Bing Shopping feed discontinued?

[Weblamer]

Anyone know if the bing shopping feed was discontinued? The pages and FAQ were up last week. This week one of my projects was to get a feed up to them, however now all the shopping feed pages have gone missing, turning up 'file not found' pages.

[advertising.microsoft.com ]

[CPC_Andrew]

Hi Weblamer,

Things have moved since Cashback transitioned to Bing Shopping. Below I've copied some information I wrote a few months ago about the new program and how you can get started. If yo migrate your account instead of creating a new one. If you create a new account your old cashback account will have to be closed before your new Bing Shopping account in Microsoft's adCenter will activate.

1. I’m new to Bing Shopping…Where do I begin?

Microsoft’s old Bing Shopping portal recently migrated to Microsoft’s adCenter. To sign up to list products on Bing Shopping, you need to create or use and existing adCenter account. [adcenter.microsoft.com...]

Once you create an account, start the setup process of your Bing Shopping portal by clicking on the Tools tab and then clicking on Bing Shopping Account Management link on the upper right hand side.

If you were listing your products through Bing Shopping’s old merchant portal (Cashback), you can migrate the account to your adCenter when you begin the setup process. Just enter your old username and password and voila! You’re all set up and good to go, just keep submitting a feed to your old FTP location.

Make sure you update the new category tab so that your store is browsable by category.

2. I thought Bing Shopping was free, why do I have to enter my credit card information?

In order to create an adCenter account Microsoft needs your credit card information. Microsoft will only charge your account if you begin any paid search programs.

3. How do I create my data feed?

Bing Shopping put together a Merchant Integration Guide that provides step-by-step instructions on creating a data feed. You can find the most recent version here:

[advertising.microsoft.com...]

4. What do I populate my MerchantCategory column with?

The category taxonomy here:

[blog.cpcstrategy.com...]

which is the same as Bing Cashback’s old taxonomy, is what you should be using to populate your Merchant Category column.

Be as specific as possible to help Bing Shopping funnel the most qualified traffic to your webstore.

5. My products aren’t live…What’s wrong with my data feed?

Bing Shopping has very strict requirements for data feed headers and the file name you are submitting. Make sure they are accurate as detailed in Bing Shopping’s Merchant Integration Guide.

Sometimes special characters like quotations ” hashtags # and other special characters will prevent your data from being published.

Other common errors include specifying the wrong data feed file name in your Catalog Management tab of the adCenter.

6. How long does it take for my products to go live?

Your first data feed can take up to 14 days to completely process and display on Bing Shopping. After that your data feeds can take up to 72 hours to go live.

7. Do I need a BingCategory, or B_Category column?

This column is required and should have one of the following top level categories inserted for all products:

Arts & Crafts, Baby & Nursery, Beauty & Fragrance, Books & Magazines, Cameras & Optics, Car & Garage, Clothing & Shoes, Collectibles & Memorabilia, Computing, Electronics, Flowers, Gourmet Food & Chocolate, Health & Wellness, Home Furnishings, Jewelry & Watches, Kitchen & Housewares, Lawn & Garden, Miscellaneous, Movies, Music, Musical Instruments, Office Products, Pet Supplies, Software, Sports & Outdoors, Tools & Hardware, Toys, Travel, Vehicles, Video Games

8. How do I get more traffic from Bing Shopping?

There are certain enhancements you can make to your product titles and descriptions to improve their findability. Put yourself in your shopper’s shoes, what keywords can you input into your product names and descriptions to gain the most qualified leads?

Hint: If you use a third party tracking pixel you can drill down to discover what keywords shoppers are using to find your products. But be careful, there’s a fine line between adding relevant keywords and increasing qualified traffic vs. adding broad keywords and increasing unqualified traffic.

The more specific you can get with your titles and descriptions the better.

9. How do I know if my products are live?

The site: search feature on Bing Shopping is not fully operational. To check to see if your products are live do spot check searches on products in your data feed. Type in 5-20 product titles in Bing Shopping to make sure your products are listed.

10. How do I contact Bing Shopping?

Below is Bing Shopping’s official contact us link:

[support.microsoft.com...]

You can also reach Bing Shopping by e-mailing [e-mail]

[Weblamer]

Aaah, thank you.

[RhinoFish]

"Your first data feed can take up to 14 days to completely process and display on Bing Shopping."

14 days? Will that be coming down as time passes?

[CPC_Andrew]

Probably not. Part of the wait times with the accounts has to do with the fact that Microsoft has a quality assurance team that checks each merchant's standing. They're very strict about who can and who can not list on Bing Shopping.

That quality assurance coupled with the extremely strict data feed requirements is reason for the long delay. Just make sure you submit the feed the right way the first time to avoid any additional downtime.

[RhinoFish]

thanks for replying!

moving the feed under AdCenter was SMART for several reasons, one relevant one here is knowing who the merchant is and confirming that thru credit card.

there should be many ways you can automate the feed details screening to cut the time down, your competitors have.

[CPC_Andrew]

"there should be many ways you can automate the feed details screening to cut the time down, your competitors have." What do you mean?

[RhinoFish]

google merchant center, many CSE's and also feed aggregators all accept feeds, and i know of none that require 14 days to approve.

[CPC_Andrew]

I wish I could get Bing Shopping to speed it up too! :)

I was confused about your initial statement, I think you mistook me for a Bing Shopping employee. I work for an agency that specializes in full service shopping feed and comparison shopping engine management.

[RhinoFish]

shoot, i did exactly that. sorry, my mistake.

switch it to "they" not "you". :-)

[CPC_Andrew]

No prob, I take it as a compliment. ;-)