Recently, Bonanzle debuted the ability to import your items into Google Base (or Product Search). Their documentation was very user friendly and while Google was never actually able to import our items from Bonanzle, its probably just a temporary issue as it worked great for many people. The instructions to set up your Bonanzle products are here.
While I was setting this up, I realized that the documentation for doing this very same thing with eBay is pretty terrible so I decided to take a moment to write out the process step-by-step for fellow eBay users.
Two things before we start:
- As far as I know, you have to be an eBay store owner to be able to take advantage of this feature. Only eBay store’s have the published feed of all their items that lets you automatically import. Google Product Search also doesn’t do auctions so it will only include fixed price or store inventory listings and omit any auctions.
- If you have a Google Products account for your own webstore, Bonanzle booth or other store already set up, you need to create a new account for your eBay listings or visa versa. Just create another Google Products account with a different email address. Unfortunately, the way that the feeds import will conflict with one another so you just need to separate them into different accounts.
Getting started:
- In your eBay account go to Sellers Manage Store (the link at the bottom of your store).
- Then, under the Marketing Tools navbar, under the Store Marketing Heading, click Listing Feeds.
- Select “Make a file of your Store Inventory listings available” and update. Under this option, there will be a link that will look like http://esssl.ebay.com/GetListings/yourstorename?fmt=g Take note of this, we will need it in a second. If you are activating this link for the very first time, please note that it will take about 12 hours for eBay to get this set-up for you.
- Create a Google Base Account (or log into one if you already have one and aren’t importing something else into it already).
Now, if you always sell the same items and your inventory is pretty static, you may wish to just download the Google Base Store Connector. This free program imports items from eBay, Yahoo, or osCommerce in a few clicks and allows you to bypass the process we are about to go into. However, keep in mind that Google only keeps items in product search for 30 days so you would need to remember to reupload your items every month with this program.
Now, if your inventory is ever changing and you don’t want to be bothered with using Store Connector every month, read on.
- Once you are in your Google Base Account, go to Settings (it’s one of the tabs under the Google Base logo).
- Once there, change your Website URL (Optional) to that link we got from eBay before. It will usually be http://esssl.ebay.com/GetListings/yourstorename?fmt=g but replace yourstorename with the name of your store. (Duh, right?)
- Once that is done, go back to the My Items tab and select Data Feeds then the New Data Feed button.
- Select the target country that you wish.
- Under 2. Select item type, select Products and then googlebase in the menu that comes up under that.
- Under 3. Specify the data feed filename, type your store name .xml. For instance, if your store is Priced Nostalgia you type pricednostalgia.xml here.
- Click Register Data feed.
- Now your feed shows in the list of feeds. Under Schedule, click edit. From here you can select how often you want Google Product Search to look at your eBay Store and update your listings. This can be anywhere from daily to monthly depending on how often you update.
And you’re done! Now you don’t have to worry about remembering to add items to Google Product Search. Instead, Google Base will automatically import anything you list on eBay into their listings and you can spend more time working on your tan.
Or, you know, working on other stuff.
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Morning, Hillary,
The Google Base Store Connector would be awesome…but it seems to constantly fail. I was using it regularly last Spring when all of a sudden it seized. I could get it going again by uninstalling/reinstalling it, but it would only work the one time. I abandoned it to recently try it out again, was very happy with my first upload…went back the next night and the old error messages cropped up. When I had the problem the first time through I hit the Google forums and found I was not alone. So, it’s got a lot of potential, but I don’t think we can depend on it.
I’m currently using the feed from the eBay stores (the esssl.ebay.com… URL) but it won’t upload my Fixed Price listings, just Store items. Any tips, maybe I’m missing something.
Thanks —
Thanks, Cliff
Morning, Hillary,
The Google Base Store Connector would be awesome…but it seems to constantly fail. I was using it regularly last Spring when all of a sudden it seized. I could get it going again by uninstalling/reinstalling it, but it would only work the one time. I abandoned it to recently try it out again, was very happy with my first upload…went back the next night and the old error messages cropped up. When I had the problem the first time through I hit the Google forums and found I was not alone. So, it’s got a lot of potential, but I don’t think we can depend on it.
I’m currently using the feed from the eBay stores (the esssl.ebay.com… URL) but it won’t upload my Fixed Price listings, just Store items. Any tips, maybe I’m missing something.
Thanks —
Thanks, Cliff
Cliff, I don’t pretend to understand all the mysteries of Google Base. 🙂 All I know is that this has been working for me. The only thing that isn’t working is that it choked on a few of my listings because of characters in the text. I haven’t gone into play with these listings to make them Google friendly but I know that the Store Connector never had a problem with these same listings so I may just be stuck using that program for these.
Cliff, I don’t pretend to understand all the mysteries of Google Base. 🙂 All I know is that this has been working for me. The only thing that isn’t working is that it choked on a few of my listings because of characters in the text. I haven’t gone into play with these listings to make them Google friendly but I know that the Store Connector never had a problem with these same listings so I may just be stuck using that program for these.
Hi Hillary,
No, I didn’t mean to imply you did, those are just my personal experiences. If you do ever run into a Store Connector problem be sure to check out Google’s discussion on it, it’s pretty extensive!
In unrelated news, I just received a Google email stating I had to go in and change the formatting of my tax and shipping info…it never ends 🙂
Thanks,Cliff
Hi Hillary,
No, I didn’t mean to imply you did, those are just my personal experiences. If you do ever run into a Store Connector problem be sure to check out Google’s discussion on it, it’s pretty extensive!
In unrelated news, I just received a Google email stating I had to go in and change the formatting of my tax and shipping info…it never ends 🙂
Thanks,Cliff
That tax and shipping info is actually easier to fix than it sounds. Just go into your account and set it up once in your setting and then it seems to be happy from that point on.
That tax and shipping info is actually easier to fix than it sounds. Just go into your account and set it up once in your setting and then it seems to be happy from that point on.
If you click the view sellers other items, you will get a web address that shows all the sellers items on one page. can you use this address if you do not have a stor?