Comments on: Live.com Product Search & MSN Shopping Comparison Engines

By: Kyle

Kyle — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 18:52:46 +0000

Bing decided to discontinue this service!

“Thank you for your interest in the product upload beta. Regrettably, we are discontinuing this program.”

By: Richard V. Burckhardt

Richard V. Burckhardt — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 17:49:09 +0000

I can’t even get products to show up. I use a Google Base compatible feed which uploads successfully and is indicated as published. However, no products EVER show up live. All of our competitors seem to have no problem. When I asked Live Product Search support, I got run around in circles about how to create an account and feed (They use cut and paste answers). Finally, my support request was elevated, but all I got back was “Currently many factors are involved when searching for a particular product using the search engine. Unfortunately some of these factors are confidential and proprietary in nature so I will be unable to disclose those to you at this time” – another cut and paste answer.

I have to assume our competitors are paying them or that their products are showing up by virtue of some other shopping comparison feed (PPC).

Anyone else have this experience?

By: eCopt

eCopt — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 16:16:10 +0000

@ Guest – Yeah, they have really dropped the ball lately with their products search service. The blog hasn’t been posted on or updated since April 2007 and I haven’t seen any major developments with it since they rolled out the sorting and imagery features in April.

Keep in mind, it is a Beta, so there are no guarantees that it will always be up and running and that your products will always process without failure, however I think it is something they should keep working on.

Another issue I have with them is their character limit for product descriptions, its roughly 10,000 characters or something, sometimes very hard to keep it under, especially with very detailed product page descriptions.

Keep trying, whenever it has taken them a long time to process in the past, it’s usually working again shortly after. I agree they may be having issues with many feeds in their que.

By: Guest

Guest — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 22:41:47 +0000

I don’t think Live.com can handle all the request; my uploaded file has been in “Processing” status for 4 days (96 hours). Google product upload was a piece of cake (less than 12 hours). I hope Live.com Product Upload, can have this problem fix, soon would be nice to get some more exposure.

By: eCopt

eCopt — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 18:52:47 +0000

@ Steve – Any time, glad to be of assistance. I understand your frustration, having gone through it all myself when they first launched. When I got started there was hardly any documentation or reference while in beta. That’s part of the reason I created this post. One, it has all the info in one place with links and screenshots and two, it goes through the steps in order, just as you would after completing registration and sign up.

By: Steve

Steve — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 16:04:24 +0000

Thanks for the great write up. I’ve been trying to figure out Live & MSN and your article answered all my questions.

By: eCopt

eCopt — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 19:18:11 +0000

@ Gokhan – Yes, it’s horrible to see competition in places you cannot get to due to software or knowledge limitations. That’s why sharing accurate information and social communities are so important. We all help each other along the learning curve.

By: Gokhan

Gokhan — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 04:17:08 +0000

Great information. I was researching since long time how to publish my products in MSN shopping especially painful it was when I was seeing my competitors there…

By: eCopt

eCopt — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 20:15:45 +0000

@ Slippy – Thanks for the feedback and I hope you keep reading as we have much more in store for the future.

@ Janet – To see errors associated with a catalog file just click the name of your catalog and look for the number of errors it shows in the catalog file section under offers with errors. To see the specific errors just click error details and it should show you what to fix.

By: Janet

Janet — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 15:58:18 +0000

Hey Ecopt. I got my catalog on Live, now the only problem is my file has errors. How do I go about fixing them so it passes with flying colours?

By: slippy

slippy — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 20:54:45 +0000

Wow, thanks for the terrific information. I have a eSite that I am trying to get listed in MSN. Up until now I thought I had to join their paid listing service to get in, now I can do it for nothing. Great tips, I will keep reading.