Omar Kattan

Archive for the ‘Feeds’ Category

Do you subscribe to Google alerts?  If you do then you’ll be happy to know that Google has now begun offering the option to recive them via RSS!.  Yes thats right RSS!

Benefits of reciveing Google alerts via rss as opposed to to email include the ability to include them in your favourite reader, or even importing them into a adatabase including your cms for reputation management and collaboration.

To get the alerts, you need to create a Google alerts account and once you’ve created the search query, you will have the option to subscribe via email or rss.  Also make sure you select the “comprehensive” alerts.  You can even go one step further and create a Yahoo pipe of various alerts  as instructed by trillianjedi in this webmaster world thread

What does this development mean?  Well, recently there has been some buzz about Google developing its reputation management offering and this seems like a logical step towards achieving this goal.  Rumours have it that Google will soon be offering its search results in RSS format (it currently offers news search result s in both XML and Atom).

I’m personally extatic at his news at it allows me to stay on top of my clients’ online reputation and in these difficult times we’re living in, this is crucial!  THANKS Google!

Yahoo offers a programme that allows your site to show up in it’s natural results pages on a per click basis.  The programme is called Yahoo  Search Submit aka Paid Inclusion.

In a nutshell, the programme works as follows: 1) You provide Yahoo with a live Feed (IDIF) that includes all the pages of your site.  2) Yahoo sends its spiders to this live feed every 48 hours and based on certain prequalifications being met, 3) your pages will start showing up in Yahoo’s natural results.

The benfits of this programme over regualr SEO listings include:

• Since Yahoo regularly vists your feed, your listings will always remain fresh in Yahoo’s index

• Having a feed allows you to tell Yahoo of all of the pages on your site (much like Google Webmaster Tools)

• You can optimise the feed for SEO which allows your listings a good chance of ranking highly for competitive search terms

• The ability to update the feed on a regualr basis allows you to alter the message of your listings in line with promotions and special offers you may run on your site.

• Having your product database in Yahoo’s Paid Inclusion programme allows you to have a competitive  edge over your competitors.

To sign up for Yahoo’s Paid inclusion programme, visit this link.

During the month of April/May 2008, Google has been showing more and more shopping feeds (Google Base) on top of the Natural search results. Companies not participating in shopping feed distribution most certainly would have seen a substantial drop in their website sales as a direct result of this.

Its all part of Universal Search, the concept of adding non traditional search results in the SERPs (Search Engines Results Pages).  As a bonus, Google gets to eventually monetise more and more of its SERP space … Google base results are a natural (pardon the pun) solution for accomplishing this crucial goal!

Its simple really, since shopping feeds appear above the natural search results, and since shopping feeds almost always contain various competitive prices from various suppliers, users will most likely click on them over natural search results which are not updated on a regular basis. 

The problem is further compounded by the appearance of the PPC (Sponsored) results at the top of the page.

What’s the solution?  Simple…Participate in shopping feeds! 

Not only will you give your brand more exposure, but more importantly, you’ll ensure that you limit the damage from the inevitable drop in sales resulting from this new trend. 

For more info on how to create a shopping feed for your product, post your questions here…