Interview: Lin Grosman Talks About GoDataFeed Shopping Engine Solutions

GoDataFeed specializes in the automated delivery of product data feeds to over 40 major comparison shopping engines for merchants interested in saving time and effectively sending, optimizing and analyzing their feed content. GoDataFeed works together with merchant sellers, search engine marketing and optimization firms, hosting companies and a variety of other service providers, many of which are attracted to GoDataFeed’s affordable, efficient model designed to increase visitors and product/brand reach within the individual shopping channels.
In addition to the data feed automation, optimization and tracking processes, GoDataFeed truly cares about their clients success and always aims to exceed their expectations by offering the support and resources needed to meet the demands of their individual client needs.
GoDataFeed Comparison Shopping Solutions Overview:
- Promote products on more than 40 comparison shopping sites & affiliate networks
- Enhance product placement with built-in shopping engine categorization and validation
- Customize feed campaigns for sale, holiday, free-shipping, brand-name promotions and more
Data Feed Automation
- Easy one-time setup process
- Feed fresh product data
- Full integration with Yahoo! Store, ShopSite and Volusion 5.0
Data Feed Optimization
- Accurate product placement
- Robust field and category mapping
- Built-in categorizations and validation for all shopping engines
Data Feed Tracking
- Engine and product-level performance
- Real time data on clicks, conversions and revenue
- Determine your best products and shopping channels
GoDataFeed Features:
- Automate your data imports via FTP or instantly import your fully-integrated ShopSite, Volusion 5.0 or Yahoo! Stores
- Ensure your product data is always fresh with nightly FTP updates
- Submit your feeds automatically- daily, weekly or monthly
- Enhance product placement with robust category & filter rules that let you customize feeds and merchandise products where customers expect to find them
- Validate feeds against each shopping engine’s requirements to ensure your product data is accurate and complete
- Customize feed campaigns by adding or modifying values to your feed- like adding tracking tags to your URLs or creating targeted promotional initiatives for sale items, free-shipping, brand name and more
- Real-Time feedback on your clicks, orders and revenue
- Monitor your best performing engines and products
- Determine the best shopping sites for your store
GoDataFeed $.99 Trial:

GoDataFeed offers a 30 day trial of their professional comparison shopping engine solutions. The cost for the trial is only $.99. That’s right, only 99 cents to try GoDataFeed for a whole month. Visit the GoDataFeed trial page and fill out the brief form to sign-up for your $.99 thirty day trial offer.
GoDataFeed Pricing:

All GoDataFeed plans include: Two FREE Feed Setups, FREE Analytics Module & FREE Support
- Starter - 3 Feeds, 5,000 Products, $50/month
- Self-Managed - Unlimited Feeds, 5, 000 Products, $75/month
- Managed - Unlimited Feeds, 5,000 Products, $250/month
* Note: Each plan charges $5.00 extra per each additional 1,000 products
GoDataFeed Blog:
GoDataFeed also has a blog running where anyone can go to get the latest CSE and GDF news along with tips and resources from the experts at GoDataFeed. Simply visit their main page and look for the link to their blog in the top right corner.
To get an idea of the type of content to expect, be sure to read the latest post: Maximizing Comparison Shopping Site Marketing. It’s a great article full of tips to help merchants or pros effectively use CSE strategies. It’s a must read for anyone in the current CSE space.
Lin Grosman, Marketing/Integration, Answers 10 Questions About GoDataFeed:
What made you decide to get into the feed generation or management business originally? How long have you been servicing merchants, vendors and Online sellers?
GoDataFeed’s software engineers and marketing specialists have developed ecommerce solutions for online businesses since 2000. Responding to the popularity of comparison shopping channels, GoDataFeed’s team combined its collective knowledge of best ecommerce and shopping channel marketing practices to create a single, user-friendly application to manage the product feed process.
What are your specific service specialties? Do you currently provide feed generation, distribution, tracking, management or all of the above?
‘All of the above’ GoDataFeed data feed management service automates, optimizes and analyzes product data feeds to more than 40 comparison engines and affiliate networks:
- Automation: The software simplifies and automates the data feed management process through FTP updates as well as automatic integration for Yahoo! Stores, ShopSite, Volusion (5.0) stores, and AmeriCommerce.
- Optimization: Merchants can optimize their product feeds through built-in categorization and feed validation tools that help them make their product data more accurate and complete.
- Analytics: GoDataFeed’s analytics module helps merchants track product-level and engine performance, which helps determine best-performing shopping channels for their store.
What comparison shopping engines are supported by your service? Which engines do you work with?
GoDataFeed supports more than 40 comparison shopping sites and affiliate networks including:
Amazon.com, Become.com, BuyersEdge, Ciao.com, FindGift.com, Gifts.com, Like.com, NexTag.com, Oodle.com, MyCoupons.com, PriceComparison.com, PriceforSure.com, PriceGrabber.com, PriceLeap.com, PriceRunner.com, PriceWatch.com, Pronto.com, Shop.com, Shopping.com, Shopzilla.com, Smarter.com, Sortprice.com, Streetprices.com, Yahoo Shopping, Google Product Search, MSN Live Product, TheFind.com, Dealio, Share-A-Sale, Commission Junction and Performics.
We also provide custom feeds for merchants who submit to specialty sites, such as wine specialty sites, gourmet and affiliate sites, etc.
Who are some of the merchants that currently use you as a feed generation or management firm?
We cater to retail clients, hosting firms companies and search engine optimization and search engine marketing firms. Some of our clients include: StuffedAnimals.com, Puppet.com, CoffeeCakes.com, FootwearEtc.com, AffiliateTraction, Lexiconn Internet Services, WebDex Media Group.
What factors should merchants consider when shopping for a feed generation or management firm?
Data feed management firms should give merchants the right tools to make their product information as accurate and complete as possible prior to submission to shopping engines, tools like feed validation and built-in categorization and customization options.
Data feed management firms should inform and educate merchants — through a transparent process– about the steps involved in optimizing and submitting their products to multiple shopping sites, acting as merchant advocates, and keeping them abreast of industry developments.
Shopping feed software should:
- Automate the data feed management process
- Optimize product information for each individual engine
- Monitor shopping site and product performance
Data feed management firms should provide responsive, unlimited support — GoDataFeed provides unparalleled turnaround time with support requests, live help with feed setups and live chat — all in an effort to simplify the feed management process, get their stores up and running and save merchants time and resources.
In your opinion, what is the biggest mistake merchants make when venturing into the comparison shopping world?
The biggest mistake merchants can make is to look for “set it and forget it” or cookie-cutter solutions—merchants should be involved in the process of preparing their product data, as they know their product information best, and monitor their performance on the shopping sites.
In your opinion, what is the most commonly overlooked feed aspect, that makes the biggest difference with CSE’s?
Each shopping site has its own data feed template, system and resources. We think the most commonly overlooked aspect–which can have the biggest impact– is merchants not tailoring feed campaigns to each shopping site and taking advantage of each shopping sites’ resources—i.e. account manager assistance, shopping site user review programs and shopping site optimization tips.
In your opinion, what will the comparison shopping-scape look like in the future? Replaced by traditional SE’s? Better than ever? Hardly used? More social? Anything?
The comparison shopping world is definitely becoming more social as shoppers are not only buying, but researching products and looking for ratings, reviews and user experiences. In addition, we think that more shopping sites will adopt a Cost-per-Action model—which is popular with many merchants.
What goals do you hope to accomplish and where do you see your firm heading in the next 1-3 years?
Our goal is promote a “Power to the Merchant” movement that empowers merchants and SEO firms to understand and take control of their data feed management to unlimited engines—at an affordable rate. We have just launched GoDataFeed’s v2.0—which has an extremely user-friendly interface and appeals to many users, making it easy to customize feed campaigns to more than 40 shopping sites. We aim to grow our business by helping merchants grow theirs.
What is the single best performing comparison shopping engine you currently support? Who earns the most revenue on average for your merchants?
It is impossible to generalize on the best performing comparison shopping engine, because each store and industry are different and perform differently on the shopping sites—however, the most popular shopping sites we currently support are Google Base, Shopzilla, Yahoo! Shopping, PriceGrabber and Jellyfish—now known as CashBack.
Conclusion & Final Thoughts:
To Lin: Wow Lin, thanks so much for taking the time and effort to participate in our QandA style interview about GoDataFeed. I really appreciate all the thought and information that went into your responses, well done. I love the fact that you are all about empowering the merchant for success, it can be easily overlooked in this fast paced industry. My favorite part, that is so true, is about the commonly overlooked aspects. You hit the nail on the head by stating, “merchants not tailoring feed campaigns to each shopping site and taking advantage of each shopping sites’ resources.” I can’t count the times I’ve worked with businesses who fail to utilize ALL their resources. The rating and reviews are the biggest, as you said. Optimization of feeds is also a big one. Thanks again Lin. I hope you continue to drop by. Please don’t hesitate to send us updates about your service so we can all stay informed about the progress GoDataFeed is making!!
To our readers: Well, that pretty much wraps up our latest data feed company interview. I hope you all enjoyed our time with Lin Grosman from GoDataFeed. It always amazes me to see how companies such as this are revolutionizing the CSE industry. I hope it was as informative for all of you as it was for me. If you liked this article and interview, be sure and subscribe to our articles feed or email updates, that way we can send newly published articles directly to you. If you just can’t wait for more like this, and haven’t already, you may also want to check out some of our past ecommerce interviews.
GoDataFeed is featured as one of the data feed companies on our Product Listing Guide!
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1 Reader Comment or Link
Add a new comment...Comment posted by Click Bank
December 4, 2008 @ 6:57 am
Awesome! I have read a lot on this topic, but you definitely give it a good vibe. This is a great post. Will be back to read more!
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