When I say data feed optimization (DFO), I mean any strategy or tactic to achieve better results on the shopping comparison engines (manipulating your data feed, bidding, properly setting up your account, proper categorization, etc.)…thus some companies call this comparison shopping optimization (CSO). Regardless of what you call it, the opportunities are real.

It’s time to think about data feed optimization just as you think about search engine optimization (SEO). It’s a war. You want to test out as many strategies as possible to out-do your opponents (merchants that sell similar products).

You want to take an hour every day to make sure your titles and descriptions contain the keywords that searchers would enter to find your products on the shopping engines. You want to add a customized attribute to your Google Base feed. You want to make sure that your products are categorized correctly. You want to review your click charges to make sure that nothing out of the ordinary happened (and if it did, get to the bottom of it as soon as possible). You want to add that extra optional field to any feed. And you want to track & be smart about A/B testing.

It’s time to realize that you can’t just put up a feed and expect great results overnight. You don’t expect your Adwords ads to have a high click-through rate from hour 1. You don’t expect to get ranked #1 in organic search for all your keywords immediately after making a change.

Yes, some of the placement on the shopping engines is due to bidding (and we’ll discuss bidding) but there’s a huge opportunity beyond or even before bidding.

It’s time to change your mindset and think about data feed optimization as an opportunity as opposed to thinking about the shopping comparison engines as your enemy. It’s time to love your feed.

With at least 6 ‘major’ shopping comparison engines to submit to, why am I suggesting Become? Submitting directly to Become, as opposed to going through Shopping.com (which syndicates its listings to Become), will get you great exposure on the site as Become’s own merchants are always displayed above Shopping.com’s merchants.

While the traffic to Become might not be anything to write home about yet, the company is out there aggressively buying keywords and working on search engine optimization (SEO). Best part? The CPC rates on Become are lower than on Shopping…and will be a lot lower once Shopping.com’s seasonal rate adjustment goes into effect…so you’re saving yourself money.

Become recently revamped its site and even cleaned up its registration process (thank you!). Sign up today.  And if you deposit $25, you can get a $25 credit by entering the following promotional code on the payment information page: BECNOV243Q

There are a couple housekeeping issues I want to take care of before I get going.

1. This site will obviously promote SingleFeed as a data feed management service, but I will also discuss other solutions provided by Channel Intelligence, Channel Advisor, Mercent, Performics, MerchantAdvantage, RedZoneGlobal, etc. There are a lot of companies trying to help merchants perform better on the shopping comparison engines, and I hope to include them all in the discussion here. I’d love to even have those companies become regular contributors to LoveYourFeed (seriously!).

2. I will accept advertising on this site, but I won’t take money directly from a shopping comparison engine. Will I take money from another division of Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, eBay, EW Scripps, Experian, etc.? Not sure yet.

I will never display ads from Google Adsense or Yahoo Publisher Network. Sure, I’m leaving easy money on the table, but I think there are plenty of other advertisers around that would be interested in reaching an active audience of internet marketers.

Expect the usual suspects…SEO firms, PPC management companies, e-commerce providers, etc. I’m going to be picky about my advertisers, so don’t expect just anyone to show up.

3. I hope to engage the shopping comparison engines in a more open dialogue through LoveYourFeed.

Right now Shopzilla, Shopping.com, PriceGrabber, etc. do a poor job of communicating outages or problems with their sites. Google and Yahoo! issue ‘weather’ reports and frequently update developers of changes to their services. I’m going to encourage the shopping engines to use LoveYourFeed for the same purpose. I’ll even give each shopping engine access to this blog as I want them to truly start a dialogue with merchants. Over the last year, the shopping comparison engines have taken a lot of flack for rising PPC rates, lower conversion, and fairly poor customer service. Yes, I’m making a generalization (many engines have and continue to delight merchants), but I think more communication is a good thing. I know not everyone will participate in this discussion, but it’s worth a try.

I’ll also allow the shopping engines to post their own optimization tips and strategies. Doesn’t it make sense to have Shopzilla talk about submitting and optimizing a Shopzilla feed?

4. I’m juggling a couple hats, so there might be conflicts of interest. We’ll see. If you have any concerns, just let me know. At the end of the day, my value to any one of my audiences is enhanced through managing the other services.

5. I hope to have plenty of guest bloggers as I’m just one of many internet marketers using the shopping engines. I’d love to have people like Lisa Bari (Art.com), Paul O’Brien (HP Home & Home Office, SEOBrien), JP Werlin (Downtown Ecommerce Partners), Nathan Kartchner (SewellDirect), Victor Berggren (Tampa Bay New Balance), David Dwek (Etronics), and Christal Condon (Home Decor Products, Inc., BuildersSquare) get involved. Sure, not everyone is going to be willing to share ’secrets’, but if we put together our collective thinking caps, we’ll be able to intelligently add to the conversation like Danny Sullivan did in the early days of search engine optimization on Search Engine Watch.

I’m passionate about this industry and want to see it continue to grow and succeed. Yes, I obviously hope to profit from SingleFeed and LoveYourFeed, but if that’s all you see, then you’re missing the point. I’ve helped merchants, VCs, analysts, media, the shopping engines, and others understand what’s going on in the shopping comparison engine industry.

Now it’s time to focus on you, the merchants, and give you the tools, research, and insight you need to understand and love your data feeds.

What’s LoveYourFeed?
Over the last 2 years of covering the shopping comparison engine industry I’ve realized that merchants generally hate their data feeds. Submitting and re-submitting a ton of data feeds to multiple comparison engines, I also grew to hate data feeds. And I don’t hate much of anything…so I asked myself what I could do to improve the situation for merchants and the shopping comparison engines (who, by the way, don’t love dealing with all the errors in our data feeds).

Developing SingleFeed was the first step as I wanted to alleviate the severe pain of managing multiple feeds.

However, just submitting any old feed isn’t enough. So many merchants put big money behind PPC management and search engine optimization, but somehow expect the shopping comparison engines to peform incredibly well without any oversight. Few companies actually take the time to optimize their feeds.

That’s wrong. And that’s the basis for LoveYourFeed.

The goal of LoveYourFeed is to become an active hub for data feed optimization (DFO) and comparison shopping optimization (CSO) tips, strategies, and advice. I want to help merchants (large and small) achieve success on the shopping comparison engines.

What’s SingleFeed?
SingleFeed is my new online self-service data feed management and submission company dedicated to helping small and medium sized merchants get up and running on multiple shopping comparison engines quickly and easily. A mouthful, I know! Put simply, through ComparisonEngines.com, I realized I wasn’t the only merchant frustrated with the data feed management and data feed submission process, and I decided to do something about it.

Setting up a Google Adwords or Yahoo! Search Marketing ad takes a couple minutes. Setting up a data feed can take 10 hours, submitting that data feed can take an hour, and correcting errors in that data feed can take 2 hours. That’s 13 hours for just the first feed…imagine if you want to submit to multiple shopping comparison engines!

SingleFeed sovles this problem. A merchants creates a single feed that covers all the required and most important optional fields for each shopping comparison engine. The merchant then corrects all errors on SingleFeed. SingleFeed then submits and automatically re-submits the merchant’s feed to the selected engines. For any merchants that are manually working with 6 different spreadsheets to update their feeds, SingleFeed is a great alternative. For more sophisticated marketers, SingleFeed will soon be adding a number of features that will make your life a lot easier.

The price? During BETA:
Deluxe Submission: $129.99/month plus a $29.99 set up fee for submission to Shopping.com, Shopzilla, PriceGrabber, Yahoo! Shopping, Become, NexTag, Google Base, and Smarter.com.
Google Base Submission: $9.99/month.

I started ComparisonEngines because I was using the shopping comparison engines for a number of consulting clients, and I couldn’t find out any information about the industry. Everyone was talking about Google AdWords and there were plenty of blogs about search engine optimization and affiliate markeitng, but just one site discussing the shopping comparison engines.

At the same time, everyone and their mother had a blog. Why not me? My second interview was with Dan Ciporin, the former CEO of Shopping.com (I’ve come a long way from those first couple posts). A couple weeks later, Shopping.com was purchased by eBay. A couple weeks after that, Shopzilla was purchased by EW Scripps. The rest is history.

My original audience were VCs and media as the summer of 2005 was the summer of vertical search. Next the shopping comparison engines started to read ComparisonEngines. Finally, around October of last year, the merchants showed up in droves asking for help with their feeds, help dealing with crappy customer service, help addressing click fraud, etc.

I’ve never taken more than a couple meals from the shopping comparison engines as I wanted to remain an independent analyst. In fact, ComparisonEngines has no ads on the site…no AdSense, no YPN, no nothing.

I’m Brian Smith.

A little about me…
I’m an independent analyst covering the shopping comparison engine industry through ComparisonEngines. You may also know me through VerticalSearch.net (where I cover the online travel and job search verticals), or Danny Sullivan’s Search Engine Watch (where I’m a shopping search correspondent and SearchDay contributor).

A little about my background…
I’m an internet marketing and business development guy. Over the last 11 years, I’ve been involved with a number of internet start-ups, researching, planning, implementing, and optimizing cost-effective online marketing and business development programs. I have a passion for metrics oriented marketing activities that drive targeted traffic at a low cost per acquisition (CPA) for e-commerce companies. I have hands on experience with search engine optimization (SEO), pay per click (PPC) marketing, email marketing, adware, banner/media buying, affiliate program management and optimization, and shopping comparison engine marketing.