| Has anyone tried Froogle? |
|
|
|
|
|
lecarlb
New Member
Cash: $ 0.20
Posts: 9
Joined: 09 Apr 2004
|
| Has anyone tried Froogle? |
 |
|
Has anyone tried Froogle? If so, please tell me what it has done for you. I'm thinking about trying it.
|
Sat Apr 17, 2004 7:21 am |
|
|
Andrew
Admin
Cash: $ 467.10
Posts: 1717
Joined: 02 Nov 2003
Location: Texas
|
Hi Lecarl,
I submit a Froogle Feed for my retail store in order to make our products available in Froogle. We get a few hits each month from being listed there. It will depend on both how much competition and demand there is in your product area and how low your prices are, as to how much being listed in Froogle will help. (I think the best prices get listed first.) It can be little a bit of trouble to set up, but it can hardly hurt. As Froogle usage increases that should add more traffic as well, but it is not a huge traffic source for me.
|
|
Sat Apr 17, 2004 12:47 pm |
|
|
lecarlb
New Member
Cash: $ 0.20
Posts: 9
Joined: 09 Apr 2004
|
| Thanks Andrew |
|
|
Andrew, from my very first posting on money-talk, you've been the first to offer help. That says a lot about your character. I will give Froogle a try. Like you said, it couldn't hurt. I don't know much about data feeds, but I've seen a few examples on the net. I'm guessing I could use Excel to create one. Can you resubmit product feeds once you've sent the first one? Or do you have to start from step one again? Again thanks for the input.
|
|
Sat Apr 17, 2004 3:13 pm |
|
|
Andrew
Admin
Cash: $ 467.10
Posts: 1717
Joined: 02 Nov 2003
Location: Texas
|
Glad to help where I can. Yeah, the feed is just an ascii file, with certain defined columns and that is correct, you can use a spreadsheet to create it. After you generate the file, you FTP it to the froogle site, and the they do the rest. There is no inventory count though, so you only need to update if you add or remove products or change prices, for the most part.
|
|
Sat Apr 17, 2004 5:13 pm |
|
|
lecarlb
New Member
Cash: $ 0.20
Posts: 9
Joined: 09 Apr 2004
|
| Thanks Andrew |
|
|
How long did it take Froogle to contact you once you applied? I applied last weekend. I hope to hear something soon. Should I start building the data feed now? Please show me an example of a data feed done in Excel perhaps. Thanks.
|
|
Thu Apr 22, 2004 5:00 am |
|
|
Andrew
Admin
Cash: $ 467.10
Posts: 1717
Joined: 02 Nov 2003
Location: Texas
|
Seems like it did take several days, I don't remember exactly.
I think there can be variations on this, but the first line in my feed is this header...
product_url name description price image_url category
URL and name should be obvious. In my feed, the descriptions are pretty long so it makes the file hard to read, it is a long string with no newline. Price like 19.95, no dollar sign. image_url is link to your picture if you have one.
The category field doesn't have to fit into the Froogle structure, they just want your classification for the item, with each level separated by a ">" character...
Toyota>SUV>Highlander
Each line has newline at the end. Hope that helps give you some idea until you get your instructions.
|
|
Thu Apr 22, 2004 5:23 am |
|
|
redamazon
New Member
Cash: $ 0.00
Posts: 3
Joined: 01 Aug 2004
|
| description problem |
|
|
I am not familiar with creating a data feed in spreadsheet. I am having a problem with just the description field for my products not staying within the cell. I am copying and pasting the decription to save time but it bleeds over into other cells and rows. Can anyone please help me figure out what I am doing wrong? I wrote a email to froogle for help on this but no response yet. 
|
|
Sun Aug 01, 2004 8:21 am |
|
|
Andrew
Admin
Cash: $ 467.10
Posts: 1717
Joined: 02 Nov 2003
Location: Texas
|
Sometimes spreadsheet programs, like Excel, show a cell "bleeding over" with text spilling over into the next columns, although in the output file it will remain in it's field only. As long as the file is okay, it doesn't matter. Is this a problem in your output file or not?
|
|
Sun Aug 01, 2004 2:53 pm |
|
|
redamazon
New Member
Cash: $ 0.00
Posts: 3
Joined: 01 Aug 2004
|
Andrew,
I appreciate your help and yes it is affecting the output and I can't understand why. Have you had succesful feeds and if so can you guide me on how you created yours. I would really like to be able to do this myself. Have you heard anything about the froogle feeder program and do you recommend it? 
|
|
Mon Aug 02, 2004 12:30 am |
|
|
Andrew
Admin
Cash: $ 467.10
Posts: 1717
Joined: 02 Nov 2003
Location: Texas
|
I my case, I have my inventory stored in a MySQL database that is hooked up with a PHP cart system. I use a custom PHP module that reads the database and produces the Froogle feed in a flat file that is then automatically FTP'd to the Froogle FTP site.
Are you using Excel?
Maybe you could post a small section of your file that demonstrates the problem.
If you are talking about a program called "Froogle Feeder", no I'm no familiar with it.
|
|
Mon Aug 02, 2004 1:59 pm |
|
|
redamazon
New Member
Cash: $ 0.00
Posts: 3
Joined: 01 Aug 2004
|
Thanks alot for your help. I'm going to try a few things to see if it works. Take care and thanks again for your efforts Andrew.
|
|
Fri Aug 06, 2004 6:48 pm |
|
|
mots32
Member
Cash: $ 1.20
Posts: 13
Joined: 04 Oct 2004
|
It definitely can not hurt to go on Froogle... it is a pain though...
I've submitted a feed twice and it's been wrong. My suggestion is to download their sample spreadsheet and go from there. Remember to save as a text file before uploading it.
I actually go the second denial yesterday, because I had HTML in the feed. So don't put any HTML in your spreadsheet. Also it has taken awhile for them to get back to me.... I think it was weeks ago that I uploaded the second feed.
So back to work I go... I just keep thinking that if it's this difficult to get on maybe my competition will forget it!!!
|
|
Mon Oct 04, 2004 2:47 am |
|
|
|
