized properly, they will appear above everythign else at the top of the page.

Google can display up to 3 Froogle listings (the top 3 in Froogle). So, the data feed is the easy part. Optimizing it and the site to "feed Froogle" is them more strategic part.

[T0PS3O]

So do you reckon on-page optimisation for regular SERs equals in-feed optimisation for Froogle SERs? i mean text wise or do you think there's more that can be done?

[EConcepts]

The way you optimize a page for Froogle is a bit different thatn the way you optimize a page for typical SERs.

Froogle itself has certian things it likes that may not necessarily be what you would think about when you optimize for yoru typical SE. Of course, there are some typical SE tatics that will help (title, descriptions, etc...) however, wehn you get to the actual HTML layout of a page for Froogle, that can be a little different.

I would recommend (and this is what we do) developing a product page for Froogle alone that would be setup to "optimize" your chances of ranking higher there. What I mean is make sure the product page you are going to drive Froogle traffic to is setup to "match" your feed and setup from an HTML layout to accomodate that as well. This is just one of numerous factors that we feel plays into utilizing traffic sources and sales from Froogle.

[wrkalot]

I submit feeds to froogle. I stopped doing it for a couple of months because it just takes to much time. Copy, paste, copy, paste. I only have about 200 products at the moment but thats about to change big time.

I am now working on an .ASP script that pulls all of the data from my database, writes it to a text file, then emails me the the .txt The one I did yesterday took about 30 minutes vs 3 hours the copy/paste method (i still have to remove my html formatting in my product descriptions).

I would love to have prepackaged tool that would do it for me. I do have a business to run after all.

[EConcepts]

There are a lot of shopping carts out there (ASP driven) that actually create the data feed for you automatically.

In addition, I have found a few scripts (ASP) driven that actually create feeds for you as well. We were working on an automated system that does just that, but there are so many already adapted to varius carts, that it doesn't make a lot of sense building on at this point.

Also, you may want to try the new Froogle Merchant Center. I beleive they have some nice tools that may assist you. If nothing else, I'm sure as Froogle evolves, they will surely add that type of functionality.

[expat]

if you can run php

$string = strip_tags($string)
will strip standard tags
$string = strip_tags($string,<b>) leaves tag <b> </b>

isolate specifics like a link you would need strpos and substr
$LinkStartPos = strpos($string, ' http://');
$LinkEndPos = strpos($string, '">') - $LinkStartPos;
$tmpurl = substr($string, $LinkStartPos, $LinkEndPos)
;$tmpurl is the url clean
M

[wrkalot]

No php here. I have only been working on my own .asp script for a day and will eventually integrate something similar. My shopping cart is mostly custom (by me).

I've tried logging into the merchant center but the login just refreshes... It won't let me in. Even after resetting my password.

[expat]

I've tried logging into the merchant center but the login just refreshes... It won't let me in. Even after resetting my password.
best send a request to
accounts-support at google.com with you details like site url and original e-mail and they will send you another invitecode.... may take about two days..
M

[Elee]

Shawn, we have submitted over 1,000 images/cards through the Froogle on four sites.

A Nightmare!!!

Plus, we are continously updating with new cards.

[vintageagain]

I use the EasyPopulate contribution to create the feed for my osCommerce shopping carts. It works really well.

There is a auto froogle upload mod for OsC Im using and seems to work fine. I just installed and set a cron to upload once a week. nice and up to date now every time I've checked.

[leeds1]

what would an optimised page for froogle look like ?

I have about 20 products I want froogle to have

[expat]

Shawn, we have submitted over 1,000 images/cards through the Froogle on four sites......Plus, we are continously updating with new cards.
.. not sure if I follow but on such size you probably use a database and standardised pic's, titel, description pricing etc.
Thus an extraction from the DB into a csv file (export) should do it directly. Most sql and specifically mysql give you a host of commands to be used during extraction like substring concat allowing complete new fields to be generated on the fly. If one has phpadmin or alike such command can be run on-line the result finetuned and than directly converted into csv txt or alike.

So once generated it can be easily reused and changed put in a file to be weekly called etc...

F has such an easygoing structure that even if one overruns a fieldlength or hapen to have some garbled content in it it just ignores the line or truncates.
M

[EConcepts]

There are a number of ways you can optimize a page for better placement in the Froogle Search engine. We are always testing news methods, and have found a few that tend to help a bit. Overall, it is the quality of the feed as it relates to the information the Froogle crawler is able to see through spidering your product page.

In that light, think of it as optimizing for a typical search engine (design the page accordingly), but you should make sure your strategies sync up with your data feed.

[leeds1]

I have my product pages normally around #1 in serps

do you think if I chuck them at froogle I will lose these listings ?

[EConcepts]

I have never seen where submitting pages to Froogle decreased your listings in other SEs.

My suggestion would be to create DIFFERENT product pages optimize only for Froogle - Leave the other pages go. You can use the new pages and direct only Froogle traffic to them using the URL you submit for each in your datafeed.

This is the approach we typically take with our clients.

Does that help?

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Thanks very much Felu.... although I'm thinking of removing the MMR lol!

[msmoneygirl]

Whats the best way to use Froogle?

[softgroups]

did you made that tool?

[pspmodandcfw]

I submitted my site once. Then they came i just left it there