{"id":45,"date":"2008-07-31T13:37:56","date_gmt":"2008-07-31T12:37:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.setfiremedia.com\/blog\/?p=45"},"modified":"2008-09-25T16:26:23","modified_gmt":"2008-09-25T15:26:23","slug":"introducing-the-new-froogle-performance-dashboard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.setfiremedia.com\/blog\/introducing-the-new-froogle-performance-dashboard","title":{"rendered":"Introducing the New Froogle Performance Dashboard"},"content":{"rendered":"

Google have finally released a new Froogle Performance Tool<\/strong> which shows a host of useful data about your Froogle impressions, clicks and feed items. You can find it by logging into your Google Base account and clicking on the new Performance <\/em>section.<\/p>\n

\"Optimise<\/p>\n

Google Product Search, or Froogle as it\u2019s far better known, is a price comparison site with a big difference \u2013 it\u2019s completely free. This makes is an attractive channel to reach your customers; all you need is a product feed.<\/p>\n

Like so many other digital marketers, I\u2019ve been waiting on this tool to optimise Google Product Search for ages \u2013 I\u2019d even gone as far as to previously develop a dirty Excel hack that queried Froogle data. The new froogle performance tool now provides all this data in a choice of slick graphs or CSV downloads.
\n<\/p>\n

Filters<\/h3>\n

Item Type<\/strong>
\nAllows you to select the Google Base feed to analyse.<\/p>\n

Froogle is just one part of Google Base (which also contains books, scholar, recipes, vehicles etc.) If you\u2019ve only got a Froogle feed then this isn\u2019t an selectable option, otherwise you\u2019ll need to choose Products <\/em>to view Froogle data.<\/p>\n

Target Country<\/strong>
\nIf you are submitting items to multiple countries, you have the option to filter by country.<\/p>\n

Destination<\/strong>
\nAllows you to select between Click <\/strong>data and Impression <\/strong>data<\/p>\n

Items Graph<\/h3>\n

This is a great way to see how many of your feed items are inactive compared to your total feed. Most large Google product feeds will have a few inactive items due to various reasons. We\u2019ll definitely write a post some time about how to minimise this and ensure your feed is firing on all cyclinders.<\/p>\n

The blue line shows your total amount of items in your feed, and the red line shows your active items. As you reduce errors on your feed items you\u2019ll see the lines get closer together.<\/p>\n

\"View<\/p>\n

Performance Graph<\/h3>\n

Anyone familiar with Google Analytics will feel right at home with these graphs. You can set the date range with either the Zoom <\/em>function or the familiar Google Analytics date sliders under the graphs. You can also hover your mouse over the graph to get specific values for a given day.<\/p>\n

Froogle Clicks<\/strong> (set the Destination drop-down menu to Search<\/em>)<\/p>\n

The graph shows you how many people clicked on your products along a timeline.<\/p>\n

Sharp dips<\/strong> are a good indication of broken feeds or competitor activity.
\n Gradual dips and rises<\/strong> are a good indication of seasonal demand or price competitiveness
\n Sharp rises<\/strong> are a good indication you are doing something right, or your competition have dropped out.<\/p>\n

\"Froogle<\/p>\n

Froogle Impressions <\/strong>(set the Destination drop-down menu to API<\/em>)<\/p>\n

This graph is as close to genuine ad impressions as you can get. It\u2019s actually how many times the Google API returned an item from your Froogle feed. This means the API impressions will probably include all automated queries run by scrapers and bots.<\/p>\n

For Google, publically releasing specific values of this kind of data is almost unheard of. However let\u2019s not look a $25 billion gift horse in the mouth \u2013 we can use this impression and click data to really optimise our Froogle feed, and monitor the changes both on-site (via web analytics) and now off-site (via the Froogle Performance Dashboard).<\/p>\n

\"Froogle<\/p>\n

Performance Details Download<\/h3>\n

If you\u2019re a data-head like me, you can download a CSV of all your performance data and load it into Excel (or your favourite spreadsheet program) for even more fun.<\/p>\n

A quick warning about the Froogle CSV data download however\u2026<\/p>\n

View details about your content and its performance as an average of the last 7 days. Select an item type or data feed to download a report containing the daily metrics for the 1,000 most-clicked items.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You can choose to download by data feed or by Google Base product type (you\u2019ll want Products <\/em>for Froogle). When you view the report in Excel you\u2019ll notice alternating columns for clicks and API impressions \u2013 it\u2019s a little difficult to read at first until you get used to it.<\/p>\n

The reports are a little buggy at the moment (sometimes showing clicks but zero impressions) and I\u2019ve emailed Google hoping to get some feedback on this issue which I\u2019ll post later \u2013 remember that it\u2019s a new release and the Google Base team will be treating it as a beta release in true Google style.<\/p>\n

How can this optimise your Froogle feed?<\/h3>\n

Here\u2019s just a few ways to improve your product feed with the new Froogle Performance Dashboard:<\/p>\n

Use the Items Graph to monitor and reduce wasted feed items<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Regularly eyeball the Froogle clicks on the Performance Graph to spot indications of competitor activity<\/strong> and price sensitivity issues.<\/p>\n

Start collecting Froogle click data now so that next year you have historical seasonal performance<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Keep informed of your Froogle impressions to optimise your feed titles and descriptions<\/strong> for better visibility.<\/p>\n

I love Froogle. Optimising natural search campaigns is my bread and butter, however there\u2019s always the occupational frustration that SEO usually doesn\u2019t produce instant results. Every marketer enjoys seeing immediate growth and revenue from their work \u2013 both for their clients and for themselves \u2013 and Froogle is a great platform to get some quick wins for everyone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Google have finally released a new Froogle Performance Tool which shows a host of useful data about your Froogle impressions, clicks and feed items. You can find it by logging into your Google Base account and clicking on the new Performance section. Google Product Search, or Froogle as it\u2019s far better known, is a price […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[16],"tags":[22,21,6],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.setfiremedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.setfiremedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.setfiremedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.setfiremedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.setfiremedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.setfiremedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.setfiremedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.setfiremedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.setfiremedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}