I’ll also reveal how smart marketers use feeds to drive revenue, customer acquisition and profits.Image: Google suddenly changed the terms of its CSS arrangements In a future column, I’ll compare the data feed specifications for the above players. One of the best descriptions of the service comes from a job posting: “Amazon Services provides retailers a turnkey, outsourced e-commerce solution that incorporates ’s widely recognized shopping features and technology, while still allowing retailers to entirely control the look and feel of their Web sites.” Sounds tempting.
Merchants of all kinds can submit feeds and build stores. No, wait… merchants pay to send traffic to BizRate! Beyond merchant surveys, BizRate accepts merchant feeds in a paid placement environment.Īmazon Services: Amazon is moving towards a mall model. It got BizRate’s brand out there for free. The data are, of course, valuable to marketers. Many a time, I’ve checked out of a store and been asked to rate my experience. It really gets merchants to sign up for its ratings service. Nextag: Like, Nextag runs a paid placement system to determine the default position for advertisers in the search results.īizRate: You have to hand it to BizRate. It’s an alternative to the Yahoo Stores or Amazon Services. Pricegrabber: PriceGrabber accepts feeds in a variety of formats as do most other providers, but also will build a store with its Storefronts program. Now, MySimon accepts data feeds from thousands of merchants.
runs a paid placement auction where you can specify the CPC you’re willing to pay (subject to minimums). It’s a hub where shoppers can start a search for any product. : (Formerly DealTime) determined its future lies in form and function. MSN has a holistic relationship with its advertisers, so feed pricing is dependant on an overall package. As with many of the feeds, data can be updated daily. Search results display based on relevance. MSN Shopping: MSN has an internal shopping comparison engine where tax and shipping policies are displayed along with your logo. Feeds can be adjusted for seasonality or other factors. CPCs (cost-per-click) are based on industry category and negotiated with the AOL sales team. A simple opt-in is all it takes.ĪOL Shopping: AOL has a shopping area accessible within the AOL community and to those who shop from AOL.com. If you have a Yahoo Store, it is easy to get your products included in the shopping area. Recently, it launched SmartSort described as a personalized sorting system for results. However, all indications are that we will see some major changes at Yahoo Shopping within its comparison shopping service. Yahoo does not seem to give internal products (those in Yahoo stores), or paid search feeds preferential treatment (higher position). Yahoo Shopping: Yahoo may be willing to include your products in Yahoo’s Shopping area, based on its own crawl for free, or you can take advantage of Yahoo Product Submit. Submitting a feed gets no guarantee of rank or even traffic.
Google: Google accepts free feeds to Froogle, its shopping engine which is technically still in beta.
I’ll cover the feed specifications how to generate feeds for individual engines, as well as specific search engine nuances in a later column. Due to space limitations, the following is an overview of the major aspects of specific feeds for each engine. Some accept images, pricing, inventory product descriptions, keywords, and a variety of other information for the feed.īelow, the basics for some of the most important feed-driven opportunities. Each traffic vendor that accepts feeds has slightly different specifications. Your internal and/or search agency teams must have an understanding not only of the technical specifications of each feed that’s to be developed and managed, but also how feed management will be executed to assure the right blend of ROI, spending level and profitability. Tapping the power of product and page feeds in a manner that delivers acceptable ROI isn’t trivial. If you sell products online and don’t use these feeds, you may be missing opportunities. Increasingly, the major portals accept product and page data feeds, including those beyond XML paid inclusion.
Yahoo’s acquiring Overture, which had previously acquired FAST and AltaVista while Google’s acquired search personalization startup Kaltix, Applied Semantics, even Blogger.īut the feeding frenzy I’m talking about is the one likely to impact search marketers. The portals are in investment feeding frenzy mode.