From Google Product Search (which I still stubbornly call Google Base in private):
Hello,
We’re happy to let you know that as of September 3rd, individual sellers on marketplaces no longer need to submit feeds to Google Product Search. Going forward, marketplaces will be responsible for submitting a feed of all their sellers’ items, so we will be retiring your account to avoid duplicate entries on Product Search. eBay will also be responsible for ensuring that your feeds are up-to-date and compliant with our policies.
In most cases, marketplaces already submit feeds of their sellers’ items. If you have any further questions about your items or Google Product Search, please contact eBay. We look forward to continuing to display your products, and hope you enjoy the new streamlined submission process.
Sincerely,
The Google Team
After all the recent hopes they’ve made sellers jump through with item details and more, this seems like great news.
But, with all the problems eBay has had with getting Google search results to show listings properly, will they actually do this correctly or will sellers be screwed? Remains to be seen, I guess.
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People better wake up and realize that this is NOT good. This will force marketplaces to change rules of what is allowed to be sold in the marketplace and what is not [just for the purpose of being able to upload feeds to Google] and this will end up driving individual sellers away.
Marketplaces who agree to Google’s new rules won’t tell you that if ONE individual seller in the marketplace does not have listings that comply with Google’s feed requirements, that the WHOLE marketplace will be BANNED from Google until the marketplace complies with Google’s requirements. A shining example of such is ioffer.
This is NOT a joke or something that I am making up. GO READ Google’s terms of service on marketplace aggregators. You would be better off submitting your items to social shopping sites such as Kaboodle, Stylehive, etc if you want the traffic and seriously not bother trying to cowtoy to Google.
People better wake up and realize that this is NOT good. This will force marketplaces to change rules of what is allowed to be sold in the marketplace and what is not [just for the purpose of being able to upload feeds to Google] and this will end up driving individual sellers away.
Marketplaces who agree to Google’s new rules won’t tell you that if ONE individual seller in the marketplace does not have listings that comply with Google’s feed requirements, that the WHOLE marketplace will be BANNED from Google until the marketplace complies with Google’s requirements. A shining example of such is ioffer.
This is NOT a joke or something that I am making up. GO READ Google’s terms of service on marketplace aggregators. You would be better off submitting your items to social shopping sites such as Kaboodle, Stylehive, etc if you want the traffic and seriously not bother trying to cowtoy to Google.
Thanks for the post, CB. If you have the links to this notice, pass it along and I will write up a new post about it.
Thanks for the post, CB. If you have the links to this notice, pass it along and I will write up a new post about it.