Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

How do I optimize my data feed(s)?

Our data feeds work immediately up being set up. We push your Yahoo store data to your recipient comparison shopping engines who list your items in their engines.

To optimize your product data for general search and in the comparison shopping engines, we have a helpful article at https://dashboard.feedwizards.com/articles/google/products/optimization.

This article addresses Google feeds specifically, but the theory carries forward to most search engines and comparison shopping engines.

How do I check to see what my current charges are for my feeds?

You can easily view your charges for your feeds by logging into your Feed Wizards dashboard.

The Feed Wizards dashboard shows the current monthly amount for your data feed service...whatever services and feeds you have set up currently. This changes every time you add or delete feeds or services.

Log into your Feed Wizards dashboard at https://dashboard.feedwizards.com/

Once logged in, if you click on the link ???my stores" in the upper left of the screen, you will see your store. Clicking on the link/name of your store will show you all the services and data feeds set up on the store. There is a "billing" button you can click on to get a breakdown of the charges for the month as well.

Why is it important to have shopping feeds?
Online shopping feeds are sometimes overlooked by Yahoo! Store owners. Using shopping feeds on search engines opens online businesses to millions of shoppers who otherwise would never find merchant websites through basic searches. About half of the online shopping decisions are influenced by shopping feeds. Most online shoppers take time to compare prices, and most compare products on shopping feeds before they purchase them.

In this economy, shoppers are looking for the best deals. Shopping engines have specific areas where Yahoo! stores can market themselves using promotions, coupons and free shipping offers. Merchants who use these features can be separated out from a crowded marketplace.

Shopping search engines are influenced by feeds that are regularly updated. Also, the shopping experience and overall satisfaction will be greater if the feed has accurate product information.

Shopping feeds are a valuable part of an online merchant???s overall marketing effort. It is important to note that shopping feeds, along with email, search engine optimization and social media make up a solid marketing plan.
Shopping feeds offer a great opportunity to expand your online presence in a competitive world filled with selective consumers. Go to FeedWizards.com for more information about helping you to establish and manage your shopping feeds.

I only need one data feed, is a Feed Wizards service available for this?
Yes. We have a "Lite Feed Service" which does not include image hosting and only includes a feed to ONE comparison shopping engine. This service is $19.95 per month.

How do I add data feeds using the Feed Wizards Dashboard?
If you would like to add a data feed to your list of services please follow the steps below:

1. Log into your Feed Wizards dashboard.
2. Click on "My Stores" in the menu/left side navigation box.
3. Click on the store you would like to add the service to.
4. At the bottom of that page you will see a button called "Add Service".
5. After clicking the button a list of feed services we offer will show.
6. Then simply click the "Add Service" button to the right of the feed you would like to add.

How do I send my data feeds using the Feed Wizards Dashboard?
If you would like to send the feed manually please follow the steps:

1. Log into your Feed Wizards dashboard.
2. Click on "My Stores" in the menu/left side navigation box.
3. Click on the store you would like to send the feed(s) for.
4. Under "Data Feeds" click on the "View Status" button of the feed you would like to send.
5. Towards the bottom under "Manage Service" you will see a link that says "Resend current feed now".
6. Click the link to send the feed, and it will take an hour or so to send.

How do I exclude (or include) products into my Yahoo! Store Data Feed?
There are a number of ways to include or exclude products from your Data Feeds, each with distinct benefits or uses depending on how you like to work.
Here are step by step what you can do for the different options:

Product Exclusion Rules:

1. Is the rules based system which sets the minimum requirement for products to be included in the feed? Any product that passes the rules will be included in the feed UNLESS they are blocked at an item level.
2. Item level blocks can be done manually (checkboxes in the dashboard), or through uploading lists of product ids through the dashboard, or through our email block system.

By Default ALL items are included in a feed. If you'd rather that NO items are included and you instead want to submit a list of just the items to be sent, simply let the Feed Wizards know (send us your store and which feed) and we'll switch your feed so by default NOTHING will get sent until you add some.

Product Inclusion Rules:

In the feed wizards dashboard you can set up rules (most feeds have a few by default) that determine which products make it into your data feed. To see and modify the rules for any feed:

1. Click on My Stores in the dashboard.
2. Click on a store name.
3. Click on Edit Rules next to the feed you want to modify.

These directions can't go into every possible rule but basically any page that passes ALL rules may be included in the feed. You can add new rules, change rules, or even disable or delete rules (initial rules can be disabled but not deleted). You set each rule and depending on the rule, you may need to load up to 4 parameters. Simply save after adjusting and you're good to go.
Manual Item Level Blocks

To manually add or remove products from a feed, for any items that pass the initial product rules:

1. Go to My Stores.
2. Click on your store name.
3. Click on View Products next to the feed you want to adjust. On this page you can go through the products that have passed the rules, change sorting, etc.
4. To exclude a product simply uncheck the checkbox on the left in the Include column (or check it to include it again).
5. Hit save and you're done.

Uploaded Item Blocks:

If you have a lot of items to block from a feed, just create a text file with your item ids (one id per line) and you can upload it.

1. Click on My Stores on the left.
2. Click on the feed.
3. Click on Edit Rules and at the bottom there is a link to Upload Feed Blocks/Inclusion File.
4. Select a file, choose whether it's adding or removing these from the feed, and you can check if it's to overwrite (or otherwise add) to the existing block data.
5. Click upload and it will get processed.

IMPORTANT: Be sure the exclusion list contains ALL the items you want to exclude from any particular feed. Our system replaces the list each time you upload so if you are sending small lists of exclusions, each submission is considered the complete list.

I have many items in my store. How do I download the data or image files if the export file is very large?
Larger stores with a lot of product data can sometimes run into problems when attempting to download data or image backup files particularly when the file is too large for their browser. We are trying out a large file downloader program which may be able to help.

*See http://www.internetdownloadmanager.com/ for an Internet Download Manager that we use.

From the publisher:

"Internet Download Manager is a tool for increasing download speeds by up to 5 times, and for resuming, scheduling, and organizing downloads. The program will resume unfinished downloads due to network problems, or unexpected power outages..."

It will also handle zipped or compressed files and looks to be a "life saver" for stores with large product counts.

How do I view my data feeds using the Feed Wizards Dashboard?
If you would like to view a feed please follow the steps below:

1. Log into your Feed Wizards dashboard at https://dashboard.feedwizards.com/
2. Click on "My Stores" in the menu/left side navigation box.
3. Click on the store you would like to view the feed(s).
4. Under "Data Feeds" you will see a link labeled "Download feed" to the left of the feed service's name.

By clicking the link it should open a feed file which you can open in Excel to organize the data into columns.

How do I avoid duplicate content on shopping engines & affiliates using my feeds?
Duplicate content can be a big issue with shopping engines and affiliates. You don't want to spend time creating great content and then have Google or other engines think that another site is the originator. This could hurt you in their rankings, and bring users to the shopping engine first rather than your site. This will mean less traffic.

The solution is to provide alternative content to each of the engines. In order for us to feed alternative content to the different services, you have a couple of choices:

1. Load an alternative description in a new property and then configure the feed to use that field instead of the standard caption for the description. This has the one down side - it is a lot of work.
2. The more popular option is to install a dynamic content template. This is a two step process. The first to create the templated description and the second step is to apply it to the description field for each feed.

For step 1, login to the dashboard.

1. Click on My Stores.
2. Click on Edit Settings for your store.
3. Click the edit button in the Additional Settings area. Once there you can load your alternate description, inserting markers where we should insert price, name, and section name if you want it. See below for an example.

@[email protected] is in stock and ready to ship from XYZ Company. We stock @[email protected] for @[email protected] and we guarantee your satisfaction.

Basically our system will replace @[email protected] with the product name, @[email protected] with the price, and @[email protected] with the main section name. Now to apply it to any feed, go back to the My Stores list.

1. Click on your store, and then go to MAPPINGS for any feed.
2. Find the line that would include your caption (look for it in the fields or a field name that makes sense like description) and click on the M on the right under the Modifiers Column. This allows you to create content modifiers.
3. Remove all existing rules except one and change it to USE GENERIC DESCRIPTION.
4. Click save and you're good to go.

How does Yahoo assign a category?
Yahoo uses the LAST section an item is added to as the category. This is true for both item pages and subsection pages. When you have an item that is in multiple sections, the LAST section you place the item into will be considered the PARENT section and that is what will show in the breadcrumbs trail. To reassign a parent section, go to that section page and "reset" the item as follows:

1. Remove the item ID from the contents and update.
2. Reinsert the item ID back into the contents property and update again.

Now your item will be re-categorized and your site's main CONTENTS page will automatically update.

What if I lose my Feed Wizards Dashboard login information?
If you ever lose or misplace your Feed Wizards Dashboard login information, please feel free to email us at [email protected] and we can reset your password as quickly as possible.

Did you know you can get a boost for your best selling items on Become.com? Here's how...
This is directly from Become.com:

In the Stock Status column of your data feed you place the word ???HOT??? for your top 100 selling products. If you mark more than 100 products, Become.com's system will only give the boost to the first 100 it accesses, and all others will be marked as ???In Stock???. Become.com assumes all ???HOT??? products are In Stock, so please do not mark Out of Stock items as "HOT". Become.com also recommends that you only mark top selling items, as they will be preferred over all others. Marking products that you want to sell but which do not have the market demand will cause those products to receive additional traffic that may not convert and, in fact, negatively impact your campaign.

Contact Your Store Wizards to make adjustments to your Become.com feed to display your "HOT" sellers.

How often is my store data backed up?
The Feed Wizards system backs up your product data and images each night.

How do I enable my Yahoo Store export files?

1. Log in to your Yahoo Store Manager and click the Search Engines link.
2. Locate the section marked Enable Store Contents Export and select "Enable, but do not syndicate". See:

http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/smallbusiness/store/promote/tools/tools-97.html

Can I include data from my custom properties in my feeds?
Absolutely!

If you populate custom properties in your Yahoo store, please let us know the exact names of the properties and their "type" and we can retrieve that data for use in your data feeds.

Many custom fields will automatically get downloaded if you have Catalog Manager and have enabled the catalog.xml file. Some custom properties that aren't part of the item type, or that are of certain types (references, ids, symbol), we must manually add to our export pages to retrieve.

How do I remove a feed in the Feed Wizards dashboard?
f you would like to remove a feed from your list of services please follow the steps below:

1. Log into your Feed Wizards dashboard
2. Click on "My Stores" in the menu/left side navigation box
3. Click on the store you would like to remove the service from
4. Click on the button "Edit Settings" next to the feed you would like to remove
5. Click the check box "Cancel this service"

A window will pop-up for reason of removal, and click the "Save changes" button to remove the service

Feed Wizards sign up - How do I get started?

To get started, you can visit the link below to sign up for our Feed Wizards data feed service. The Feed Wizards data feed service helps you post your Yahoo store products on Google Shopping and other major comparison shopping engines.

http://www.feedwizards.com/index.php. Just click on the "Free trial signup" button. You will be asked to set up an account with us. Afterward, one of our feed specialists will contact you. We can establish the feed for you and send it up regularly to your Google merchant account for Google to pick up so Google can post your items onto google.com and google.com/shopping. Please note Google now charges you to list your products and requires you set up Product Listing Ads. Directions are here: https://dashboard.feedwizards.com/google/product/listing/ads

How can I promote my inventory?

Product Listing
Ads<http://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/product_listing_ads_intro.pdf>appearwhen someone searches for your products on
google.com and google.com/shopping. Google will show the customer a picture of your item, its price, and your store name. Customers who click on your ad will be directed to your website where they can buy your item. Pay only for results

With Product Listing Ads you're charged only if someone clicks on your ad and lands on your website. You only pay when Google directs a customer to your store. Start your campaign

To create Product Listing Ads, you???ll need an AdWords
account <http://www.google.com/adwords/?sourceid=awo&subid=ww-ww-et-pl_ads>and a Merchant Center account <http://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/merchant_center_intro.pdf>.

m Become.com:

In the Stock Status column of your data feed you place the word ???HOT??? for your top 100 selling products. If you mark more than 100 products, Become.com's system will only give the boost to the first 100 it accesses, and all others will be marked as ???In Stock???. Become.com assumes all ???HOT??? products are In Stock, so please do not mark Out of Stock items as "HOT". Become.com also recommends that you only mark top selling items, as they will be preferred over all others. Marking products that you want to sell but which do not have the market demand will cause those products to receive additional traffic that may not convert and, in fact, negatively impact your campaign.

Contact Your Store Wizards to make adjustments to your Become.com feed to display your "HOT" sellers.

How often is my store data backed up?
The Feed Wizards system backs up your product data and images each night.

How do I enable my Yahoo Store export files?
1. Log in to your Yahoo Store Manager and click the Search Engines link.
2. Locate the section marked Enable Store Contents Export and select "Enable, but do not syndicate". See:

http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/smallbusiness/store/promote/tools/tools...

Can I include data from my custom properties in my feeds?
Absolutely!

If you populate custom properties in your Yahoo store, please let us know the exact names of the properties and their "type" and we can retrieve that data for use in your data feeds.

Many custom fields will automatically get downloaded if you have Catalog Manager and have enabled the catalog.xml file. Some custom properties that aren't part of the item type, or that are of certain types (references, ids, symbol), we must manually add to our export pages to retrieve.

How do I remove a feed in the Feed Wizards dashboard?
f you would like to remove a feed from your list of services please follow the steps below:
1. Log into your Feed Wizards dashboard
2. Click on "My Stores" in the menu/left side navigation box
3. Click on the store you would like to remove the service from
4. Click on the button "Edit Settings" next to the feed you would like to remove
5. Click the check box "Cancel this service"

A window will pop-up for reason of removal, and click the "Save changes" button to remove the service

Feed Wizards sign up - How do I get started?

To get started, you can visit the link below to sign up for our Feed Wizards data feed service. The Feed Wizards data feed service helps you post your Yahoo store products on Google Shopping and other major comparison shopping engines.

http://www.feedwizards.com/index.php. Just click on the "Free trial signup" button. You will be asked to set up an account with us. Afterward, one of our feed specialists will contact you. We can establish the feed for you and send it up regularly to your Google merchant account for Google to pick up so Google can post your items onto google.com and google.com/shopping. Please note Google now charges you to list your products and requires you set up Product Listing Ads. Directions are here: https://dashboard.feedwizards.com/google/product/listing/ads

How can I promote my inventory?

Product Listing
Adsappearwhen someone searches for your products on
google.com and google.com/shopping. Google will show the customer a picture of your item, its price, and your store name. Customers who click on your ad will be directed to your website where they can buy your item. Pay only for results

With Product Listing Ads you're charged only if someone clicks on your ad and lands on your website. You only pay when Google directs a customer to your store. Start your campaign

To create Product Listing Ads, you???ll need an AdWords
account and a Merchant Center account .