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Intecca Bing Integration Checklist

Initial Registration and Settings

  1. Go to https://adcenter.microsoft.com/ and click Sign up now to create an adCenter account
  2. After creating an adCenter account and completing registration, log into your new adCenter account ,click the Tools tab, and select Bing Shopping Account Management.
  3. Merchants without an existing Bing Shopping account must choose Create new account, fill out the form, and click Finish.
  4. Under Store Settings Configure Store Name, Destination URL, upload your Logo and click Save. Please note that logo is mandatory for activation.
  5. Under Catalog Management, Make sure the following values are selected:
    • Feed Format > Bing Shopping/Cahsback
    • How to Provide Feed Files > Merchant upload Feed
    • File Name > bingshopping
  6. Configure your FTP settings (if applicable) and click Save. Please note that FTP passwords must be at least 6 characters long, alphanumeric , and include a special character.

Final Steps and Activation
Once your data feed is ready and your registration is complete:

  1. Your initial registration will be reviewed by the Bing Shopping team and you will receive an email regarding your account status within 3-4 business days.
  2. Once you receive the email, forward it to help@intecca.com. Please attach your FTP username and password to that email. Intecca will then submit your feed.
  3. The Bing Shopping team will evaluate the data feed and provide you feedback within 7-10 days of your account registration date. If you have not heard from Bing for 15 business days from your initial registration, contact freeshop@microsoft.com.
  4. Once activated, your products will appear on Bing Shopping within 7-14 business days.
  5. Intecca will continue to submit your feed to Bing every day.

Bing Merchant Integration Guide, PDF format

We have received several emails from our current and potential clients noting that they are having difficulty downloading Bing Merchant Integration Guide in PDF format from Bing Shopping website. We are attaching it here for your convenience. No worries about technical stuff – we will take care of all that. What we need you to do is follow steps 1 through 7 starting from page 14. You should then get an email from the Bing Shopping team that your account has been activated. Please let us know when you receive that email from Bing and we will take it from there. Please reach out to help@intecca.com if you need assistance with integrating your Yahoo Store feed into Bing Shopping.
Here is the Guide: Bing_Shopping_Integration_Guide_Feb-2011

Specifying Free Shipping for Individual Items

Specify Free Shipping for select items in Google MerchantWe all know that a merchant can specify their global shipping settings in their Google Merchant Center settings. The problem is sometimes the shipping rates you charge can not be easily re-created in Google Merchant. For example, if you offer free shipping special on an item which would normally cost money to ship. Your shipping rules in Google Merchant may not necessarily be capable of reflecting this type of special. What can be done in this case? Can Intecca overwrite shipping costs with either different costs per item or free shipping per item? The answer is yes! Here is how:

 

1.       In your Yahoo product table please create a new attribute of text type called intecca-shipping. The attached tutorial shows how to add a different attribute but the idea is the same: http://intecca.com/video-tutorial-how-to-add-a-new-field-called-merchant-category-to-you-yahoo-store-product-table/
2.       After the attribute is created, fill out its value the following way:  
a.       for products with FREE shipping, use “US:::0” without quotations – please make sure it has exactly the same amount of columns as in this example.
b.      For products with NO free shipping, either don’t put anything or put shipping value just for this product, i.e. “US:::5.95” without quotations.
4.       Also, we should mention that this service requires Intecca advance service plan. The good news is this plan also includes Bing and TheFind feeds!

My account has been suspended. Can I still signup?

A quick answer is Yes!

Sometimes potential customers whose account was suspended signup for our service. They all are asking the same question: Can you help me? Our answer is: absolutely! Whether some items on your feed got rejected or the whole feed got suspended – we can help. The majority of all “acccount suspended” cases are either customers were submitting a feed on their own or used “consultants” which were not up the speed with the latest Google requirements. We can resolve them quickly. we will analyze your feed, discover any weaknesses or errors, and will suggest you a plan of action. In most cases reinstating your account will take determining missing data fields in your store, filling them out, submitting them to google and then filing a request with Google to re-enable your feed. Depending on your case the whole process may take between several days and several weeks. But in most cases this process works! So don’t be discouraged, go ahead and signup for our free trial. We  will do our best to get you up and running ASAP, no matter what  your account status with Google is.

Do I have to provide my personal Google account information during signup with Intecca?

No you don’t!

 

We do not need to have your Google account name and password in order to be able to provide you with our service. Instead you can do the following:

1.       In your Google account area at this address: http://www.google.com/merchants/bulkuploads , please create a new feed called yourdomain_google.txt where yourdomain is your actual domain without “www” or “.com”

2.       In your Google account at this address: http://www.google.com/merchants/ftpsettings , please create a FTP user name and password.

3.       Signup for our free trial at this address http://intecca.com/subscribe/ During signup, you can use not your main Google account credentials, but instead the FTP account credentials that you created in step 2. FTP credentials don’t have much personal info value.

Contacting Google Merchant Center

When contacting Google Merchant Center it is very important to use a correct channel for your particular question, complaint or request. This will ensure that your message will be received by the Google specialist who specifically deals with the area of your concern. We compiled several channels of communication with Google Merchant and description of a specific problem or request that you might have.  Please keep in mind that sometimes Google may take several days to get back to you with an answer.

 

How to get products on the Google “compare prices” lists?

In order to get your products to the compare prices lists, you need to make sure that each of your products has at least 2 of the three following attributes: UPC code, MPN, Brand.

If yo only have data on Brand and MPN, here is what I suggest you should do:

Step 1:

Please add new attributes to your Yahoo product tables. The new attributes (aka fields) are:

  • manufacturer-part-number (located under Shopping Attributes)
  • brand (also located under Shopping attributes)

Detailed instructions on how to add a new attribute to your table are here:

http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/smallbusiness/store/catalogv2/catalogv2-14.html

Step 2:

Once the attributes are added and store is published, you will need to create a spreadsheet which will have existing product name,  product code and the 2 new attributes as columns.

Update the file with the manufacturer data and MPN data corresponding to each product, upload the file your store and publish. Now each of your products will have the new attributes added. All you have to do is upload them to your Yahoo Store and publish.

 

This is it.
Within 24 hours Intecca’s service will pick up the additional data for your products and in another 24+ hours your products should appear in price comparison area.

Video Tutorial – How to add a new field called Google-Category to Yahoo Store product table

In this tutorial we will add a new field called “Google-Category” to all products in your Yahoo Store. Merchant-Category is an existing field in Yahoo product table. It just needs to be enabled.

Here is how…

That was easy wasnt it???

Keep in mind that there is only 80 fields that a table in Yahoo store can take. Good luck!

Changes in Google Product Feed

Dear Intecca Customer, Thank you for choosing Intecca.com for your Product Data Feeds. Recently some upcoming changes were announced by Google for merchants who submit product data to the Google Merchant Center. The changes are:
  1. Unique Product Identifiers are now required for all product categories except apparel and one-of-a-kind items.
  2. Shipping Information and Tax information is now mandatory. How will this affect my product feed?
For Unique Product Identifiers:
  1. If your products have UPC code, please add them in your Yahoo Store Editor. Yahoo Merchant has a default field called “Upc” – this field must have data in it!
  2. If your products DO NOT have a UPC code, be sure to fill out BRAND and MANUFACTURER-PART-NUMBER fields in your Yahoo Store Editor.
After you fill out these fields, just publish your store and Intecca will send data in these fields to Google Merchant. For Shipping and Tax Information: You can fill these out by visiting this link in your Google Merchant area: http://www.google.com/merchants/taxshippingsettings Please let us know if you have any questions, we at Intecca will be glad to assist. Intecca

We consider our products to be one of a kind. Do we need UPC, MPN and Manufacturer?

41/365: Three Roads to Quantum GravityFrom Google’s perspective, “one of a kind” means each individual product you sell is only one copy. A good example of a “one of a kind” product is original autograph by a celebrity or an original painting. If your products are sold only in your store, they may be unique to your store but they are not necessarily one of a kind. A good test would be to ask yourself a question: once I sell a product, do I have another one which is exactly the same? If your answer is “yes” then you need to have either UPC or a combination of MPN and Manufacturer. If your answer is  ”no” then you may try to fill out an exclusion request with Google at this link: http://www.google.com/support/merchants/bin/request.py?contact_type=unique_id_exemption
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