Google Tortures Bonanzle
Haven't heard too much squawking about it in the support inbox lately, but some of you have probably noticed that our Google Base feed has been out of order for the last week. This has been chapping my hide severely, since when the feed was up, we were averaging a healthy 500 unique visitors/day (with about half the inventory we have now) from users finding items via Google Product searches. I figure that, in case it is chapping your hide too, I can provide a little background about the situation as it stands, and what we're doing to resolve it as quickly as possible. Firstly, for those that don't know, Google Base is a service that Google provides that allows websites to submit their inventory of items to Google, so Google specifically knows about those items and can add them to Google Product searches. Even without Google Base setup, users can still find item listings through organic Google searches (even without GB, we're still getting 500+ visits/day from Google users), but having GB in order means that items are featured more commonly in more places on Google. What makes Google Base difficult to work with for a growing site like Bonanzle is that it is a completely free service, and as such, they don't have a stake in whether any particular site's items are shown or not. Because of this, if a site submits an item feed where even one or two of 35,000 items do not meet the criteria of the Google Base Program Policies, the entire inventory of items can be taken off of Google, without notice and without explanation, until you can figure out why the feed got taken offline and fix it and contact Google to prove you've fixed it. This has been the state of Bonanzle's Google feed for the last week. It took a day or two for us to notice that they had taken the feed down in its entirety, then about four days for their customer support to tell us specifically why it had been taken down, then a couple more days for them to review that our feed had been fixed. Finally, after determining the feed had been fixed this morning, we re-submitted it to them... only to have it re-disapproved for reasons they have yet to reveal to us this evening. We can assure you that we're crazy about Google, and the Google visitors that find Bonanzle often tend to represent vital buyers for our site, but it is becoming clear that the love in this relationship is pretty one-sided. With an inventory fast approaching 50,000 items, if Google continues to take down our entire inventory feed every time one item doesn't comply with it, we have a problem. Thus, this evening, I have sent emails out to four different Google Search Partners who will accept money in return for assorted services with Google Base item feeds. I'm not yet sure which/any of these sites will be able to help with our specific problem, but it is actively being explored as the highest priority item on my todo list right now, and you can be sure that whatever delay there is between now and when our inventory is showing up in Google Product Search again will be delay incurred from parties other than Bonanzle.
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18 responses to Google Tortures Bonanzle
Would it be helpful to inform the community what type of items are causing the feed to be taken down? Then everyone would be aware of what not to list perhaps reducing the issue in more than one way.
That’s a fine idea that would undoubtedly help, but we’d still need some means to filter items for those that don’t notice the GB program policies. Plus, it’s fine by us for some of those items to be posted, so we’d need some kind of extra UI to allow people to say “I want this item posted, but not included in the GB feed.” In short, I’m really hoping we can just take care of it automatically.
Thanks for the creative thinking.
When we noticed this a couple of days ago. Added one of our items in the base to determine if it would show up. While it was accepted and shows searchable, it does not come up in google’s shopping or products. Tells us that individual based single entries are being knocked out as well, if they are Bonanzle.
As of this morning, our feed was re-submitted and this timee, as mysteriously as it had been disapproved before, it is now approved and being indexed currently! Cross our fingers that the items should be online again by the end of today.
Good deal!…was wondering if the fact some are adding their own to the base…or possiably using the same ad for here and another site might be the culprit! Confusing the great Google!
I was going to say if it continues to be an issue, maybe users should just submit their own individual booths’ feeds and deal with google’s issues on a booth by booth basis?
It might be easier to break the import into several feeds based upon product categories. That way if any one or two items causes a problem only that feed will be declined and the rest will go thru. Also when a certain category of feed is declined it will make it easier to identify the problem posting.
I would assume this is the way eBay and eCrater do their feeds as they have far more listings and would be more likely to have unacceptable products.
eb
For one thing, I know even casual mention of alcoholic beverages in listings is a disqualifier. (why? Only the great and powerful google knows)… The point of this apparently oblique comment is that a list of no-no’s has to exist somewhere and a code to “filter” for google-base-safe listings might be created.
A couple of my experiences and thought with Google feeds:
1) Ebay only submits the title not teh item description text. Ecrater submits both.
2) Ecrater is highly succesful in getting its feeds indexed by Google. Thus they have a high traffic from Google. So maybe it would be useful to see what they do to be this succesful.
3) A more fundamental is the ‘marketing philosophies’ you can chhose from.
Why is every new site I hear of so intent on just focusing its resources on ‘brute force’ visibility, so on one of teh major search engines?
Wouldn’t it be much more efficient in managing resources to advertise ‘focused’ so on sites for specific product groups you have lots of products of. This coudl be done with banners (and thos ebanners coudl even have search boxes ib them) or you coudl even try to get a place on a site’s own search engine and feed that site only.
Example how that would work for one specific sample product group, like my own ‘used/anbtque magazines’: provide banners and/or feed sites linking to specific relevant product category ‘magazine back issues’ (maybe even with specific keywords) on sites where collectors meet of militaria, automobiles, trains, airplaes, comics, pets etc. or sites where researchers investigate history, fammous persons, literature, art, health care etc. or where educators seek teaching materials etc.
I’m sure anyone expert in any other product categry, will be able to make a list of such sites too.
Such targetted advertising would be much less costly and would produce a much higher sales conversion rate than brute force low conversion expensive general search engines.
Of course individual sellers could do the same, but that would create a lot of redundancy and extra cost. It would also make Bonanzle’s ‘growth rate’ very dependent on the number and quality of sellers it gets, and a critical mass of buyers and sales would take probably too long to get realized.
Peter
Would it be helpful to inform the community what type of items are causing the feed to be taken down? Then everyone would be aware of what not to list perhaps reducing the issue in more than one way.
That’s a fine idea that would undoubtedly help, but we’d still need some means to filter items for those that don’t notice the GB program policies. Plus, it’s fine by us for some of those items to be posted, so we’d need some kind of extra UI to allow people to say “I want this item posted, but not included in the GB feed.” In short, I’m really hoping we can just take care of it automatically.
Thanks for the creative thinking.
When we noticed this a couple of days ago. Added one of our items in the base to determine if it would show up. While it was accepted and shows searchable, it does not come up in google’s shopping or products. Tells us that individual based single entries are being knocked out as well, if they are Bonanzle.
As of this morning, our feed was re-submitted and this timee, as mysteriously as it had been disapproved before, it is now approved and being indexed currently! Cross our fingers that the items should be online again by the end of today.
Good deal!…was wondering if the fact some are adding their own to the base…or possiably using the same ad for here and another site might be the culprit! Confusing the great Google!
I was going to say if it continues to be an issue, maybe users should just submit their own individual booths’ feeds and deal with google’s issues on a booth by booth basis?
It might be easier to break the import into several feeds based upon product categories. That way if any one or two items causes a problem only that feed will be declined and the rest will go thru. Also when a certain category of feed is declined it will make it easier to identify the problem posting.
I would assume this is the way eBay and eCrater do their feeds as they have far more listings and would be more likely to have unacceptable products.
eb
For one thing, I know even casual mention of alcoholic beverages in listings is a disqualifier. (why? Only the great and powerful google knows)… The point of this apparently oblique comment is that a list of no-no’s has to exist somewhere and a code to “filter” for google-base-safe listings might be created.
A couple of my experiences and thought with Google feeds:
1) Ebay only submits the title not teh item description text. Ecrater submits both.
2) Ecrater is highly succesful in getting its feeds indexed by Google. Thus they have a high traffic from Google. So maybe it would be useful to see what they do to be this succesful.
3) A more fundamental is the ‘marketing philosophies’ you can chhose from.
Why is every new site I hear of so intent on just focusing its resources on ‘brute force’ visibility, so on one of teh major search engines?
Wouldn’t it be much more efficient in managing resources to advertise ‘focused’ so on sites for specific product groups you have lots of products of. This coudl be done with banners (and thos ebanners coudl even have search boxes ib them) or you coudl even try to get a place on a site’s own search engine and feed that site only.
Example how that would work for one specific sample product group, like my own ‘used/anbtque magazines’: provide banners and/or feed sites linking to specific relevant product category ‘magazine back issues’ (maybe even with specific keywords) on sites where collectors meet of militaria, automobiles, trains, airplaes, comics, pets etc. or sites where researchers investigate history, fammous persons, literature, art, health care etc. or where educators seek teaching materials etc.
I’m sure anyone expert in any other product categry, will be able to make a list of such sites too.
Such targetted advertising would be much less costly and would produce a much higher sales conversion rate than brute force low conversion expensive general search engines.
Of course individual sellers could do the same, but that would create a lot of redundancy and extra cost. It would also make Bonanzle’s ‘growth rate’ very dependent on the number and quality of sellers it gets, and a critical mass of buyers and sales would take probably too long to get realized.
Peter
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