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Admiral The X
VP-CART New User
USA
52 Posts |
 Posted - May 26 2009 : 23:26:56
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i just recently got google base from byz and its a required field in the byz program but it does not seem to be a required field for google itself.
am i assessing the situation accurately? i wonder because a lot of the products i carry do not have UPCs...
Air Armory - Airsoft
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devshb
Senior Member
United Kingdom
1904 Posts |
Posted - May 27 2009 : 14:48:11
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According to google's own specs, it's mandatory on the googlebase feed (for u.s. format)
But in practice google hasn't seemed to have made up its mind yet and sometimes they do accept feeds without a upc.
If you don't store a upc then it's worth temporarily taking out the upc from the googlebase feed and submitting it to google to see what they do with it.
What you can do is edit shopa_generategooglebasefiles_config_details.asp and shopa_generategooglebasefiles_config_header.asp in notepad and comment-out or delete the upc bits in those 2 files; that way it doesn't matter what your upc-field config option is (set it to "catalogid" to avoid the mandatory-error on the screen) as the upc won't go into the feed.
The comments in those 2 files (and in the feed generation screen) are all as per google's latest specs, but their specs often mismatch with what google actually does.
The googlebase forum is a good place to look to find out the truth behind what google really does.
Simon Barnaby
Developer
[email protected]
www.BigYellowZone.com
Web Design, Online Marketing and VPASP addons |
Edited by - devshb on May 27 2009 14:50:23 |
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SQLDude
Starting Member
41 Posts |
Posted - November 04 2009 : 18:52:32
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My first feed last month left out the upc element and it was kicked back because of this. They suggest using some other unique identifier in that field if a true upc is not available, like the manufacturer's product code which seems to work within the wristwatch industry, but it may not be unique in some other industries.
There are sometimes issues if you send HTML in the description field even if it has been subjected to the Server.HTMLEncode parsing process. More on this later.
This year is my 10th Anniversary as a VPASP consultant. Suggestions made to Howard Kadetz which were adopted as part of the core VPASP system include the VeriSign Gateway which I actually debugged and validated, the Snitz Forums Application which you are using right now, and ChiliSoft ASP for MySQL and Linux. I have been developing both ASP, ASP.NET and SQL Server Applications for the same timeframe and my clients have included: United HealthCare, Bank of America, Sirius Satellite Radio, Sovereign Bank, Boston University Medical School, EMC Corp., TJMaxx Stores and several other Fortune 100 or Fortune 500 Companies. |
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Admiral The X
VP-CART New User
USA
52 Posts |
Posted - November 04 2009 : 19:17:27
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i have been using the google base feed for some time now without populating the UPC code field.
i actually just set it to load an empty value from a particular column because the only thing on my side kicking back is the output code for BYZ. i didnt feel like overwriting it so i just filled it empty.
If you feel game you can pick something like Ccode to populate the UPC field and google will accept it when the CCode is 8 digits numeric, or what ever the UPC is validated as.
another place you will find upc issues is AMAZON.com if you list with amazon they require upc for everything and many products dont have them. you can speak with your rep and get an exemption for manufacturers that are not UPC compliant.
If google ever requires UPC they will also have this method. Its possible they already do this and almost nothing airsoft i sell is UPC compliant, lol. Hell some of my MFG make UPC labels that are invalid or not registered. its funny. WTG imports! =)
Air Armory - Airsoft
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