Go To Great Panes

Go To Great Panes, Kathryn Maloney ©2009
(This post is copyrighted–you do not have permission to repost this content elsewhere but you are welcome to link to it if you’d like to share the information.)

I get lots of requests for help with getting sellers’ website items up on Google’s Shopping search. Some websites & shopping carts have feeds you can use to supply your goods to Google Merchant Center, but if yours doesn’t you can use a file you upload to your website to submit your products.

For a nominal fee I’ll provide a digital file I’ve created that should help get your started and basic instructions for getting your feed up.

If you are interested in receiving the file and directions by email please use the Paypal button below and I’ll get it to you as soon as possible, usually within 48 hours.

You’ll need Microsoft Excel to open it, or something like Open Office–a free-ware program that can open & edit Microsoft Excel files.

These are my original documents, I have put my time and effort into creating and providing them for you. When purchasing, you agree not to share or sell the file or the accompanying instructions with others.

If you are from NY or CT: Please do not use the buy it now button. Please email me for an invoice with sales tax included: gotogreatpanes@yahoo.com Please mention if you are in NY or CT, and if you are in NY I’ll need your mailing address to properly determine sales tax.

Order the Sample Google Merchant Data Feed File & Instructions:

$5.00 delivery service charge Pay with Paypal

Visit our Etsy shop: GoTo

Visit our Etsy shop: GoTo

Go To Great Panes, Kathryn Maloney ©2009

Seems lots of folks have received a letter from Google about their data feed images being too small:

“We’ve noticed that in many cases you’re submitting images that are smaller than 220 pixels X 220 pixels….”

If you received one for your Etsy shop, don’t worry–the admin are working on it! They will be setting up the larger images when they start doing the feed for us:

Read sean11′s post here in the forums

Visit our Etsy shop: GoToSupplies

Go To Great Panes, Kathryn Maloney ©2009
(This post is copyrighted–you do not have permission to repost this content elsewhere but you are welcome to link to it if you’d like to share the information.)

We’ve got an admin post in the Etsy forums about Google Base:

http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=6300865

Visit our Etsy shop: GoToSupplies

Go To Great Panes, Kathryn Maloney ©2009
(This post is copyrighted–you do not have permission to repost this content elsewhere but you are welcome to link to it if you’d like to share the information.)

So after coming back from a few days away I logged in to Google Base and thought my feeds had been deleted like some other sellers’ feeds have been. I am pleased to say Google Base moved the page where they show the feeds.

So far, so good–we haven’t been “retired”–I just needed to update my bookmark!

The new main Google Base page:
Merchant account log in page

Feeds have been moved here:
Data Feeds Page

I’ll be going back and updating previous posts with this new page as fast as I can.

Visit our Etsy shop: GoToSupplies

Go To Great Panes, Kathryn Maloney ©2009
(This post is copyrighted–you do not have permission to repost this content elsewhere but you are welcome to link to it if you’d like to share the information.)

UPDATE: I have not heard of any feeds being deleted since the end of September–I wonder if they thought better of deleting feeds until the December deadline they had mentioned…

Google Base is deleting individual seller feeds. That’s the pre-formatted letter I got from Google Base tech support, and now more sellers in the forums have said their feeds have been “retired”.

I am really disappointed–they’ve given marketplaces until December to comply with the new rule which went into effect September 3rd. Even though a marketplace is not submitting a feed yet, Google Base has already retired several sellers’ feeds on Etsy and 1000markets.

It seems pretty random–some sellers have had feeds deleted, some not. Some have been able to set up Google Base feeds for the first time while others have not.

Etsy admin have said they are working on it, but it looks like it will be a few weeks before our feeds are up.

I have responded to the Google tech support message explaining how I feel this is not a good move and that feeds shouldn’t be deleted until the venue is submitting its feed–especially considering the timing for upcoming holiday season–and how sellers don’t have control over when their market place starts submitting their items. I’m hoping they will reconsider. If you’d like to contact them too, here’s the Google Base contact form:

http://base.google.com/support/bin/request.py?contact_type=no_appear

Visit our Etsy shop: GoToSupplies

Update: Click here

Go To Great Panes, Kathryn Maloney ©2009
(This post is copyrighted–you do not have permission to repost this content elsewhere but you are welcome to link to it if you’d like to share the information.)

As of December 1st, 2009 Google Base will be changing its policies for submitting goods that are for sale on sites like Etsy.

Sellers will no longer be able to set up their own shop feeds–the marketplace will need to do it for the sellers. (I’d say that it is still worthwhile to spend the 10 minutes setting up your feed in the mean time–so don’t let this discourage you from getting your feed going!)

Some have said that Google Base’s has already deleted their feeds because for this new rule (a few on Etsy and one on 1000Markets from what I’ve heard).

I’d be surprised if that is why those feeds have been deleted since the last time Google had put a change in requirements into place they allowed feeds that didn’t meet the new requirements to remain until the deadline they provided–which would be December 1st in this case.

I’ve contacted Google tech support and I’ll let you know what I hear back from them on this.

Visit our Etsy shop: GoToSupplies

Go To Great Panes, Kathryn Maloney ©2009

Visit our Etsy shop: GoTo


This tutorial replaces the Let’s Ets method since this file doesn’t need to be edited before uploading (like the Let’s Ets file does) making process quicker and easier.

This assumes you’ve already set up your Google Base Data feed using the Etsy RSS method, which is preferable to using the manual upload. If you haven’t tried the Etsy RSS method yet, go there first and set it up instead of using the manual method.

The short version–for those that are practiced and just need a reminder:

A. Right click the Subscribe to shop feed link in your public Etsy shop. Mac users: use CTRL-Click for the right-click function B. Save the link content with the same name as your Google Base data feed. C. Upload it to Google Base.

The long version–a full step by step tutorial:

Download Your Shop’s Info

1. Go to your Etsy shop’s public view, (the little yellow and white ‘storefront’ icon at the top right of every Etsy page).

On the right, at the bottom of your shop info you’ll see a blue link that says Subscribe to shop feed.

2. Right-click on the link and select “Save linked content as”, “Save link as”, “Save target as”–or whatever is similar in your browser’s pop-up menu. (Don’t left click–it won’t get you what you need.)
Mac users: use CTRL-Click for the right-click function

3. The “save” or “save as” window will pop up–at the top of the window it allows you to save it as a file to your computer.

A. In the top box use the drop down menu choose where on your computer you would like to save your feed file. Save the file in any folder you’d like, just be sure you know how to get to it on your computer after you have downloaded it. Some have chosen to save it to the desktop so they are sure to be able to find it. We save ours in our Etsy folder.

B. Name the file the same thing as your current feed, no matter what it currently says in the box. If you have the option in the second box of selecting xml as the file type, do so, otherwise ‘all files’ should be fine. Be sure the .xml is at the end of the file name, if not–type it in.

We have two Etsy shops, named GoTo and GoToSupplies so we have two feeds, our feeds are named:

GoTo.xml
GoToSupplies.xml

C. Click save.

Upload Your Shop’s Info to Google Base

4. Go to the Google Base Data feeds page: http://www.google.com/base/bulkuploads

5. There you should see your currently scheduled feed, and under the Uploads column you should see Manual: upload file. Click the “upload file” link and a window will pop up.

6. Click the Choose button–it pops open a window that allows you to access your computer folders. Go to the folder that has the feed you saved and double click the file name. The file location will now be in the manual upload window, click the Upload and process this file button.

7. This should result in the file being uploaded to Google Base. The Last upload date & status column should now say “Processing”.

It can take a few minutes or up to 24 hours to process your file.

After the Upload
See these Google Base “Frequently Asked Question” posts for what to expect next & troubleshooting help:

http://www.gotogreatpanes.com/blog/google-base

Visit our Etsy shop: GoToSupplies

Visit our Etsy shop: GoTo

Go To Great Panes, Kathryn Maloney ©2009

What are meta tags? Text placed in the computer code that make up a web page that you can’t see when looking at the web page.

A lot of the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) info talks about having good meta tags because that’s part of what search engines use to decide your placement in search results. While you can’t control what Etsy uses in the way of meta tags, you can control what some of the meta tags say. Here’s how:

For your shop homepage
meta name=	Where it comes from in your listing
“keywords”	Comes from your shop section names: Use keywords that folks looking for your items will use when they search.
“description”	Comes from your shop announcement: The first 160 characters are key so don’t waste them with info or characters that don’t describe what you sell.
“author”	Your Etsy ID

For your item listings
meta name=	Where it comes from in your listing
“keywords”	Your tags
“description”	The start of your item description: The first 160 characters need to describe your item for search purposes. This is what will be displayed about your item in search results, so don’t waste them with info or characters that don’t describe the item.

Not meta tags, but still very important:
Page Title–Shop Home The text in the blue bar at the top of your browser when viewing a webpage.	On your shop homepage: Shop Title by UserName on Etsy The first 30 characters you use in your “Shop Title” on your shop’s appearance page followed by your user name, and then on Etsy if there’s room (download Etsy’s SEO PDF document for a more precise description). If your business name is different than your Etsy ID this is a great place to put it, describe what you sell, your business’ tag line….
Page Title–Item Pages The text in the blue bar at the top of your browser when viewing a webpage.	On your listing pages: Item Title by UserName on Etsy The first 60 characters you use as the title of the listing followed by your user name and on Etsy if there’s room (download Etsy’s SEO PDF document for a more precise description). Describe the item a little if you can, limit the title to about 60 characters. Anything over 70 characters is definitely too long for Google’s taste.
Alternate Text for Images (also referred to as alt text)	Your listing title is used here again: But only for the thumbnail of the first image. When your items get picked up for Google image search, it will use this info to define the photo. It’s also the text that shows when a mouse hovers over the image.
Web Page Address (also referred to as URL)	Your listing title is used here again: The first 40 characters of your listing title will be added to the web page address to increase search engine friendliness. For example, my happy little screenbug has the title: Screenbug – Cobalt Blue Screen Bug – protect your screens from walk throughs The URL will be: http://www.etsy.com/listing/28606003/screenbug-cobalt-blue-screen-bug-protect

Visit our Etsy shop: GoToSupplies

Visit our Etsy shop: GoTo


Go To Great Panes, Kathryn Maloney ©2009

If you sell your items on several venues (your own website, sites like Etsy, Ebay…) you’ll find you can’t just add a second data feed for items located on another domain if you are using the scheduler for uploading your goods (such as the Etsy RSS and Google Base method). The data feed address will differ from the website URL and your feed will fail.

To work around that, you can do one of three things:

1. Get another Google Base account for each additional venue you sell from,

2. Change your current Google Base account to a multi-client account, and your shops/websites will be the clients of the account and allowed to have different addresses: Multi-client account, or

3. Add items for the additional venues using Google Base’s manual upload link in an additional data feed. To upload your Etsy shop feed via the manual link see this post: Manual Upload.

Please note: Google Base doesn’t like when you submit the same exact items through multiple feeds–it muddies the searches–so your feed may get disapproved if you do that.

Need a jump start for getting your website feed going? See here: Google Merchant Feed for Your Website

Visit our Etsy shop: GoToSupplies

Go To Great Panes, Kathryn Maloney ©2009

Visit our Etsy shop: GoTo

Google Base says the scheduled feeds are still catching up, and while the feeds are processing successfully, emails are going out that mistakenly say the feed has failed. Log in to Google Base to see if your feed really did fail or not.

If it did fail and your data feeds page says no items were inserted, see FAQ # 3 for help.

From Google: Two feed related issues Friday, July 10, 2009 | 6:39 PM We’re currently experiencing processing delays for feeds automatically submitted via scheduling. Our engineers have resolved this issue and your scheduled feed should start getting processed within the next few days. If you’d like to update your feeds before that time, we recommend that you submit your items manually via the Google Base dashboard. We’re are also experiencing a separate issue, where data feed notification emails are including incorrect feed status information. While our engineers work to resolve this issue, you can verify the status of your feed directly by logging in to your Google Base account. We appreciate your patience and we’ll update this post once the issues are resolved.

Visit our Etsy shop: GoToSupplies