Google Merchant Center: why won't my txt file work?

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simonmlewis
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Google Merchant Center: why won't my txt file work?

Post by simonmlewis »

Hi all
I don't know if this is the right place in the network to ask this. Apologies if it is wrong.

We are trying to get a web site's sales items on the Google Shopping pages and keep trying to upload the .txt or .xml file, from a converted .xls file.

I am using the Manual Upload facility, but rather than report back an error on the file, or a warning of wrong content (CAPS, language etc...), it just says "no items inserted". It's infuriating.

If anyone here is good with Google Base (as I think it's called), can you please respond and I'll send the file we uploaded.

According to the instructions, it must have certain fields, and some are optional. We are using ALL mandatory fields.
Love PHP. Love CSS. Love learning new tricks too.
All the best from the United Kingdom.
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deejay
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Re: Google Merchant Center: why won't my txt file work?

Post by deejay »

Hi Simon

I had this a couple of weeks ago and was having the same problem. Once I found this help page http://www.google.com/support/merchants ... 0590&hl=en and duplicated the RSS1 example ( obviously swapping their product details for ours ) I got it to work.

Apperently there are scripts that will do all this for you automatically but I couldn't get any to work for me. If anyone knows of a good one, I'd like to know :)


Hope this helps
simonmlewis
DevNet Master
Posts: 4435
Joined: Wed Oct 08, 2008 3:39 pm
Location: United Kingdom
Contact:

Re: Google Merchant Center: why won't my txt file work?

Post by simonmlewis »

Hi, what on earth is all that code about?

I'm told I can do it with TXT or XML, saving it from Excel. I haven't a clue how to make it RSS compliant.

I've also been told there are rules on 'promotions' and 'delivery'. The part that seriously bugs me, as a developer, is that there are no errors reports. So you upload something, and it just says, after an hour or som "no items inserted".
Nothing saying "error: promotions" or "error: TOO ANY CAPS".... absolutely nothing.

So how the heck does a developer learn from errors to be able to fix them and move on - which is exactly how a developer operates!!??

I must have tried uploading the documents about 10 times; each one has failed.
Love PHP. Love CSS. Love learning new tricks too.
All the best from the United Kingdom.
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