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>>>My only explanation some boared employee decided he or she did not like the sound of my store name so set my feed as not approved even after it had been approved.
That sounds out of character - search engine employees usually have more than enough urgent business on their hands to occupy their time, and they typically don't nuke feeds without a reason. Perhaps being patient with their system, reviewing the feed for errors, glitches, etc, will help.
Good luck getting the issue sorted...generally speaking, I find being nice gets you much further with other companies than complaints. Though to each, their own.
As for Froogle, I stopped submitting 2 months ago. For a while it seemed to stop showing the majority of my products despite the feed being fine, then I noticed it started using our original copy to help sell competitors products. That was the last straw. The referals were minimal and the site (for users) kept changing. In the end it just didn't seem worth it.
Sometimes you have to stand back from it all and really evaluate it as you would if it were a small no-name shopping search engine. In many respects, despite the hype, Froogle is a badly thought out shambles, and reflects poorly on the professionalism and abilities of the google teams who maintain it. If I could just submit it once and forget about it then fine. Having to upload once a month, then change minor elements whenever a price changes etc. It seemed a waste of time and in the end I couldn't shake the feeling that Google hadn't really thought through what a shopping search engine is.
At the risk of sounding like I'm Google-bashing, I think we are seeing Google for what they really are. They are (were?) very good at one thing - listing relevant websites. When it comes to something more hands-on, they seem to fall apart. I mean, the site itself is a mess, and I never get the feeling there's much thought went into it. Also you get a bit sick of never-ending BETA products. These guys have $Billions at their disposal, I do expect a more mature approach to this. One sign of their seriousness would be a roadmap. I mean, when do they plan on finishing Froogle as a product? I can't be the only person who thinks Google are hiding behind BETA developments to hide the fact that they are groping in the dark.
The Froogle guys may have updated their feed quality control detection system and for some reason your site and/or feed listings do not meet some business rule logic.
Are you functioning as a direct merchant/retailer (i.e. have a shopping cart that actually allows people to buy something) or operating as a referral source to a merchant(s) (i.e. functioning more as an affiliate).
Froogle has had long stading problems with the same product being offered by the same merchant being listed multiple times by different feed providers.
(A really good example of this is just about any computer product. It's worthless to sort by price, because the low-priced items will always be accessories for the product, often ones that aren't even specific to that product. For example, search for any computer mother board. Sort by price, and you get pages of RAM modules, etc.)
Slight variations in product names cause the same product to be listed in multiple groups. Entirely wrong products returned for a search.
Same goes for digital cameras (memory returned even when you search for a camera with the model number etc).
As bleak as my view of Google sometimes is I can't escape the feeling that Froogle is typical of Google really. They have generally only succeeded in areas where other people are a lot worse. When there's either an already existing mature market, or competitors are innovative they don't do well (jabber anyone?).
When it comes to anything that relies on serious insights into human behaviour (e.g. how people locate products on a shopping search engine) they simply fall apart.
And don't get me started on the Froogle interface.
In my opinion froogle was Gog's first major failure.
Just because they are Gog, I think they thought everything they lauched would turn to gold.
Frog, was a wake up call.
Just because they are Gog, I think they thought everything they lauched would turn to gold.
Evidence that they are far from invincible?
