Questions
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Unique URLs in Google Shopping Feed
Hello Ewanr, Please see section five on this page: http://support.google.com/merchants/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=188494#US I have pulled out the quote that I think answers your question. Although Google seems to cater their answer toward apparel and accessories, you can use variant attributes for other types of items: "We define variants as a group of identical products that only differ by the attributes ‘color’, ‘material’, ‘pattern’, or ‘size’... If you don't include variant attributes in your feed, you shouldn't submit several variants of the same product as separate listings (ex: the same product in different colors, sizes). These items will be considered as duplicates which is against our Program Policies." That document goes on to explain how to submit variant data. So what I would suggest is to submit them as variants each with a unique ID (e.g. SKU) and the same "Item group ID". I hope this has answered your question. If not, please let me know. Regards, Everett
Online Marketing Tools | | Everett0 -
Adwords Product Listing Ads & Google Analytics mis-reporting
Mike & crew, I think I've got to the bottom of it. (Mike - adding the utm_campaign was useful - thank you, but wasn't the cause of the problem) Short answer: 301 redirects were breaking the tracking. On the site in question we have products, parent products & child products (basically distinct SKU products but held under the parent - different sizing, or colours for example). The site was still sending the original URL of the child product to google shopping (Rather than adopting the parent URL), the child URLs have a 301 redirect to the parent URLs. So here's what was happening: 1. Someone clicks on the google product listing ad which contains within it the URL of the product. Google appends it's tracking info on that url (the &gclid=), including the tracking we've set so, utm_campaign, source etc. 2. That URL was being 301 redirected to the parent URL (so the customer eds up where they should!), but this in turn stripped the tracking from the URL. 3. Since there was no tracking after the 301 redirect, google couldn't see where it originated from. Obviously it makes more sense to fix the root cause, rather than try to redirect the tracking info too (although I'm sure that could be done). We're changing the setup so that child URLs adopt the parent URL. Hope this is clear. Thanks for all the help everyone. Kind Regards Ewan
Paid Search Marketing | | ewanr0 -
How unique do product descriptions need to be?
Hi Chris Great insight, and you've confirmed some of my initial thoughts and feelings on the matter. I don't want to rewrite purely for google's sake (although that was the tone of the question due to this being an SEO website!). Many of the descriptions we have (from the feed) are rather poorly written, or block text which is hard to scan and read as a customer. I want to make that clearer. I'm glad you've confirmed that picking a handful of products and doing those really well is a good idea... we're on the case! As for user generated content, yup, we're asking for reviews but probably need to encourage more in-depth ones. Thanks for taking the time to answer, it's much appreciated.
On-Page / Site Optimization | | ewanr0