Listing your 1000 Markets Items in Google Base (an unofficial guide)

Google maintains a huge list of products in its Google Base system. These products are fully searchable and sometimes even appear among regular Google searches. You can upload products to Google Base at no charge - you just need a free Google account - and the listings are linked directly to your own item listing.

1000 Markets provides sellers with an easy way to format their items for Google's product listings in Google Base. Setting up the process takes a little fiddling with settings, but once it is in place, any changes in your shops can be automatically sent to Google Base. You won't have to update it when you sell an item or add a new listing - it will happen automatically. Free and low maintenance - the perfect combination.

Nota Bene If you already have a googlebase feed set up for another site, like Etsy, you cannot add your 1000 Markets feed using the same Google account. You will either need to choose one or the other, or set up a separate Google account for each. Also, 1000 Markets has not officially "released" the shop item feed. They may make changes that might require adjustments in the future.

1. If you haven't already, Sign up for Google Base

2. From the Google Base starting page, click on the Data Feed link inside the box at the right:

3. At the top of the page, select the Settings tab. Fill out the top portion of the page like this:

- in the Display Name field, type your shop name

- in the Description field type a short description of your shop or products

- in the Website URL field, type the address of your shop page. Important: This should be the "raw" URL that ends in your user number.

With this complete, you can also indicate your time one and e-mail preferences, scroll to the bottom of the page and click the Save Changes button.

4. Next, click the My Items tab and then the Data Feeds link, then the New Data Feed button.

5. You are now on the page to register your feed. There are three steps:

Step 1 - Target Country: United States

Step 2 - Item Type: Products and then Type of Feed: googlebase

Step 3 - Data Feed File Name: Type an .xml file name such as 1Klistings.xml

Click the Register Data Feed button at the bottom of the page.

6. You should now see your feed file name in your list of Data Feeds. Click on the edit link next to the name.

7. Change the settings so they match the ones in the picture below. The encoding should be set to UTF-8. Save Changes

8. Almost done! Next select the create link next to the Schedule section in your data feed list.

9. Select an upload schedule. You can choose daily, weekly or monthly. For now, choose daily and set the time to the nearest hour. Be sure your time zone matches.

In the URL field, put the address of your RSS feed. This address will have this form:

http://www.1000markets.com/users/PUT_YOUR_USERNAME_HERE/products?format=rss

Click the Schedule button.

OK! Now you wait until the time you set for Google to fetch your feed and go back and check. It may take several minutes after the scheduled time for the feed to appear, so be patient. Once it does, you will see a green Success indicator in your list of data feeds. If your upload fails, double check all the settings above and try again. Google can be finicky.