Google Base Feed Problem

[krittleb]

I created and uploaded a google base feed and found that it did not recognize certain products as valid and did not include them.

The error given was that there is not a "description" associated with those products. All of those products actually do have a description, but the product page is a custom page layout. For some reason, the google feed creator is not recognizing and tagging the "description" correctly on that particular product page layout.

I wouldn't have a clue where to start looking for the problem, so if anybody has any suggestions, they would be appreciated.

[Michael Ward]

Hi there
For the Google feed AbleCommerce uses the Summary Description field of the product for the description information. Please insure that your products have a Summary Description.

[krittleb]

Oh, wow! That is pretty useless! That would be the problem then.

We use the summary to display things like "temporarily out of stock", etc. so that the customers can know important status info without having to actually click into the product page.

I guess our Google base products will be pretty pointless then except to generate more links for improving SEO, which was really the main point anyway.

UGH. You would think that would be a pretty basic thing for AC to fix and to know that people would want the "description" to link to the description, not the summary!! At least they could give us the options to choose from!? Hopefully this is addressed in a future upgrade...

[Shopping Cart Admin]

Hello Kristi,

Is there possibly a character field limit on the google feed for description that caused our developers to select the summary field for 'description'?

[mazhar]

Google base reference implementation is available on WIKI http://wiki.ablecommerce.com/index.php/ ... d_Provider
You can create a duplicate of it with using description field.

[krittleb]

It is possible that there is a character limit, which shouldn't be a problem for us. Maybe they can set up the admin to give the option of selecting either summary or description to link to.

Mazhar, I will check the link you gave and hopefully will be able to figure out how to get it changed.

Thanks for the help!