On Tuesday July 13th 2010 Google Product Search sent out an e-mail to their merchants letting them know that as of August 2010 merchant who submit products in the electronics, books or media categories will need to include applicable manufacturers part numbers (MPN), brand names, universal product codes (UPC) and international standard book number (ISBN) in their data feed. These fields will NOT be required but as they say “to avoid seeing a drop in traffic from Product Search, we urge you to start including these unique identifiers as soon as possible”

As I have said all along, the more information that you include with your listings, the more relevant they will be and the higher they will list within the search results. If you are an electronics merchant currently submitting to Google Product Search, you better be submitting those fields anyway! If you are not, you should head back to comparison shopping engine marketing class 101.

I have posted the whole e-mail below in case you missed it. As always have a great day and if you need help with anything, don’t hesitate to drop us a line.

CSE.Manager@gmail.com

Hello,

Starting in late August 2010, we are making some changes to how your products in the Electronics, Books, and Media categories may appear on Google Product Search. In order to provide as much information as possible to our users, we need your help in matching your products to our “product pages” where users are able to view useful data such as product specifications or reviews. If you are submitting products in the above categories for the US version of Google Product Search, please start including unique product identifiers, such as MPN, Brand, UPC or ISBN. We will make similar changes to Product Search in the UK and Germany at a later date.

These attributes will not be required for your feed to process correctly, however, to avoid seeing a drop in traffic from Product Search, we urge you to start including these unique identifiers as soon as possible. You can find unique product identifier information on Product Search product pages, under the “technical specifications” section for Electronics items, the “Tracks” or “Details” section for Media, and the “Overview” section for books.

For more details, including what specific identifiers you should include for each category of item, please see our Help Center at http://www.google.com/support/merchants/bin/answer.py?answer=160161

Sincerely,

The Google Product Search Team

Email preferences: You have received this email service announcement to update you about important changes to your Google Merchant Center account. Please do not reply to this email directly. If you have any questions, please contact us from our Help Center at http://www.google.com/support/merchants

Copyright 2010. Google Inc, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043.

Browsing through the wonderful internet for breaking news in the comparison shopping engine world, I stumbled upon some interesting information from ChannelAdvisor in regards to comparison shopping engine conversion rates!

From the ChannelAdvisor information sheet:

In an effort to add to the survey/industry information that is currently available, ChannelAdvisor took a sample of the most common retail categories and highlighted which shopping engines, on average, perform the best for our customers. If your program doesn’t include some of the engines listed below, this could be a lower-risk growth opportunity you should consider.

Courtesy of Channel Advisor

What makes this information so useful is that not only does it show the comparison shopping engines’ average conversion rates but they are broken down by the industry.

This information can be used as a “guide” to help you decide which comparison shopping engines you should research for your comparison shopping engine portfolio.

(I say “guide” because these figures are averages, and the industries are quite broad. This information should be used to help, but not be the only factor, in making the decision.)

That is all! I hope the weather is as gorgeous where you are as it is here! Hooray Spring!

CSE.Manager@gmail.com

Yesterday, Comparison Shopping Engine Management reported a problem with Google Base/Merchant Center. I am happy to report that this issue has been resolved. All of our client’s feeds that went out this morning were picked up and processed by Google without error.

Here is link to the help forum where Google acknowledges the problem:

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/base/thread?tid=04c2d685fe982779&hl=en

In case you missed it, here is the e-mail that Google was sending out (in error) to its merchants when they submit a file on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week.

Dear Google Merchant Center user,

On March 2, 2010 11:32:44 AM PST you uploaded to Google Merchant Center via FTP a file named “FILENAME.TXT”, but you don’t have a data feed registered with this name. Please verify that you provided the correct file name, including correct capitalization.

This is a computer-generated email. Please do not reply.

You can change your notification settings at http://www.google.com/merchants/basicsettings

CSE.Manager@gmail.com