Google Base Feeder Support Thread [OLD]

numinix:

Untrue, if you install Auction Site Attributes you can set it manually. That module is no longer being developed though and will be replaced by something less invasive as it currently overwrites a lot of files in the admin. Once we have a better solution it will be released publicly.

              if (GOOGLE_BASE_ASA == 'true' && $products->fields['products_condition'] != '') {
                $content["condition"] = '<g:condition>' . $products->fields['products_condition'] . '</g:condition>';
              } else {
                $content["condition"] = '<g:condition>' . GOOGLE_FROOGLE_CONDITION . '</g:condition>';
              }

Thanks for clearing that up numinix I didn't realize that you could use that for this. Sorry for miss leading people.

Has anyone tried changing the store URL to another URL different to the site that you are running Zen on to see if it changes... cause it doesn't seem to!
I'm running a multisite and have been using the feeder for over a year with multisite mod and never had an issue. Thought i would change the feed to a different store address and it don't work! Still produces the XML file which is fine, but its not changing the link address to the different store url...

countrycharm:

Thanks for clearing that up numinix I didn't realize that you could use that for this. Sorry for miss leading people.

I'll probably rename the module to "Numinix Product Fields" so that it is less confusing. But, we want to have a better method for adding the additional fields without having to keep modifying the core files.

numinix:

I'll probably rename the module to "Numinix Product Fields" so that it is less confusing. But, we want to have a better method for adding the additional fields without having to keep modifying the core files.

But, we want to have a better method for adding the additional fields without having to keep modifying the core files
That sounds great, Keep up the good work. I'm sure their will be some who will need it. For myself everything I sale is new so it would not benefit me.

numinix:

I'll probably rename the module to "Numinix Product Fields" so that it is less confusing. But, we want to have a better method for adding the additional fields without having to keep modifying the core files.

Hey Numinix, great mod..

But I still have one problem that changing files doesnt seem to help. Maybe you can shed some light on where i can insert the right info. Everything seems to be working fine, with one exception. All of my products inserted are missing the "product type" attribute.

Missing Product Type Values - xxx items (100%)

Your item list is missing product type values. Please submit product type values for all items.

In the config, the options for product type are top, bottom, full. I have tried all 3 and have just left it on full. none seem to get the right info inserted. Is there something im missing? I really dont want to edit every item to insert the product type. That could take weeks. Any help would be greatly appreciated :frusty:

I have this module working in my main store but I am having trouble getting it to work in a new store I am working on. There are only 2 products right now. I have turned on debug. When I click on "Create Product Feed: Click [HERE] to create / update your products feed.", a window pops up, it says "Waiting for <website>" briefly, and then nothing else happens. The only file in the feeds directory is index.html. What should I do next? Running 1.3.8 (current). I did have some trouble installing - not sure the database is 100% correct; got lots of errors and wound up removing a lot by hand and then running the sql scripts again. This issue has been there since my first installation attempt. The last thing I did was start going through the SQL updates. I am not clear from the instructions if I need to install those but I started getting errors part way through and quit patching. It's late now and I'm not going to go back and start this whole thing over until I get some feedback on what's not going on when I try to create the feed.

sobebabies:

I have this module working in my main store but I am having trouble getting it to work in a new store I am working on. There are only 2 products right now. I have turned on debug. When I click on "Create Product Feed: Click [HERE] to create / update your products feed.", a window pops up, it says "Waiting for <website>" briefly, and then nothing else happens. The only file in the feeds directory is index.html. What should I do next? Running 1.3.8 (current). I did have some trouble installing - not sure the database is 100% correct; got lots of errors and wound up removing a lot by hand and then running the sql scripts again. This issue has been there since my first installation attempt. The last thing I did was start going through the SQL updates. I am not clear from the instructions if I need to install those but I started getting errors part way through and quit patching. It's late now and I'm not going to go back and start this whole thing over until I get some feedback on what's not going on when I try to create the feed.

Go back to few pages. Start from page 151 and read those pages and see if that helps you out some. If not I will try to help you out.

G'day,

I just installed Google Base Feeder v1.7.4 and it seems to be working. (I've created a feed and uploaded it to Google Base, which is still processing it.)

My store runs in Australia - see http://www.scubadoctor.com.au/diveshop/. Google Base supports targeting USA, UK and Germany. I'd like to target both the USA and UK.

But Google Base Feeder only seems to support creating one feed with one targeted country and currency. Any chance we'll see a future version supporting multiple countries and currencies?

Cheers, Lloyd Borrett.

G'day,

It seems Google Base Feeder doesn't output linked products. That is, products that have been linked so that they appear in more than one category.

Given that the URLs and Meta Tag information Zen Cart produces for linked products are different, wouldn't we do better if linked products were output? Seems to me there should be no 'duplicate content' penalty, and because of the different search keywords, there is a greater chance people might find the products. Or am I missing something here?

Any chance a future version might support the option of outputing linked products?

Cheers, Lloyd Borrett.

G'day,

It seems Google Base doesn't like products without a description.

Any chance Google Base Feeder could be modified to not output products without a description? Ideally have this as an option that could be configured.

Cheers, Lloyd Borrett.

lloyd_borrett:

G'day,

It seems Google Base Feeder doesn't output linked products. That is, products that have been linked so that they appear in more than one category.

Given that the URLs and Meta Tag information Zen Cart produces for linked products are different, wouldn't we do better if linked products were output? Seems to me there should be no 'duplicate content' penalty, and because of the different search keywords, there is a greater chance people might find the products. Or am I missing something here?

Any chance a future version might support the option of outputing linked products?

Cheers, Lloyd Borrett.

If someone were willing to support it then it'll happen.

lloyd_borrett:

G'day,

It seems Google Base doesn't like products without a description.

Any chance Google Base Feeder could be modified to not output products without a description? Ideally have this as an option that could be configured.

Cheers, Lloyd Borrett.

The module already disallows any product with a description of 15 characters or less. There is no switch in the configuration to turn this on or off, it is always on.

kburner:

I created that file some time ago. I created and ftp to root directory in filezilla. I just looked at it in cpanel and files. Still there with this code.

max_execution_time = 300
max_input_time = 90
memory_limit = 32M

Could not find it when I went to cPanel>MyPHP. Not sure what to do when I get to database area. But, did a search and did not come up with this file.

Someone figured out that query cache does not work well with this mod. Even though I need it getting products loaded is more important. I backed out query and re-installed orig files from query cache. Hopefully someone will come up with a solution. But, Google base feeder mod is still not working for me either. Tried it again.

Get this error when I tried to: NOTE: You may view Google Base FTP content.

Google Base FTP content:
Connected to: uploads.google.com
Connection failed: uploads.google.com

It did load about 2500 to includes/feed/google_products.xlm file...But descriptions run together with no spaces. And I am still missing about 8,000 products. I ran manual load to google base feed waiting to see status.

I received email to register for new requirements and have completed.

Is there anyone I can pay to get this to work? How about Google Analytics? I can not seem to get to work. It has been months. In fact, I have never been able to get either working. :frusty::frusty:

G'day,
why is it blank when i generated the file of 'domain_products.xml'. Always a lot of errors:shocking:

I currently host my site, frugaltek dot com on fasthosts which does not allow me to change the php settings, someone posted a .htaccess file which did not work for my configuration. I need to know if there is a way I can alter the settings of my server on fasthosts so it will work with this module or I need to know how people with large databases (over 100k products) are able to make the files. I was thinking that there must be a php script available that would list the product url and sku by itself. The only information I really need is the product url, if someone could help me fix any of these issues it would be amazing, tHANKS IN ADVANCE.

numinix:

The module already disallows any product with a description of 15 characters or less. There is no switch in the configuration to turn this on or off, it is always on.

In my case Google Base processed 968 products and inserted 851. It reported that the others were "missing an important attribute" and that the bad data was the description.

Unfortunately a new feed file has been created since this submission, so the reports by Google no longer match the positions in the file to check it. Looking throught the feed file, maybe one or more of the following is happening:

1 - Google has changed the minimum length of the description to be higher than 15.

2- When HTML markup is stripped out a 4 space gap is left instead of a 1 space gap. Maybe Google Base Feeder is testing the length of the description with these extra spaces included, but Google Base is ignoring them.

3 - Google Base Feeder turns appropriate characters into HTML entities. Maybe Google Base is testing the length of the description with the full length of the entity included, but Google Base is treating these entities as a single character.

Hope this helps.

Cheers, Lloyd Borrett.

G'day,

Is there an explanation somewhere as to what the options for the various Google Base Feeder Configuration options are, what sort of values should be set for them, what's acceptable, and what they do to the feed result and the way the feed is displayed by Google Product Search?

I'm have some difficulty understanding just what is what with these settings.

In my case, it's a store operating in Australia.

GST tax of 10% is payable by those buying in Australia. No GST for those buying from elsewhere.

We accept credit cards from those in Australia and New Zealand. We only accept Direct Transfer payment from those elsewhere.

We offer free shipping on orders over A$1000 in value to anywhere in Australia.

We give everyone store pickup as an option. Those in Australia can select from two forms of shipping. Those elsewhere can only get International air delivery for shipping.

All of these things are configured into the store using the various zone options for shipping, payments etc.

But I'm at a loss as to how to transfer these settings into the Google Base Feed Configuration setup. Any help would be appreciated.

Cheers, Lloyd Borrett.

G'day,

After reading some more about Google Base, especially it's attribute optins, I'm starting to come to grips with some of the Google Base Feeder Configuration options.

But I now also have some more questions.

Google Base supports a "location" attribute, being the address of where the item is. Surely it would be useful to provide this, especially if Store Pickup is set to true? Also, providing the location might help in the case where, like me, the store is in one country but Google Base is being used to target customers in another country.

Google Base supports a "manufacturer" attribute. Google Base Feeder picks up the manufacturer from Zen Cart and outputs it as the "brand" attribute. Why output the brand attribute instead of the manufacturer attribute? Would there be any benefit or penalty if both the brand and manufacturer attributes were output?

Cheers, Lloyd Borrett.

fusionsp:

hmm, ok I tried that and it added more products. The few its missing may be my fault. Google does not allow products that do not have descriptions or too small ones.

Any ways, I created the feed. when I looked at it, it has all the descriptions bunched up? It took out all the spacing? I obviously like that it accepted more products but I cant change every product.

I am having the same problem. I have replaced the sanitizer portion of the code with the 1.7.0 version. Now, Goggle will accept my feeds with no problems or errors, however, when you look at the descriptions, they are all run together with no spaces between words.

In looking at my performance measures I noticed that my CTR's dropped almost to zero when I started using this updated version of Feeder. The only thing I can attribute it to is the lack of spaces in the descriptions (and I am assuming in the titles also) of the products.

Is there a quick fix to keep the Sanitizer from stripping all the spaces from the description field?

HELP!

After uploading all the new files to update my version 1.7.1 to 1.7.4, I got this SQL error:

1062 Duplicate entry 'GOOGLE_BASE_MAP_PRICING' for key 2
in:
[INSERT INTO bnconfiguration (configuration_id, configuration_title, configuration_key, configuration_value, configuration_description, configuration_group_id, sort_order, date_added, use_function, set_function) VALUES (NULL, 'Enable Map Pricing', 'GOOGLE_BASE_MAP_PRICING', 'false', 'Enable MAP Pricing (requires separate add-on)?', @configuration_group_id, 2, NOW(), NULL, 'zen_cfg_select_option(array(\'true\', \'false\'),');]
If you were entering information, press the BACK button in your browser and re-check the information you had entered to be sure you left no blank fields.

Anybody knows why, BTW I am unable to generate a new feed!!!
If I click in generate products feed in Admin it does nothing there are no new files in feed ... and it has 777 permissions so I think there is a problem with the xml generation ...

icecold:

After uploading all the new files to update my version 1.7.1 to 1.7.4, I got this SQL error:

1062 Duplicate entry 'GOOGLE_BASE_MAP_PRICING' for key 2
in:
[INSERT INTO bnconfiguration (configuration_id, configuration_title, configuration_key, configuration_value, configuration_description, configuration_group_id, sort_order, date_added, use_function, set_function) VALUES (NULL, 'Enable Map Pricing', 'GOOGLE_BASE_MAP_PRICING', 'false', 'Enable MAP Pricing (requires separate add-on)?', @configuration_group_id, 2, NOW(), NULL, 'zen_cfg_select_option(array('true', 'false'),');]
If you were entering information, press the BACK button in your browser and re-check the information you had entered to be sure you left no blank fields.

> 
> Anybody knows why, BTW I am unable to generate a new feed!!!
> If I click in generate products feed in Admin it does nothing there are no new files in feed   ... and it has 777 permissions so I think there is a problem with the xml generation ...

Go back and Start from page 151 and read those pages and see if that helps you out some. If not I will try to help you out.