Product feed
A product feed ( english product feed ) and product data feed (English product datafeed ) is a file containing a list of products and product features that uniquely identifies each product. Each product can be displayed, compared and specifically advertised with the help of a product feed on the Internet. A product feed usually contains the name of the product as well as a product image, a product description and product properties.
Product feeds are used to provide content that is used by various e-commerce platforms , such as search engines , price comparison services, affiliate networks and other aggregators of e-commerce information. Manufacturers and online retailers create and optimize their feeds; in some cases, the information is extracted from online shops using web scraping or web harvesting.
Product feed applications
Product feeds differ in content and structure, but the goal is the same - namely to provide high quality information (up-to-date, relevant, accurate, comprehensive) so that buyers can make purchasing decisions online.
Product feeds are exchanged between manufacturers and retailers and are used by a number of marketing channels. This enables buyers to search for their products on the Internet on various types of platforms and then to go to the retailer's website.
These marketing channels include:
- Price comparison portals - feeds in this case are the content that describes the products that are necessary to operate the platform and to compare prices. Properties are mostly made available in vertical search portals.
- Indicating semantic targeting use
- Affiliate networks
- Marketplaces
Feed formats
- After discovering the importance of the quality of their product feeds, Google revised the requirements for their feed.
- Other pages listing products use proprietary formats that contain neither plain text nor XML .
- RDF format: Semantic Web standards such as RDF are in the process of establishing themselves. It is expected that product feeds will adopt this new standard.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Data feeds overview - Google Merchant Center Help (english)
- ↑ Products Feed Specification - Google Merchant Center Help (English)
- ↑ Product Content Cloud - Edgenet.com ( Memento of the original from August 6, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English)
- ↑ Provide high-quality data - Google Merchant Center Help (English)
- ↑ Spex Access - Product Data Management for Manufacturers (English)
- ↑ Data Feed Requirements - PriceGrabber.com ( Memento of the original from July 28, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English)
- ↑ Successful Strategies in Increasing Product Sales with Google Shopping ( Memento from April 20, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Google Commerce: Updated Google Shopping feed specification (English)
