Adding Custom Fields to Your Froogle Feed

Froogle Feed sends the required fields for generic products to Google Base. If you have specialized products, you can probably get a better ranking if you include additional fields such as the manufacturers product number. This article shows how to add custom fields to your Google Base feed.

The Customize Product Feed tab includes two fields for adding custom data to your feed: Custom Field Names and Custom Field Values Function. The later is where you enter the name of your custom function and the former is a comma separated list of field names. Click on the Help button at the top right corner of the Custom Product Feed tab for a more complete description.

Froogle Feed ships with a sample Custom Field Values Function in a file called CustomSample.vb. Follow these steps to use the sample:

1. Copy CustomSample.vb from the Froogle Feed installation directory to the root directory of your store (i.e. to the same directory with default.aspx and detail.aspx).
2. Compile your site by loading CompileSite.aspx in a browser or selecting Compile Site from the StoreFront menu in FrontPage or Dreamweaver. If you have the Ebay add-on installed, you will need to use the custom version of CompileSite.aspx that comes with that add-on.
3. Enter the following values on the Customize Product Feed tab:
   Custom Field Names: mpn, c:keywords:string
   Custom Field Values Function: StoreFront.StoreFront.CustomSample.GetValues
4. When you refresh the Sample Data, you will see two new fields in your feed called "mpn" and "c:keywords:string".

Once you have the sample working, it is a simple matter to change CustomSample.vb to add or remove your own custom fields.

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