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Lets talk Froogle. First of all the best thing is it's FREE. For me it required some learning on how to use Excel spreadsheet and Winzip. So my son taught me the very basics of how to use these tools. I was already using FTP so that part was easy. There are other things you can use instead of Excel and I'm sure someone will come along with ideas. Winzip and FTP are free downloads.
First thing is Froogle will want to review your website. I have submitted 3 sites without one comment from Froogle. All they want to see is if your site meets their specs. Mainly that you are selling a product not services. That you have prices and pictures on all items. That you are located in the good ole United States.
Now once they have reviewed your site they will request you submit a test feed and will give you instructions on what's required and how to submit. This is where your Excel and Winzip come in. You put your item data into Excel spread sheet and when you are done your Excel will convert this data to a "tab delimited" file. You then take this file to Winzip and change it to a zip file. Then you upload the zip file using FTP to Froogle. They will let you know if your coding was correct and you are ready to go.
I have been submitting changes the last couple of days and the changes are showing up in Froogle within a hour. Now you won't get the large amount of hits on Froogle like you get from Google but jeez it's free.
If anyone wants to discuss this in more detail just let me know. I may post later about the required data fields and explain about each. We'll see how much interest is out there. I don't type so this is a real pain if there is little interest.
Mike
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I really want to do this but I am not sure about how do put the data in Excel - do you have to copy everything?
We do flat files for Sharon to place items on the site, and she adds pictures in at the same time. Could I use those?
I'm just a bit stretched for time but it's the perfect thing for us to work on during the time I'm gone and the office is quieter (May-June) or in Summer when sales slow down a bit.
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Time consuming, but well worth it!
URL of product (from your site)
NAME of product (from your site)
DESCRIPTION of product (from your site)
PRICE (from your site)
URL of photo (from your site)
CATEGORY (from your site)
ITEM # (from your site)
BRAND (OPTIONAL)-if it has a BRAND name
Copy and paste all info, FTP it to Froogle AT LEAST monthly. More frequently when adding new items.
And please, personal request, remove SOLD or no longer available items from the feed after a month. Don't be like a "donkey" I know who is STILL showing an item "for sale" that he sold back in JULY 2003!
:)
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Hi Kathleen,
Ouch - huge amount of work!!!
But I guess we can try to do some of it this Summer, at least of higher ticket items, and see how it goes.
We currently have over 700 items on the site, can you imagine the work? Yikes!
I wish I could automate it somehow, it has to be do-able, but not for an a-technical person like moi
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Mimi-
It's all copy and paste "work". (I had almost 300 products to do.)
I DO NOT use this software, and know NOTHING about it:
Froogle Feeder
Maybe something like this would help you/others.
---------------------------------------------
How To Establish a Froogle Data Feed:
If you'd like to feed data about your products to Froogle, then send an email to feeds-support*google.com.
Be sure to include the following information:
your name and title
your phone number
your email address
the name of your store
your store's URL
a brief description of the products you sell
They'll send you more information. According to their site, the first step is to "create, in our feed format, a tab-delimited text file, which you can upload to us daily, weekly, or monthly."
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Thanks Kathleen - I'll have to try and get into this before I leave since it's a project one of the girls can do while I'm gone.
BTW - do you have an idea of how I can rename our links page - we have had it there for a while but it's a bit hidden - I can't think of how to rename it in a non-wordy way ....
We're re-working a lot of the content and moving things around, so I want to get that done right immediately.
Thanks!
Mimi
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Hi Mimi, Didn't Sharon design your site? If she adds pages for you, she would need to change it (I think), you will lose page rank temporarily. IT is good not to have your link page be called a link page anymore, since google does not appear to be counting links from link pages. None of the LINK pages that i am on are showing a backling to that site. Google changed this in one of their last updates. I have been on your site (Very Nice) and have never found your link page. Thought you didn't have one. I have been referring people in my shop to your site for how to clean linens.
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Hi Mildreds - it's there, it's under Textile Information for some reason, which I don't find logical.
our links page
We're trying to figure out what names to use in the flag bar at the top - the one Tanya designed, so it's not too wordy - and we cannot add another link there, we have to re-arrange the ones we have.
I am not sure what you mean about Sharon's changes? She adds our items in with a flat file made from a spreadsheet I send her. I'm going to look into converting the spreadsheet so all we have to do is add each item's URL.
The problem is that she adds about 20-30 items each week, at random pretty much, and I never know which ones.
I send her a spreadsheet and pics for about 300 or so items, so it keeps us going for a while.
It's a bit of a convoluted system but it works for us and she's much faster at adding items. We remove them when sold, that's about my level of expertise.....
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<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by mildreds:
... since google does not appear to be counting links from link pages. None of the LINK pages that i am on are showing a backling to that site. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Actually, Google's only "showing" those links which are rated a 4+. So if you're linked to a site which is a 3, you don't get "credit" for it.
Which is another reason one's links pages or "directory" pages should ALSO be submitted to the search engines, together with being "linked" from the home page.
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Kathleen: Something is going on besides the 4+. Until the last google shuffle this backlink showed up when i would check my back links.http://www.theoldtimes.com/links.html. I checked everyone of these websites and now no one is showing up with the oldtimes back link.
Mimi. i meant the name of the page in the URL, When i click on your textile information page i get "Not Found". all your other pages are there, http://www.touchofeurope.net/about.html, what i am wondering is if you have the word link where the word "about" is that goggle is ignoring those backlinks.