Datafeed Panel at Affiliate Summit West 2010

by Scott Jangro on January 11, 2010

City Over The Knee Boots Jeffrey Campbell - ShoeHunting.com-1.png

Next Monday morning at Affiliate Summit, I’m moderating a panel titled, “Datafeeds: The Next Level”. I know what you’re thinking, how can so much excitement be contained? The truth is, Las Vegas is the only venue large enough to discuss such an awesome topic.

OK, seriously. I realize that there are more exciting topics than product datafeeds. But I owe my publishing business and career in no small part to product datafeeds and finding creative ways to use them. I hope that there are plenty of people who would like to learn how to use them better or at all.

The panel consists of a really smart set of guys, Larry Adams from Google Affiliate Network, Brian Smith from SingleFeed, and Shergul Arshad from StyleFeeder. Two of them have the word “feed” in their company name. C’mon!

We’re going to talk about best practices for merchants and affiliates, how to get started with datafeeds, the possible creation of standards, and more.

A critical element is to get input from attendees on what you want to hear about. We’ll probably be accepting questions live via twitter, and certainly by microphone if you’re willing to stand up. But why not chime in right here and now with your input on what you’d like to hear about.

What datafeed question do you have for this panel of experts representing the affiliate marketing triumvirate representing affiliate, merchant, and network?

Let us know in the comments and I hope to see you there.

  • weconnecttheworld
    if you are truly a blogger and want to know how to earn extra cash from your web site or blog. follow this link. http://www.poemfame.blogspot.com
  • efoghorjoseph
    1. How do we create a link on our web site or blog for advertisers to be able to paste their ads on our sites?
    2. Where precisely should we paste our ad link code on our blog or web site for ads link we generated from Google or Amazon to show in our sites and blogs?
  • Guest
    Is google affiliate program going to offer web services to access merchant data instead of datafeeds or in addition to data feeds?
  • Can I add my ads to the other websites I own? How would it work if I was to do that?
  • mohdnazri
    WELCOME....
  • Hi, I've tried numerous emails to your tech support to properly link my affiliate account to my adsense account. I managed this successfully ages ago, but now it's completely messed up. I've accepted your new terms by attaching to another google account, but you don't think I've done that since I'm still getting emails saying I haven't accepted the new terms. I can't get paid since I'm attached to the wrong google account and I can't create a new adsense account with the same EIN. Tech support's suggestion to use the link to another account using Click here to use a different Google Account fails regardless of which google account I originate the request from.

    Enter the Google Account that you would like to use with Google Affiliate Network.
    The account must be an active Google Account. To create a new Google Account, please sign out and visit www.google.com/accounts gives me an error: Could not commit change to user <edit>: ORA-00001: unique constraint (PFX.IX01_APPUSER) violated (DBD ERROR: OCIStmtExecute)

    How do I do an escalation that will actually talk to a human vs getting some kind of automated response? Is there a phone number? There are clearly several database configuration erorrs. I've seen people post similar errors to your forums. The response is to send email to help. This isn't working.
  • Sophia Green
    Hi Sandra,

    Google Affiliate Network has escalated your inquiry to our Technical Team, you should have received a response from Google Affiliate Network Publisher Support notifying you of this.

    Once the Technical Team has completed the necessary actions to remedy your account issue, Publisher Support will confirm this with you.

    If you need assistance with anything else please always feel free to email, affiliatesupport@google.com.
  • Issues that I have seen with product feeds include broken HTML in product descriptions, very short product descriptions, and sometimes broken affiliate links. I realize Google wants to make it as easy as possible for businesses to upload feeds. I also realize that businesses would not want their product descriptions to display with broken HTML because it makes it look sloppy. Instead of every affiliate processing the feeds looking for broken HTML, I think it would be easier to do this at a central location. When a business uploads a feed, Google could process the feed to get a list of ProductIDs with broken HTML. At that point, they could email the business about the products with issues. Until the problem is fixed, Google could filter the feeds to exclude products with broken HTML. As for broken affiliate links, every affiliate has a unique link do to the tracking number so it would be inefficient for Google to see if they are all active. However, I could see Google taking a random tracking link for affiliates and seeing if it works. If it does, they could assume everything is OK. If not, more processing could be done to see if it is a common problem. Just a few ideas to think about :)
  • I would be interested in downloading coupon datafeeds from the Google Affiliate Network. Possible columns could be CouponID, ProductID, StartDate, EndDate, CouponTxt, OriginalPrice, DiscountPrice, and PercentDiscount. The ProductID could be in a one-to-many relationship with the ProductID in the actual product datafeed. The OriginalPrice would probably not be needed in the Coupon datafeed as the price is already listed in the actual product feed. I know there is a SalePrice in the actual product feed but I guess that does not have to go hand-in-hand with the coupon price. Let me know what you think?
  • Paul
    I run a website that does not only compare price, but also efficiency of products. Unfortunately, almost every feed contains only basic infomation. What is the best strategy if you want to have more detailed feeds?
  • This is a tough one, I am *really* want to hear this panel, but you are up against a networking thing too. So will try to hit both. I haven't heard of these services and need to know more, plus you are one of the best people to listen to when it comes to datafeeds!
  • No worries Deb.

    Invite me to a podcast someday and we can talk datafeeds until the
    cows come home.

    See you soon.
  • myasmine
    What tools do you recommend using? (I won't be there but I hope you'll blog about it!) Thanks!
  • Thanks for ths Yasmine (can I call you Yas?)

    This is a tough one for me because personally, I've never used any tools for datafeeds. I'll pose it to the panel and will look into writing more about that here.
  • myasmine
    Sure, Yas works :)

    If it helps at all, I've heard of some people using PopShops.
  • Yeah, Popshops, GoldenCan, datafeedr are some store builder tools that serve up content on the fly using Javascript or API calls.

    Webmerge is a popular one as well that builds static pages.

    I can name them, it's the recommendation part that I have a hard time with since I've not used them. :)
  • alyssaomara
    Hi Scott,

    If you were starting from scratch and are not a web coding expert, where would you start to build a comparison shopping site. I'm not looking for the website idea, just where would you go to get help building the site?

    Thanks Scott!
    Alyssa
  • Great question Alyssa, thanks.
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