Have you ever wondered why your competitors are ranking higher than you on Google Product Search?

Well as we all know that on Google Product Search content is King. Your titles should have key-words and key phrases (terms and phrases that a shopper would use to search for the product.) Your descriptions follow the same rule but unlike the title, you have much more room to add these key phrases.

So elaborate, be creative!

If you feel confident that your title and description are very SEO friendly but your still being out ranked, the Google Base Competitor Analysis tool created by (Tom the Developer) can help to tell you why.

This tool allows you to search for products or keywords on Google Product Search and be presented with much more information that is not generally displayed on the normal Google Product Search listings. You will be shown the pertinent fields (and data within said fields) that your competitors are including!

Here is an example of what you can see using this tool:

Here we can see the Weight, Condition, Product_type, Manufacturer’s part Number (MPN), Universal Product Code (UPC), ID, Model_Number, Brand attributes that a competitors listing includes. You can the cross reference this data to see what you can do to improve you listing. You can also use this tool to potential help populate data that you may be missing from your data-feed.



Lets say you get your products from a drop shipper but the data-feed they gave you does not include an UPC number. Using this tool you can look up the product and get its UPC number from someone who has that data input. Obviously you’ll want to make sure that the products are identical so that you aren’t incorrect or erroneous data.

Lets say that you are not being included in a Google Product Search group listings.

You would want to know why right?

Well you can use this tool to look up your competitors in this group and find out what data that they all share in common but you lack. Generally an incorrect or missing UPC or Model Number is the culprit.

The Google Base Competitor Analysis Tool is something that I use often to help improve my clients content and data feeds. The best part about this tool is that it is free. That’s right, FREE!



You can access the Google Base Competitor Analysis Tool here



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Google has added another weapon to their internet marketing arsenal, Google Product Listing Ads. These ads will appear in the “Sponsored Links” section of the search results on their website (the same place your normal AdWords Ads currently appear).

“Product Listing Ads is part of our effort to simplify the advertising process for merchants with large product inventories. Some of the key features of Product Listing Ads include:

* Pay only for results: Product Listing Ads are charged on a cost-per-action (CPA) basis, which means that you only pay when a user clicks on your ad and completes a purchase on your site. Because Product Listing Ads is charged on a CPA basis, it offers a risk-free way for you to reach a larger audience on Google.com.
* List your entire inventory: Product Listing Ads requires no keywords or additional ad text. Whenever a user enters a search query relevant to an item in your Google Merchant Center account, Google will automatically show the most relevant products along with the associated image, price and product name. Product Listing Ads makes it easy for you to promote your entire product inventory on Google.com.”

Source: Inside AdWords: Announcing Product Listing Ads

Here is a screen shot showing the difference between a Product Listing Ad and some AdWords Ads:

You can read the article detailing the release here: Inside AdWords: Announcing Product Listing Ads

CSE.Manager@gmail.com

Attention Yahoo! Merchant Solutions store owners!

Yahoo has added an option to enable your objinfo.xml and your catalog.xml files but not to syndicate them. What this means is that Yahoo! will not send your product catalog to Comparison Shopping Engines for you. This is great news for those merchants who submit data feeds on their own or by using programs such as FeedPerfect or Merchant Advantage.

“Select “Enable” to let shopping comparison engines and other third-party sites download your catalog of products. We’ll submit a link to these files to Google Base and provide other shopping comparison engines with access to the files.

Select “Enable but do not syndicate” if you wish to enable the XML files, but do not want the files to be sent to Google Base or other shopping comparison engines (for example, if you’d like to manage your own product feeds).

The files will be updated each time you publish your store or catalog.”

Source: Yahoo Merchant Solutions

If you are a Yahoo! Merchant Solutions store owner who has tried to submit to Google Products Search via Google Base / Merchant Center; you probably have gotten the error :

This error was caused by Yahoo! submitting your product catalog to Google Base / Merchant Center for you. This happens automatically if you have your .xml files set to enable (which in the past was the only options besides disable.)

I have seen a lot of work around’s used to get past this error; including adding /index.html to the URL so it would be unique. This would “fool” Google Base / Merchant Center into letting you continue, but would lead to duplicate listings on Google Product Search since two feeds would technically be getting submit.

The only other sure fire way to fix this was to contact Google Base / Merchant Center using this form: URL in use – Google Base Help but this could take days to get resolved a you have to work with the technical support team and they need to prove that you are really the owner of the domain.

So when you enable  your objinfo.xml and catalog.xml files for the first time (or if you already have them enabled) make sure  to set them to ” enable but do not syndicate” this will help you avoid all of the potential problems above.

Hope this helps!!

CSE.Manager@gmail.com