Power Sellers Unite

chris12331 · Joined: 02 Dec 2006 Posts: 959

Last night Patch and i had a discussion, via PM, concerning Google feeds.

If i check google base, every listing on my site shows up extremely well, yet nothing shows on Google shopping. I dont know the reason why, so i have contacted google techs who will come back to me.

But, theres a couple of points i have noticed when checking through the two. Google shopping appears to be based around Google Checkout. Though it has to be said there is a link to sellers stores. Shopping appears to be predominintly for the US market, but other markets do show, mostly not too well.

Googlebase does accept auctions too whereas shopping does not. There are two API here, one for base and one for shopping.

Its creating an SEO nightmare in my book. Just how are you supposed to get your site out there when google have two conflicting searches and why have google decided to have the two and effectively playing one off against the other.

It will be interesting to read google reply when or if it comes to me.

purple_reading_giraffe · Joined: 04 Feb 2008 Posts: 5485 Location: Indiana, USA

Well - starting from base.google.com and searching auctionsworldwide to find your items,
http://base.google.com/base/s2?q=auctionsworldwide&hl=en&gl=us#/base/s2/ajax?&start=30&q=auctionsworldwide&scoring=&&hl=en&gl=us&view=List
I got some interesting results which might contain some clues as to why your items are not currently showing up in Google Shopping / Products.

1. There are 2 authors that I found - tyke99 and http://www.auctionsworldwide.net/ - the authorids can be seen in the links "all results from ***" - manually entering &authorid= with the appropriate number in the URL can allow some specific control when desired. Manually adding &q=bob+builder+chrome+money+clip (for example) in the URL is a quick way to see search results that are limited to a specific authorid.

2. There are some duplicate listings for the same item URLs within Base - one having a price in $ and one in £ - on the items I saw, the price was the same number although the exchange rate would suggest they should be quite different. I only saw these duplications if seaching with an authorid= limitation; if I searched using the base search box, I only saw one return - one was the US dollar (bob) and another was the British pound (batman). Try this search for a "glimpse":
http://base.google.com/base/s2?hl=en&gl=us&view=List&authorid=3994187&q=chrome+money+clip

3. I chose the Bob the Builder Chrome Money Clip and the Rolls Royce Silver Ghost Chrome Money Clip as my test searches in Google Products and Google Web searches. A search within Products/Shopping did not find anything, but a search within Google Standard Web Search in each case returned a Google Shopping link partway down the page with those items on AWW listed and linked. Each was shown as listed by "tyke99" though one of these is currently within Google Base only from "http://www.auctionsworldwide.net/" and the other shows up as from "tyke99".

My tentative conclusion is that your items were quite recently listed in Google Products (as evidenced by the cached results in Google Web), but that (I'm guessing) a change-over from tyke99 (the much earlier authorid) to the auctionsworldwide.net authorid created some inadvertent duplicates (maybe?). Also, an attempt to address both dollars and pounds may have caused duplicate items. I have heard that Google Products does not like duplicates, so this "violation" might (I repeat, might) be the reason your items are not currently visible in Google Products. I have also heard that Google Products is "touchy" about drop-shipped items and will not accept items without a fixed price and items without an immediate payment method. Since your site is an auction site, that might be the main "problem" Google Products has. I also understand that if an authorid has a single problematic item, all items from that same authorid will be "suspended" from Google Products (though this may or may not be true for feeds that contain both fixed and auction items; I have only recently seen it said that Base would take auction items) -- this is the reason that several sites have changed from site-wide Google Base feeds to individual seller feeds, though in most cases the site still provides the database that Google "grabs" for the seller once the seller creates a Google Base account.

I hope some/all of these observations/notions might point you in the right direction.

wphamilton · Joined: 01 May 2005 Posts: 1940 Location: Georgia

I had to look into this subject a little more in the last few days and found out a few things.

Your items in Google Base are found in this url:

http://base.google.com/base/s2?authorid=yourid

Replace "yourid" with the ID Number for your google base. To find that number, log into your google base dashboard. The ID is at the top of the screen on the right side.

On that page clicking on the "products" link, shows your Products listed in Base with some search functions. However, that list is not the same as your products in Shopping.

Your items in Google Shopping are at this url:

http://www.google.com/products?authorid=yourid

Again, replace "yourid" with your own googlebase ID number. There isn't a one-seller-only search form on that page, but you CAN do it by modifying the url. Just add: &q=keyword after your ID number, replacing "keyword" with whatever you're searching for.

So all your uploaded items are in Base, the first url, unless they've been disapproved or become inactive. Of those items in Base, some of them will be shown in Shopping, the second url. There is some kind of filter or set of filters between Base and Shopping, blocking duplicates or other problematic listings from passing from Base to Shopping. On rare occasions, your Shopping listings will start to dwindle for no apparent reason, or nothing new gets added into Shopping, and you might never notice just looking at Base (or the Base dashboard which btw is http://base.google.com/base/dashboard ). So do check the Products page often.

I think - and it's just my own theory based on my own experiments - that the Base data can become corrupted or individual filter levels applied to specific Base accounts and/or items. When that happens, you'll find that your items don't translate from Base to Shopping. It looks like they're all there in Base, with no discernible issues, but neither you nor anyone else will see them in a Shopping search. When that happens you can't just upload a new feed; it won't work. The filters, or corrupt records if that's the case are tied to an identifying number unique for each Google Base item, perhaps to the individual feed and Google Base account itself. Erasing the records and uploading the feed again, even with new item id numbers, also doesn't work. The reason is that the Dashboard is only an approximation and doesn't reflect the true state of google's database. It takes hours or days to complete updates and indexing operations (if at all in some cases), so your erased items are still there and, being "duplications" of your new clean feed come back to haunt you.

My tentative solution to this is:

1) erase all items in Google Base at the dashboard
2) wait at least 24 hours checking both of the above links until no items are showing in either list, Base or Products. Waiting longer would be better.
3) Make a new feed in the "Data Feeds" section of the Dashboard on Google. This may not be necessary but literally takes a few seconds so why not?
4) Make a new feed file, with all new item id's, and upload.

I'm not certain that even this works yet, but it's the best shot I've come up with so far. Unfortunately, to be able to do this you have to be creating your own data feed upload to begin with, not using a site's auto feed. So it's probably worthwhile to work that out before there's a problem.

2BOYSandTOYS · Joined: 14 Mar 2005 Posts: 10095 Location: Kansas

I have never been savvy about the googlebase vs. google shopping, but did want to share that I've got google checkout turned 'off' for my items currently. So, I am not certain that 'field' affects submissions and / or page rankings.

On my first cup of coffee - hope this makes sense? :lol: :lol:

knappschiles · Joined: 25 May 2005 Posts: 4035 Location: Wi

Using GC has always been an IFFY thing to get the "badge" that Google gives out.

While I have GC on BJ, eC, BZ and my own web site, none of my listings get the badge at all.

Carol

hotnana · Joined: 02 Feb 2008 Posts: 875

When I originally set up my GCO account I used eCrater for the callback URL, then months later I added it to my BISI store using the same account. My BISI store had the little blue cart but my eCrater store didn't...hummm I thought! So last week I contacted GCO and asked them about it, they told me they would add the cart for me. My eCrater items now display the blue cart, ask and thou shall receive! :lol:

DaLizardsLair · Joined: 15 Feb 2009 Posts: 4780

When I sold on Blujay, I found that in any given month, I would have 1250 or so items show up on Google Shopping, while 1350 would show up on Google Base.

As long as a buyer could find my item by typing what they were looking for in basic Google (www.google.com), I could care less where it came from or how.

And isn't that really what any seller should care about...the buyer being able to find them?

wphamilton · Joined: 01 May 2005 Posts: 1940 Location: Georgia

Absolutely lizardslair, and that's exactly why I hoped that confusing post would be helpful. All that buyers see are the google shopping search. Base is what you see. If there's a disconnect between them causing buyers NOT to be able to find our Base items, we've got to a) know about it in the first place and b) do something about it.

It's really a problem. Scouring the web, "why don't my products show up in Shopping" is a recurring question and they all get the same set of non-working answers. I'm still researching it. Maybe I'll write an piece for one of the article aggregate sites and just post a link here for anyone interested.

So, I am not certain that 'field' affects submissions and / or page rankings.

I don't think that submissions are affected by which fields are included Erin, except for Condition which is now required. Accepting GCO, and the blue badge, does not improve ranking as far as I can determine with A=B tests.

However, the identifier fields of MPN (manufacturers part number), UPC and ISBN are "srongly encouraged" by Google, not necessarily required for submission of all items but do improve searches according to Google. Other attributes such as color are reported to improve search ranks but I personally haven't been able to verify that.

hotnana · Joined: 02 Feb 2008 Posts: 875

In regards to Lizards post...if 1300 items were found in GB and 1200 items were in Google Shopping, it merely means that 100 items weren't published. Google Base is the first step in the door of Google Shopping, just because your items are submitted to GB doens't mean they will be published and viewable to potential customers. :wink:

wphamilton · Joined: 01 May 2005 Posts: 1940 Location: Georgia

That's true and you wouldn't think it's a problem if 5%-10% of your Base listings aren't in Shopping. Not worth sweating over. Some items are too similar, have boilerplate or some other standard issue. But that doesn't say much about the situations that are problematic, when 70-100% of the Base items fall out of Shopping, or when nothing listed past a certain date remains in Shopping past a week (a situation I ran into once). It's not explained by the fact that sometimes not all items are there. When LOTS of items aren't there, or ALL of some set of items, something else is wrong.

A pitfall that I'm trying to emphasize is that you can't trust the Base Dashboard. You said "published in Shopping". You'd think that "published and searchable" in the Dashboard would mean the same thing. It doesn't. You look at the Dashboard and see that everything is "published" and "searchable", and think most everything's ok but it's not. Everyone tends to just repeat the couple of Google help pages and the conventional wisdom about it, but that doesn't actually solve those problems. The whole thing needs to be demystified.

Google's terminology makes it more confusing. If you find this url:
http://base.google.com/base/s2?q&a_n0=products&a_y0=9&hl=en&gl=us
there are buttons for "search products" and "search web". Intuitively you think of "products" as in "shopping", but it's really product item types inside the Google Base database. When you're in the Base search, and click "products" you don't get shopping products although it looks like it. You get a different view of Base. No actual shoppers will see this product search. When you go into "Base" and get to the Google Base Dashboard you see Base records and your feeds, but that's not really Google Base. It's really a cached set of what you want Base to reflect, or an approximate reflection of Base. The Product Search http://www.google.com/prdhp?q&hl=en&tab=nf off the main Google page is of course the true product search, that shoppers will see. Bottom line is that's the one we have to focus on, even when Google's forum "experts" try to distract the issue to Base products.