For those of you who manage and run feeds through Google Base then you will have noticed that Google has been busy adding additional functionality to the admin control panel. The new tab called, Data Quality, allows you to oversee any problems you might have with your feed identifiers.
The above example is taken from a clients xml feed, and highlights to me that the information I am subitting via the EAN xml node is wrong. Luckily, it hasn’t stopped the shopping feed from displaying on the most promiment positions.
I am a massive fan of Google Base, I run and manage feeds for all my eCommerce clients and think its a great way to get targetted traffic quickly. In some cases your sitting above the organic traffic on Page 1 for a high traffic volume search term with a feed from a relatively new site.
My tips for anyone who is looking to start their own Google Shopping Feed is give Google as much information as you possibly can about a product. Don’t try and rip off some other websites content and manage your feed update correctly.
I am aware of companies that upload a new feed every other day as their stock and prices change dramatically. Their error in their submission is that they just keep on reusing the same file name convention. I like to spread a few weeks between submissions, some feeds run the full 31 day max submission time. When its time to re-upload, a whole new file is registered with the day, month and year included in the naming convention as well as the site name.
I’d like to see the headers in the Active Items clickable and sortable, so I can quickly view my feeds via impressions vs clicks. Also what would be nice, as well, if we could search within the item, see which time it was clicked, what search term displayed the impression. Or even better if Google Analytics could handle data coming through from a Google Base impression. Mmm, does anyone know how to write a custom Google Analytics filter to show and monitor Google Base impressions, now, that would be awesome.
I have a lot of love for Google base as well. It provides a significant boost in traffic and sales for some of my clients.
I have been trying to sort out something for Google Analytics recently. The best idea I had was to add an extra variable in the URL when you create the feed and then create a filter for that variable within your analytics.