Question

Topic: SEO/SEM

Impact Of Google Merchant Center On Seo Results?

Posted by Anonymous on 7/26/2010 at 10:06 AM ET 500 Points
We have not currently included our products in the Google Merchant Center (Google Base) product feed.

I have a quote from our website development firm to develop the API that would let us synch up our product database with Google Merchant Center on a daily basis. The quote is higher than I had anticipated, but it would be nice to have this completely automated as we currently have 1,000+ SKUs on our website.

Does anyone have any before and after results from implementation of your products in Google Merchant Center? What quantifiable uplift in traffic to you site did you see? I am trying to determine the ROI I might expect if I implemented the API feed and incurred the development expense.
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RESPONSES

  • Posted by modza on 7/26/2010 at 12:02 PM Member
    I don't have the stats but I question the quote and even the need for a custom API at all. I would suggest looking at the Merchant Center help files on your own. Of course it depends on what file type you have or can easily export your SKU list to, but Google's intention was to make it easy for small business owners, not programmers, to upload their inventory, even automatically.

    I uploaded Excel spreadsheets, and I believe I could have stumbled through creating a macro in Excel for no cost that would have automated the process.
    Michael Odza
  • Posted by excellira on 7/26/2010 at 5:19 PM Accepted
    Some of our clients get a fair amount of traffic from this source. We have one client receiving about 1/3 of their traffic from this channel alone. Others receive very little, mostly because they don't have the resources to execute.

    Usually it's not expensive to generate a feed though it does take some effort to optimize the products for the feed (more of the ownership of this task would be on you or your team).

    If you're in the right vertical, you should be there.
  • Posted by excellira on 7/27/2010 at 12:53 AM Member
    I'm questioning the cost of implementation and the volume requirements. What platform is your site built on? Is it custom or an open source or commercial app?
  • Posted by excellira on 7/27/2010 at 10:48 AM Member
    It's still using a db, it shouldn't be too difficult to get a feed out. How many hours have they estimated the project to be?
  • Posted by excellira on 7/27/2010 at 11:11 AM Member
    Hmm. I don't know what their labor rate is but that doesn't seem terribly out of line if they are budgeting for issues.

    The big question is whether you have the time to manage the effort. Lacking knowledge about your offering and resources (not a good combination when giving opinion so take with large grain of salt ;-), I think that it could prove to be a good channel.

  • Posted on 8/1/2010 at 1:04 AM Member
    Excellira always has great advice I found it beneficial to listen to him . Google base as is true with other verticals like Places and Images are of course beneficial to your SEO endeavors specially now with blended search. The value really is unquantifiable unless you are privy to Google's algorithm. I can only speak from experience, we targeted the Google
    Places vertical and saw minimal traffic compared to our organic but some testing verified that the vertical provided a big lift to our organic listings .

    As for the development cost I'd shop around to get a feel of the costs involved. Just my opinion.

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