Submitting product information to the shopping comparison search engines such as Yahoo! Shopping, Froogle and Shopping.com can be a daunting task for many merchants and managing the data feeds across many comparison sites can get very time consuming.

The first step in the product submission process is the preparation of the product data feed. Data preparation starts with writing a script to capture all products information from the web site’s product database and formatting of the product information into the require feed format. Often the raw data stream must be verified and optimized before the product feed can be uploaded to ensure that the product listings rank well on the search results page of the shopping comparison sites.

Submission of data feeds gives you time-sensitive control over current freshness, accuracy and latest price changes rather than waiting for Google spider updates. Data feeds can be submitted at any time but at least once a month to avoid automatic Froogle expiration. A significant advantage is the flexibility of creating compelling, keyword rich product descriptions versus “snipped” Google descriptions which sometimes are incoherent keyword gibberish. Data feed content must be the same as the visible content on the web page. Image, URL, description, product titles and specified price(s) must also be consistent to actual web page content.