[IP2]

Originally Posted by Chubster

It is...I knew I had seen EAN before just couldnt place it. So thanks.

Does that mean then that in the states they have barcode details on google base?

It means in the US it is a required field, so that like Amazon everything (is supposedly!!!) an exact match comparison.

[Cathy]

Google have recently made the 'id' attribute compulsory for UK feeds....which seems rather like the first step on the road to the same system they've already implemented in the US where there a half dozen more required fields....

[Case]

Make sure you're using all the right attributes for a 'Products' upload...

http://base.google.com/support/bin/a...n&answer=73932

[MSC]

We use it for our other website and it is brilliant. I am not organised enough to remember when the feed expires but I can always tell by a drop in sales within a day or so.

[Case]

Just remember to upload a new one every week or something. It doesn't do any harm to upload a new feed before the old one expires.

They last 30 days btw.

[MSC]

I am sure I don't have all the right attributes but I've been uploading the feed for over a year now without any problem, how odd. The cart I use has a modification that creates the feed but it is quite basic, but still seems to work very well.
Thanks Case, I should do it weekly, that is a good idea

[IP2]

Equally we upload every week and Google Base does appear to have some 'importance' put on the frequency of uploads. I believe you can see a downward drop by week 3 if you have not reloaded!

[Cathy]

Regarding the 'required' attributes. For now, it seems Google UK is not 'requiring' these but I believe there will come a time when they do.

It seems like they're moving in that direction already.

For example, up until recently I could quite happily upload feeds without using an ID field, ie unique identifier for each product.

A few weeks ago I got an email from Google which I initially took to be 'spam' but later confirmed was genuine. In the email they advised that they were about to implement a requirement for the unique ID field.

I managed to modify our field fairly easily to produce this so I don't know when/if they've carried through on their intention to require a unique ID field. I believe that the other required ones in the Google link posted above will become increasingly 'required' if the feed is not to fail.

[Chubster]

Arghhh...how hard can it be...trying a test file and keep getting We didn't understand some of the formatting in your dsv (delimiter separated values) file.

[Cathy]

Can you turn it into a tab delimited....that's what we use and apart from some 'silly errors' like it hates any unusual characters it works.