Live.com Product Search & MSN Shopping Overview:

Live Search was officially released from beta in September of 2006 when it began to power MSN search results. Since then we have seen many more beta projects from Windows including feeds search and even one for products. Windows Live Product Search is meant to compete with other online comparison shopping giants including Google Product Search, Yahoo Shopping, Shopping.com and more.

Live Product Search and MSN Shopping are comparison shopping engines powered by Microsoft and Windows systems. They allow web searchers interested in buying items online to find and refine product results based on keyword or phrase queries and user features. Both sites are capable of aggregating millions of product offerings from a variety of merchant retailers across several categories. Users have the ability to sort products or narrow search results in a number of different ways including price, rating, reviews, brand, store and relevance.

MSN Shopping launched it’s new public beta nearly two years ago in summer 2005 while Live.com Product Search has only been in existence since May 2006. The results on each site are very similar and the refinement features are exactly the same with a slightly different user interface on each. This makes sense as Live Product Search now powers relevant MSN portals including their comparison shopping engine. This is good for both users looking to buy and merchants hoping to get listed and sell. Shoppers who were used to using MSN Shopping can still go there and may prefer to use that interface and layout rather than the Live.com results. Users who are already on Live.com searching have nearly instant access to product results so there is a way to get there from either portal or page. Merchants get to have their products listed in multiple places and the chances of users seeing their items increases.

Where Your Products Get Listed & Found:

Live.com Product Search Engine

Live Product Search enables you to find products available for purchase on the web from a broad selection of merchants. We obtain our products both directly from merchants as well as from crawling the web. As the results are determined automatically, the name, image, description and price may not always be up-to-date and accurate.

MSN Shopping Comparison Engine

Comparison shopping made easy – Users can compare 35,197,504 products from over 8,000 stores, all in one place. MSN Shopping is fed by listing that are submitted directly by merchants and also from crawling the web. Live.com is tied directly into MSN Shopping.

Live.com Products Onebox on General Web Searches

Today I was surfing like normal and happened across a results page on Live.com that looked strangly similar to something I see often within Google’s search results, a Onebox for products. Live.com has been beefing up their search results, relevancy and UI lately and this move comes as no surprise to many in the industry, however I don’t think anyone expected to see things happen this quickly.

Comparison Engine Features & How Users Find Items:

Comparison shopping engines allow users to find, sort and compare items of interest and then direct them to the eRetailers or merchants that sell those items. Live.com Product Search and MSN Shopping have several useful comparison shopping features to assist users that are searching for products within either portal or site. How users find your items is important since there may be several competing businesses within a niche selling the same or similar products online. As mentioned above, users can sort and filter results in a number of ways including by price, seller rating, brand, relevance and more.

Use the corresponding numbers next to each feature as a referrence when viewing the screenshot below:

• (01) Large, fresh selection of products updated often.
• (02) Quality merchants and popular products.
• (03) Multiple views including grid (default), list with images or list without images.
• (04) Enhanced preview option on image hover for quick review.
• (05) Related terms refinement option to narrow results.
• (06) Brand refinement option to narrow results.
• (07) Seller refinement option to narrow results.
• (08) Low price refinement option to narrow results.
• (09) High price refinement option to narrow results.
• (10) Relevance refinement option to narrow results.
• (11) Products load quickly so shoppers don’t have to wait.
• (12) Results options for number of listings shown per page (default 10).
• (13) SafeSearch options to filter out explicit content.
• (14) Location options to identify default geographic location of the searcher.
• (15) Language options to limit searches based on spoken languages.

Adding Your Products To Live.com & MSN Shopping:

Adding your products to Live Product Search and MSN Shopping is very easy, especially if you already have an upload file that follows any of the accepted file formats (.txt or .xml). Live.com has created a special place called Live Product Uploads for merchants to upload items from an online catalog quickly and easily. Live Product Uploads is an account managment system that allows merchants to upload an entire catalog or one item at a time and manages the whole process including the catalog status, tracking, potential upload errors and important updates.

Get a Live ID or Login using an MSN passport, Hotmail.com or MSN.com email. From the Product Upload homepage simply click the “create an account” link to get a Live ID. Sign in with your Windows Live ID, if you do not have one, simply click “Sign up for Windows Live” and get one.

Visit Merchant Pre-Registration and fill out the required form fields to pre-register. To receive an invitation for the beta program you must fill out the form and click “Submit.” Once the form is sent Windows will validate your site and the authenticity of the request before sending the invitation, which also provides more detailed instructions on how to use Live.com Product Upload.

Provide contact and company information including your eCommerce store url. On the Product Upload registration page fill in the required contact and business information including a company name, country or region, postal code, web address or url and optionally your business description and phone number. Use the more information section for any additional notes and click “Accept” on the Windows Live Seller Agreement to complete the account activation.

Establish catalog settings and create a new catalog to upload to Live Product Search. On the catalogs tab click “create new” and fill in the required catalog setting including a title, the name of the upload file, the file type (.txt or .xml) and optionally a products category, tab delemiter (only applies to .txt files) and a catalog description. Once the settings are established click “Save” to continue to the upload.

Create a catalog file using one of Windows Live accepted file formats including .txt or .xml files. Catalog files describe your item offers and allow you to add attributes like price, images, model numbers, brand, item descriptions and seller information. This file needs to be created in one of the accepted formats and can include a number of required and optional attributes. Accepted file formats are .txt or .xml, but merchants who already list items on Google Base can use the same file for Live Product Upload.

To see specific formatting instructions and file structure examples visit the following.

• Creating .txt catalog upload files
• Creating .xml catalog upload files

Upload your catalog using Quick Upload HTTP for small files or FTP for larger files. One you have established your catalog settings and your catalog file is created in one of the supported formats you can choose from either HTTP or FTP to upload the catalog into Live Product Upload. HTTP method is typically used for small files with few item offers and FTP upload is the best method for large files with many item offers.

To see specifics for either file upload method visit the following:

• HTTP upload method
• FTP upload method

Once the catalog is published your items will be searchable within Live.com and MSN. Approximately 24 hours after you upload the catalog file Live.com will either approve or disapprove your upload depending on whether there were formatting errors and to make sure it follows their content guidelines. If the upload is approved you will see an published status in your Live Uploads Account. You can manually check to see if your products have been published to Live.com and that they are displaying correctly by searching Live.com Product Search (site: command is best if searching for offers from one domain).

To search for published offers from your Live.com Product Upload account use the following steps:

1. Login to Live.com Product Upload with your Live ID
2. From the Catalogs Tab, click “View Published Offers”
3. If you don’t see all your offers published try searching manually with site: command

If the upload fails you will get access to detailed error reporting features including troubleshooting help and answers to frequently asked questions so you can edit the file to follow the formatting guidelines. Common reasons for failure may include non-matching filenames or extensions and trying to upload a file that is already processing. Once you have made any recommended changes try your upload again.

Detailed Catalog Status & Error Reporting:

One of my favorite aspects of Live.com Product Upload accounts is the status tracking and icons that are shown through each step of the upload and catalog approval processes. Sellers with one or more catalogs can see the current status of each catalog and where it’s at in the process. The status icons on the Catalog Page will be grouped according to the catalog status.

• New : You have successfully created a catalog, but it has not yet been uploaded using either HTTP or FTP.
• Processing : You have successfully uploaded the catalog file and it is currently awaiting verification before it is published. Processing may last up to 36-48 hours before the catalog is published depending on the size and intensity of the file. You can’t edit or delete catalogs that are being processes. Other things Live looks during processing may include the formatting, the required fields and the appropriateness of the data in required and optional fields.
• All Published : Your catalog formatting, attributes and data has been verified and all of your product offers have been successfully published. Soon you will see your item offers on Live.com Product Search and MSN Shopping.
• Published w/ Errors : Your catalog has been verified and all of the product offers that passed verification have been published successfully. Any products that didn’t pass verification are reported as offers with errors or warnings.
• Rejected : The catalog you uploaded has not passed verification and will not be published successfully unless corrections are made. Rejection of your catalog could be due to formatting errors or the type of content within your data file. Review the errors or warnings, formatting requirements, data fields and content guidelines to make sure you follow them all.
• Expired : The catalog has been published and it exceeds the 30 day limit for uploads and requires a new upload using either HTTP or FTP. You should recieve an email notification 3 days before your catalog upload expires but you also have the choice to track the status through really simple syndication (RSS) or by logging into your Live account.

Live.com Product Upload shows detailed error reports when your catalog file format is not correct or doesn’t match the required upload attributes. Errors that occur throughout the entire catalog file will be displayed along with errors for individual product offers including the item attributes associated with your offers. Merchants may also get catalog upload errors or warnings if the content within their file, or one or more of the offers in the catalog, is found to be inappropriate, illegal, malicious or copyrighted material. These types of errors are more like alerts that are designed to warn merchant sellers and give them an opportunity to correct any errors for the next upload. COntinual uploading of this type of content may result in rejection of the catalog upload.

Catalog RSS Feed & Status Subscription:

There are currently several ways to subscribe to status updates for one or more catalogs in your Live.com Product Upload account. Each time the status of your uploaded catalog changes you automatically recieve an email notification that tells you the current status of each catalog in your account. One of the newest and most popular ways sellers can subscribe to recieve regular updates is through RSS subscription and an RSS feed reader. RSS, or really simple syndication, sends regular updates directly into your feed reader of choice so you never have to worry about checking the status emails or logging into your account to check each catalog(s) status. We recommend using Google Reader or a desktop feed reader like Google Desktop for RSS updates.

To subscribe via RSS use the following steps once you are logged in to your Product Upload account.

1. Look for the universal feed icon displayed in the lower left of your account pages.
2. Click on the “View RSS feed” link under the descriptive text and feed icon.
3. Copy the feed address from your browsers address bar exactly as it appears.
4. Paste the feed address into any RSS feed reader (desktop based readers are best).

Complete Support Docs, Help & User Feedback:

Live.com Product Upload offers several different avenues of support, documentation and help depending on the issues and errors encountered by individual merchant sellers during the catalog creation and upload processes. In addition to multiple forms of support they also enourage feedback from merchants who regularly use the Live.com Product Upload services, account and features.

You may aquire support or help for Product Uploads using one or more of the methods below.

• Use the detailed Help and FAQ section to search for support topics by keyword or phrase or by using the list of contents or questions on the left side of the open window.
• Use the Product Upload Support form to request help or give feedback directly to Windows Live Product Upload team.
• Submit feedback from each page in the Help and FAQ section by selecting an emotion icon () and typing in your feedback directly then clicking on “Submit.”
• Visit the Live Product Search team blog for updates to features, account services or any other news related to this Windows beta.
• Visit the Live Product Upload homepage for links to important sections, news or updates including additional support methods or feedback forms.
• Use eCommerce Optimization’s comparison shopping guides to find answers about Live Product Search and Uploads.

Additional Sources & External Links:

Invitation Request Form (Needed for beta users)

Live ID Sign Up Form (Needed to use Product Uploads)

Live.com Product Upload Beta (Information about the beta)

Live.com Product Upload Homepage (Get started here)

Live.com Product Search Blog (Get updates and info from Live)

MSN Shopping Insider (Blog dedicated to MSN Shopping)

Conclusion & Final Thoughts:

Live Product Search and Live Product Uploads may not be the newest or most popular comparison shopping service, however they certainly have done an excellent job of putting the tools in place to offer one of the largest, most relevant and easy to use interfaces offered by current comparison product engines. The only way shopping engines can become more popular and remain competitive is by offering great tools, numerous product offerings, several different major categories and by getting feedback from users. Live knows these rules and has taken the stpes necessary to implement many of them into their shopping engine. Since it’s release there have been many improvements and I expect them to stay around for quite awhile, especially if they continue to progress the way they have.

Don’t expect the same amounts of traffic from Live that you may get from places like Google Product Search, but certainly expect an increase in traffic and potential customers interested in the products you sell. If you can manage to get established within this newer shopping engine before it becomes more popular you will gain access to tons of potential buyers before your main competitors begin to list their product offers.