Click here to close this tab and return to the app.

Support  →  Topics  → 

Turbify (Yahoo) Store Help

Yahoo Store product name/title contains path/category prefix

You need to turn off the compound-name variable in your Yahoo Store's Store Properties.

  1. Log into your Yahoo Store Manager and go to Store Editor
  2. Click Contents in the tool bar
  3. Click Variables in the tool bar
  4. Expand the Store Properties section
  5. Set Compound-name to No
  6. Click the Update button and then publish your store
Does your system support legacy Yahoo stores?

Yes, we fully support legacy stores. Just supply the objinfo.xml URL and leave the catalog.xml field blank when you set up your feed. Our system even supports a workaround so that you can create custom attributes for your legacy store.

How do I bulk delete items via the Yahoo Store Catalog Manager?

If you do not have that many items to delete, you can delete them from Catalog Manager directly. See How do I delete an item in Catalog Manager?.

Otherwise, download your catalog CSV file from Yahoo, then change the Path of the items you want to delete to a path like 'TODELETE'. Then, upload the file and commit. Now, you can just navigate to the 'TODELETE' section in the Store Editor, and delete it. All the items in that section will also be deleted. See Uploading and Downloading Items via Catalog Manager for more information.

See this page for more information on deleting sections and all the items in them: Deleting a Page in the Store Editor.

For additional support on this topic, please contact Yahoo Store Merchant Support directly.

Yahoo Store Design and RTML Development Companies

We specialize in data feeds, so we do not offer Yahoo Store design services or RTML template development.

We have had clients who have worked with the companies listed below. We do not endorse any of these companies, but provide this list for your reference only.

  • FastPivot - a high-end Yahoo Store design company
  • YTimes - advanced RTML development for Yahoo Store
  • Nakamoa - Yahoo Store RTML and add-ons

You can also consult the Aabaco Merchant Solutions Developer Network website, which has a listing of many design companies.

If you require Magento store development services, consider these providers:

Product Data Entry and Amazon Listing Service Providers

If you need help adding product listings or product data to your website or onto Ebay, Amazon, Alibaba, etc., then consider the following providers:

Wrong number of fields detected (x instead y)

Your Yahoo Store might give you a message that says, "WARNING: Wrong number of fields detected(6 instead 7)" when you upload a CSV file from Excel into your Yahoo Store Editor or Catalog Manager via Database Upload.

This is an Excel problem. Sometimes, Excel does not put trailing commas if the last few fields in a row are blank. In that case, Yahoo thinks the field is missing. As a workaround, just rearrange the columns so that a column with full data is the right-most column. For example, you can just move the 'id' column to the end.

An example is below.

Tue May 1 10:40:10 2011
Database upload	default-table Uploaded
Field names=(:ID :MANUFACTURER-PART-NUMBER :BRAND :GOOGLE-PRODUCT-TYPE
:UPC :NAME :MANUFACTURER)
600 records are loaded for add.

Warnings and Errors
Record	Detail
16 [Show]	WARNING: Wrong number of fields detected(6 instead 7)
17 [Show]	WARNING: Wrong number of fields detected(6 instead 7)
18 [Show]	WARNING: Wrong number of fields detected(6 instead 7)
19 [Show]	WARNING: Wrong number of fields detected(6 instead 7)
20 [Show]	WARNING: Wrong number of fields detected(6 instead 7)
"Enabled, but do not syndicate" option in Yahoo Store

Under Promote > Search Engines in your Yahoo Store Manager, you will find links to two store export files, objinfo.xml and objinfo.xml, that contain all the data in your store catalog. (Legacy stores only have objinfo.xml.) Each store export file has three settings, Enabled, Enabled, but do not syndicate, and Disabled. This article explains the definition of each option.

Disabled
This means the store export files will not be available for download from your store. If someone tries to access the URLs, the server will return an error.
Enabled
This means the store export files will be available for download by anyone from your Yahoo Store. Furthermore, Yahoo will submit an automatic data feed to their partner search engine, PriceGrabber. (You would still need a paid PriceGrabber account to actually receive clicks.) We are not aware of them submitting to any other search engine automatically.
Enabled, but do not syndicate
This also means the store export files will be available for download by anyone from your Yahoo Store. However, Yahoo will not automatically submit the files to PriceGrabber.

We recommend our customers to use the Enabled, but do not syndicate setting because the automatic feed from Yahoo to Pricegrabber interferes with the PriceGrabber data feed submitted from our system. Yahoo's automatic feed to Pricegrabber is generally not reliable or customizable, so many merchants prefer to use our data feed service to submit to them.

Power Tips for Yahoo Store Merchants

Videos on how to use Catalog Manager

They say a picture is worth a 1,000 words, so certainly, a video could be worth 10,000. Our friends over at 1Choice4YourStore have put together some awesome Yahoo Store Help Videos on how to make the most of the Database Upload feature of the Yahoo Store Catalog Manager. Spend a couple hours watching these videos and it could save you days of tedious work in the Store Editor!

iMacros Add-on for Firefox

You can automate your busy-work with the iMacros Add-on for Firefox. After installing it, press F8 to see sample macros and play/record buttons in a side-bar. Then, click Record to record your actions. When you're done recording, click the Play button to play back your actions. It will save you a lot of time on some repetitious tasks!. For example, you can set up automatic addition of property fields to Yahoo Legacy store items.

Tip: To work with the Yahoo Store Editor, switch the mode from 'html tag' to 'x/y' before recording. After recording your actions, delete the GOTO URL line and then replace the form and attr lines with the '*' symbol. You may have to create multiple macros depending on the position of the buttons on various types of pages, e.g. pages with multiple products per page vs. pages with a single item.

How do I add custom fields to my Yahoo Store?

You can easily add custom fields to your Yahoo Store catalog in order populate item-specific values. Check out the excellent video by 1choice4yourstore, Yahoo Store Database Uploads Video Tutorial, for a helpful overview. You can also refer to the Adding, editing, and removing attributes from tables instructions and contact Yahoo Store technical support for further assistance.

How to Add a Custom Attribute

  1. Log into your Yahoo Store Manager
  2. Go to Catalog Manager > Products tab > Manage Tables
  3. Select your product table using the Manage table drop-down menu.
  4. Click the Add New Attributes link to the far right of the the Custom Attributes heading.
  5. In the Add New Attribute dialog box, enter the following:
    • Attribute Name: my-custom-field
    • Format: text
    • Leave the Required checkbox unchecked.
    • Leave the Default Value field blank.
    • Leave the Description field blank.
  6. Click Add
  7. If you get an error like, 2000 : Invalid attribute name. 'upc' is a reserved attribute name, then click the Add New Attributes link to the far right of the the Shopping Attributes heading instead. You will be able to check the fields you want to add. Generally, do not make them required and do not enter any default value.

Suggested Fields to Add

The fields below can be added as 'Shopping Fields' to the table in Yahoo Store Catalog Manager. The fields in bold are pre-configured in our Google feeds.

  • product-url
  • manufacturer
  • yshopping-category
  • merchant-category
  • brand
  • upc
  • manufacturer-part-number
  • condition
  • ypath
  • color
  • yahoo-shopping-category
  • ean
  • promo-text
  • classification
  • in-yshopping
  • model-number
  • gender
  • age-range
  • age-group
  • size
  • style-number
  • msrp
  • medium
  • isbn
  • style

We recommend adding the following custom fields in the 'Custom Fields' section of the table, when applicable:

  • google-product-category
  • google-shipping
  • google-tax
  • google-online-only
  • google-condition

Populating the Fields

After adding the custom fields, use the Yahoo links below for instructions on how populate the data using Excel or OpenOffice Calc.

Legacy Yahoo Store RTML Template to Export Custom Attributes as CSV

To support legacy stores, we can now install a special template in your Yahoo Store that can export your custom item attributes or properties, such as UPC, brand/manufacturer, and manufacturer part number (MPN). The template exports the data in CSV/Excel format, which is picked up by our system whenever a data feed is generated. The data can be mapped to any data feed attributes with a Custom Feed. The template installation costs $99. Please follow the instructions below to get started.

  1. Log into your Yahoo Store Manager, and click the Access link under the Site Settings section, (found on the right-most column of the page.)
  2. Give Store Editor access to support email address.
  3. Submit a request using this link: Request Legacy Yahoo Store RTML Installation - $99.00
  4. Send us an email with the names of the custom attributes that you want exported.

Attributes

The attributes to add are listed below. If you do not use an attribute or the value is always the same, then there is no need to add it.

brand (required)
mpn (required)
upc (required - leave blank if not available)
google-product-category (if other than default value defined in feed)
google-condition (can be 'new', 'used', or 'refurbished' only)
google-availability
size, color, gender, age-group (see apparel requirements)
uc-category (optional, for Unbound Commerce)
pg-category (optional, for Pricegrabber)

Objects and Types in Yahoo Store Editor

When you create an item, it is assigned a "type" by the Yahoo Store. The "type" defines the properties of the item, such as name, caption, UPC, brand, etc.

The Yahoo Store comes with a number of built-in types with standard properties. You are not able to add properties to the built-in types, so it is better to create a custom type based on the built-in type. If you have not already, we recommend that you copy the "item." type to create a new custom type called "c-item".

On the "c-item" type, you can add properties, and these will be applied to all items based on that type. If your items are based on the default "item." type, then to add properties, you must add them to each item individually. You can do that quickly by using the iMacros add-on for Firefox, or use an automatic Yahoo Store property addition service.

You can not delete or rename properties added to a custom type, so add these carefully. It is not possible to change the 'type' of an item after it has been added. The item must be saved offline, deleted, and then added back.

In the "Config" section of your Store Editor, you can set the default "type" for new items to the "c-item" type that you created.

Set up your "c-item" type with the properties required by the search engines, like "upc", "mpn", "brand", "google-condition", etc. Refer to the list of suggested fields to add for a complete list.

Our template will be able to export the properties assigned to your items, whether they were added via a property override or via the "type", as long as they are named consistently in each item.

Workaround

If the data you are adding to your store does not appear in your data feed, then you may need to use this workaround. Use the Yahoo Store Editor 'Find' button to look for the 'aten-software-feed' item, click 'Edit' for it, and then click 'Update'. Once you do that, you can publish as usual. This will ensure that the Yahoo Store updates that page, and that our system is able to retrieve all the latest data.

How do I add custom fields to a legacy Yahoo store?

Please see here for a new, easier alternative to the method described below:
Legacy Yahoo Store RTML Template to Export Custom Attributes as CSV or Excel

Legacy Yahoo stores do not support the catalog.xml Store Export file that would contain extended product attributes. We can map 'manufacturer-part-number' (MPN) to your Yahoo Product ID or Code field if that works. For 'brand', we can set the default value equal to your store name if it applies to all your products. Otherwise, you can embed product-specific values for these attributes in your product captions or descriptions as follows:


<!--
<brand>Performance Golf</brand>
<upc>012345678912</upc>
<mpn>100XYZ</mpn>
<gpcategory>Sporting Goods &gt; Indoor Games 
     &gt; Bowling &gt; Bowling Gloves</gpcategory>
-->

The fields shown above are the recommended minimum, but you can add or remove fields as needed. For example, if your MPNs are in your Code field, brand is your store name, and product type is the same for all products, then you can add the UPC as follows:


<!--  <upc>012345678912</upc>  -->

For any products with no tags, or with missing values in the tags, our system will just leave the value blank in the feed. Therefore, you can add data over time and it will be automatically picked up in the feed as it is made available.

The information in the made-up HTML tags is commented out and will not be visible in your actual product pages, but you could use style sheets and display the information too. After you populate the data in your descriptions, you must contact us and we can set up your feed to extract the data.

Your feed will have to be upgraded to a Custom feed to support this technique.

For best results, we recommend adding a category field for each shopping engine. We can configure each feed to use the appropriate data. For the other fields like <manufacturer> and <mpn>, we can use the same data for every feed, so you do not need to make a different one for each shopping engine.

Not all the items need to have the embedded attribute values. We can define default values for those items with a value missing.

If product attributes are already in your descriptions in a consistent, standardized format, we can usually write custom fields to extract the existing attribute values.

Click the following link for more information on configuring brand, MPN, and UPC.

Below is a more extensive example of the attributes you can provide using this technique. The tags are listed in order by our estimation of importance to Google.


<!--
<brand>Performance Golf</brand>
<upc>0123456789</upc>
<mpn>100XYZ</mpn>

<gpcategory>Sporting Goods &gt; Indoor Games 
     &gt; Bowling &gt; Bowling Gloves</gpcategory>


<googleshipping>US:::0.00</googleshipping>
<googletax>US:CA:8.25:y</googletax>

<agegroup>adult</agegroup>
<gender>unisex</gender>
<color>white</color>
<size>Small</size>
<material>leather</material>
<pattern>solid</pattern>
-->
Yahoo Store Corrupt Caption in objinfo.xml Store Export

Yahoo Store has an known bug where the 'caption' field in the objinfo.xml store export file is occasionally corrupted. The captions are truncated and mismatched after a certain point in the file, resulting in wrong product descriptions for most of the products.

Our system uses the captions from the catalog.xml, if available, which are not corrupted. Unfortunately, for legacy stores, our system relies on the captions in the objinfo.xml, and this therefore causes data feed corruption. The corruption occurs rather infrequently.

We have been contacting Yahoo regarding this for many months with no resolution. We have implemented retry logic to attempt to detect the corruption, but it is not 100% reliable.

We have an open support ticket Yahoo tech support and they say they are working on a fix.

How do I find an item by ID in my Yahoo Store?
  1. Log into your Yahoo Store.
  2. Go to the Store Editor.
  3. Click red arrow on the far right on the Store Editor Toolbar to switch it to Advanced mode.
  4. Click the Controls button in the Store Editor Toolbar.
  5. Under Store Editor Setting, change the Show Find Button setting to Yes.
  6. Click Update.

You will now have a Find button on your Store Editor Toolbar that will let you find items by typing in their product ID. This is helpful for quickly finding specific items, such as discontinued items or items with missing information.

Other Yahoo Store Editor Search Methods

You can also find the item by looking through the Contents, but this can be time-consuming.

On the Controls page, there is also a Search function that allows you to search your entire store by Code, Name, Caption, Abstract, Contents, Headline, or Ship-weight. The search option can be 'exact match', 'is empty', 'is non-empty', or 'contains'. For details, refer to the Yahoo Store Editor Variables Guide.

Error images (all red square images) in Turbify (Yahoo) Store feeds

Occasionally, you may find some of the images in our feeds look like a small, all-red square, with image URL http://store1.turbifycdn.com/Img/error-img.gif. The Turbiy Store error image is displayed below:

Turbify (Yahoo) Store Error Image - Red Square

This occurs when the image is too large. Although the store editor and store will show the image correctly, the error image will show in the store XML exports.

To resolve the issue, re-upload the image for the item into your Yahoo Store via the Turbify Store Editor, and re-publish. The image must meet all of these requirements:

  • Height is less than or equal to 2,000 pixels
  • Width is less than or equal to 2,000 pixels
  • Total pixels (Height * Width) is less than or equal to 2,000,000 pixels (Note: A 2,000 * 2,000 image is 4,000,000 total pixels, which exceeds this limit.)
  • The image file size must be less than 2 Megabytes

Go to Manage Feed > Validation Report to find all the error images in your feed.

Alternatively, download your feed file and open it in Excel. Then sort by the image URL column and look for any images with the above error-img.gif URL.

Can I include external inventory data into my data feed?

Some Yahoo Stores track their inventory or stock status in an external database, which stores the product code/ID and inventory count for each product. For these stores, we have the capability to read that data and include it in your data feed. This allows you to set the quantity attribute with accurate data, or set the availability attribute to out of stock. Typically, we just add a filter to remove the out of stock items from the feed, i.e. where quantity on hand is zero or less.

We can integrate with the following inventory tracking systems:

This feature requires a Custom data feed. Please let us know where your inventory database is located, and we can give you a quote for the setup.

The inventory is fetched every time your feed is refreshed or resubmitted, ensuring accurate stock data. We can set up your feed to run more frequently than once per day if desired, or to a customized schedule.

Note: Non-orderable and zero-priced items are not imported into our system, so there is no need to filter those items.

Do you have code/specifications to create the Yahoo Store Export file?

Use the information below to generate a Yahoo Store export file in XML format from your product database. This XML file can be plugged directly into our system.

There are two Yahoo store product export files:

  • http://www.yoursite.com/objinfo.xml
  • http://www.yoursite.com/catalog.xml

Here is an important note from the objinfo.xml files:

"Note that although the native encoding of this store's content is iso-8859-1, all the text in this XML export format has been converted to UTF-8"

We suggest sticking to UTF-8; our system uses that too.

You should set the published date in the XML tag:
<Published timestamp="1228928138"/>
and also in the 'Last-Modified' header of the HTTP request. (Our system uses the latter for caching purposes.) If it is not easy to calculate the timestamp, just set it to the current time. All the other elements in the settings section are not needed for our system.

Here are the links to the XML Document Type Definitions (DTD):

You do not need to implement every possible field. Our system will work even if just the main ones are implemented, like title, url, image, price, and description. Path is a bit tricky, and can be left out. The catalog.xml file is entirely optional, but should be implemented in order to get all the attributes into Google and maintain ranking.

Sample code to add the 'Last Modified' HTTP header is below.

$lastModified = time();
// OR SOMETHING LIKE $lastModified = "SELECT MAX(DateModified) FROM Product";

$gmdate_mod = gmdate('D, d M Y H:i:s', $lastModified) . ' GMT';
$expiresDate = gmdate('D, d M Y H:i:s', time() + 3600) . ' GMT';
header("Expires: $expiresDate");
header("Last-Modified: $gmdate_mod");
header("Cache-Control: max-age=3600, private");

Note that in the objinfo.xml file, 'Description' is actually the title, and 'Caption' is actually the long description.

We recommend to flush output as it is generated. Our system has a built-in timeout if a page does not respond for a long time, so the script might not work for a larger store unless it sends the data continuously rather than buffering it before sending it. Your script might also run into memory limits if it is being buffered.

How to grant access to your Turbify (Yahoo) Store Catalog API
  1. Log into Turbify: My Services (formerly Yahoo Small Business) as an Admin
  2. Click on Store to go to your Store Manager
  3. Click Real-Time Links
  4. Click API Settings
  5. Click the Add New Partner button
  6. Enter this Partner ID:   ypa-005115307017
  7. Check the box for Catalog API
  8. Click the Next button
  9. Click the Accept button

Turbify will send us an automated email with the API token.

The API access has to be manually renewed when it expires.

Reference: Turbify Merchant Solutions API Documentation

What is the 'Daily Plus' Update Frequency option?

The ‘Daily Plus’ Update Frequency option is a feed setting that automatically uploads your latest product listings to the shopping engine within a short time (about 1 hr) of your Yahoo Store being published. It submits your feed a minimum of once per day, even if you do not publish your store.

This free feature enables you to meet Google's new high-quality data requirements and provide an excellent shopping experience to your shoppers. Shopping.com also recently announced a capability to accept more frequent data feed submissions.

Instructions

  1. Log into My Account
  2. Click Manage for your Google feed
  3. Click Modify Settings
  4. Select the Daily Plus Update Frequency
  5. Click the Update button to save your settings

Additional Information

Your feed will be submitted a minimum of once per day even if you do not make any changes in your Yahoo Store.

This option is currently only available for Yahoo Stores. It is also restricted to shopping engines that prefer/allow multiple updates per day, namely, Google Shopping and Shopping.com. Feeds will not be submitted if you have no credit balance, or if there are outstanding tasks for the feed.

Your feed will be automatically resubmitted (within about 1 hr) after you change field definitions on the Define Fields page for your feed. If you are testing changes, make sure to set your feed's update frequency to Never to temporarily pause the submissions.

We recommend enabling this option for all feeds, unless your product listings change independently of your Yahoo Store Publish function. For instance, this may occur if you have an external inventory status database. Contact us if you need scheduled submissions more often than Daily, e.g. every four hours.

As per our terms of service, submissions are made on a best effort basis, and no guarantee or warranty is made as to timeliness of submissions.

Catalog Field Instructions for Yahoo Store Options

Catalog fields can output the first option value or all option values (comma-separated) into the feed. This is supported for Yahoo Stores only at this time.

First Option Value

Example Field Name:

{option-first-value:Color}

To output the first value from a specified option, enter the value displayed above into the Field Name setting. Replace the word Color with the exact name of the desired option. The name is case-sensitive. In this example, if you have an option named "Color" with values "Red", "Green", and "Blue", the value "Red" would be returned.

All Option Values for a Single Option

Example Field Name:

{option-single:Size}

To output all the values of the specified option, enter the value displayed above into the Field Name setting. Replace the word Size with the exact name of the desired option. The name is case-sensitive.

Values will be comma-separated. For Google feeds and Custom feeds, commas will be stripped if there are more than 10 values.

Can I backup, download, or export all my Yahoo store images?

Please use the following instructions to download, backup, or export all your Yahoo Store images to your computer.

First, configure one of your data feeds, preferably your Google Shopping feed.

  1. Go to My Account
  2. Click Manage for your Google Shopping feed to get to the Manage Feed page.
  3. Click Advanced Settings
  4. Set Image Hosting to Enabled.
  5. Wait about 10-15 minutes for your image hosting data to be loaded.

Next, prepare a folder and download the images.

  1. Create a new folder on your computer, e.g. images.
  2. Open the URL –
    http://ih.atensoftware.com/ 12345/download-images
    – in your web browser. Replace 12345 with your FeedId, which can be found in your browser's address bar when you click on the Manage Feed page.
  3. Use your browser's File > Save As function to save the file as download-images.bat to your images folder.
  4. Download wget.exe and save this file also in the images folder. This program is a free download tool for Windows.
  5. Double-click the download-images.bat file, and the images will begin downloading.
  6. If you receive a security warning, just click Run.
  7. When you are done downloading the images, go back to Manage Feed > Advanced Settings, and set Image Hosting to Disabled.

Caveats and Notes

  • This will only download the primary image for items that are marked orderable and have a non-zero price.
  • If you add or remove products, you have to download and run the latest version of the download-images.bat batch file.
  • You must be using a computer with the Windows operating system.
  • The batch file and wget.exe must be in the same directory. You can also copy wget.exe to your c:\windows\command folder, to make it globally available on your computer.
  • You can stop and restart the batch file, and it will pick up where it left off. It will not re-download images if they already exist and they are up to date.
How do I define categories for Unbound Commerce feeds?

To set up your categories for UnboundCommerce mobile commerce data feeds, please use the examples below.

DESCRIPTION                     :   SAMPLE CATEGORY
Top-Level Category              :   Nike Shoes
Category and Sub-category       :   Shoes > Nike
Category and Sub-categories     :   Shoes > Nike > Slip-on
Multiple Categories             :   Nike Shoes|Running Shoes
Multiple Categories (example 2) :   Brands > Nike|Types > Running

Tips

  • Use the '>' greater-than character to separate category levels.
  • Use the '|' pipe character to separate multiple categories.
  • Keep category names short to conserve space on the mobile screen.

Legacy Stores

If you have a legacy store, you can embed the category information in an HTML comment inside the Caption field of each product. Add the code shown below to the bottom of every Caption, and change the category as appropriate.

<!--
<uc-category>Brands &gt; Nike|Types &gt; Running</uc-category>
-->

Remember to replace the '>' greater-than character with '&gt;' to ensure that the HTML code remains valid. For more information, see How do I add custom attributes to a legacy Yahoo store?

Google Feed Warning: Value too long in attribute: id

Google limits the 'id' attribute to 50 characters. This took effect on September 30th, 2014.

Under Manage Feed > Google Validation Report, you will see an error for the items with 'id' over fifty characters.

This problem primarily affects Yahoo Stores. Here are various options for resolving this issue.

The best option is for us to convert your long IDs to a short, unique, hash code in your feed. We can enable this option upon request.

One option is to simply filter the items with errors out of the feed.

Firstly, truncating the IDs does not work, because it could result in duplicate IDs.

For Yahoo Stores, another solution is to use the 'code' field as the ID instead of the product ID. You can use the Manage Feed > Analyze Source Data to view an analysis of your 'code' field. If it contains no duplicates or values over 50 characters, then it can be simply configured as the field name on the Manage Feed > Define Fields > Edit 'id' page. For other store platforms, you could select another suitable field with unique, short value, like 'entity_id' or 'productcode'.

A hybrid option might be to truncate the ID and append a unique code, but then this derived ID might change over time, and that may cause problems for reporting. We do not offer this option.

A final option may be for you to change the ID of the item in your store. We may offer one or more of the other options as a temporary fix, or if you have too many items to fix.

How to Change a Yahoo Store Product ID

Yahoo provides no mechanism to allow you to change the ID of an item.

You must create a new item with the new ID, copy over the product data and images from the old item to the new item manually, and then delete the old item. At the same time, you should create 301 redirects from the old product URLs to the new product URLs. This ensures that inbound links do not get broken and you do not lose any organic ranking in search engines.

You may be able to change the IDs in a batch. First, download a CSV file of your products with long IDs from Catalog Manager. Then, change the IDs and upload the file back to create the new items. Next, download the images for the old items and save them with the ID of the new item. You can use multiple image upload to upload the images into the new item. We do not provide support for Yahoo Store, so please contact Yahoo Support for more information. You can also use the links below as a starting point:

Yahoo Small Business Spinning Off; Re-platforming Advice

The information below is posted with permission from Istvan Siposs, long-time Yahoo Store Developer. It was send in a February 23, 2015 YTimes email newsletter.

Lately, a lot of things have been happening around Yahoo! Small Business, and by now most, if not all of you have probably heard at least some of it. I've been getting emails and phone calls from worried merchants who, understandably, are worried and uncertain about what the future holds for their online stores. While an official communication from Yahoo is still forthcoming, I thought I'd go ahead and share with you what has been made public, what I know, and my take regarding the situation.

Starting with Yahoo! Stores (or "Yahoo Store 2.0"), you may or may not have heard that about a year ago Yahoo started building a brand new e-commerce platform. I was part of a select number of developers who worked with the new platform from the beginning, and helped develop the "themes" new Yahoo Stores customers can choose from when signing up with the new platform. This new platform has been available to the general public for some time (maybe a couple of months or so?). The new system is very different from, and not compatible with the editor-based system your store is on. Although available to the general public, the new system still has a lot of features planned but not yet done, and admittedly in its current form it is aimed at small scale stores rather than larger enterprises most of you are running.

Then, very recently came the announcement that Yahoo! Small Business is going to be spun off Yahoo! as a completely separate, independent company. This development had to do with the fact that Yahoo! is a major shareholder of Alibaba, and because of the Alibaba IPO they were going to be slapped with a big (huge) tax bill unless they could somehow get rid of a bunch of Alibaba shares. The immediate flip-side of this is that this new (yet to be named) company will be the most well funded "startup" in History. I put "startup" in quotes, because of course it is far from being a startup. The "new" company will come with a seasoned team of professionals, plus the technical background of the Yahoo! e-commerce platform. Not being part of a huge corporation such as Yahoo! may actually be an advantage in that the new company will be free to concentrate on what they know best: e-commerce. By the way, as you can imagine, the formation of the new company will not take place in a matter of days or weeks; it is going to be a process lasting most likely several months.

So where do all these developments leave you and your current Yahoo! Store? Here are the facts I know:

  • The new platform is moving forward, but is not yet up to par with the current system. - The current system is not going to be shut down.
  • No current Yahoo! Store will be forced to switch to the new system. Since the viability of the company depends in no small part on the existing merchants, it really means that you can continue running your business as usual, investing in new development and all, knowing that the platform you are on will not be pulled from under your business. However, I know that some of you are entertaining the idea of moving to a different platform, and others will be courted by different platforms to switch and take your business elsewhere. If you are considering re-platforming, you should keep the following in mind:
  • Replatforming is expensive. Contrary to what you may hear, unless you have a cookie-cutter online store, moving it to a totally different platform will probably involve a new design (an existing "skin" can never be transferred from one platform to a different one), a brand new implementation, plus migrating your data (which, granted, some of the other platforms make it easy for you.)
  • Since the new Yahoo system is not compatible with the current Yahoo store system, switching from the current (RTML-based) system to the new 2.0 system is the same as re-platforming (to a third party system.)
  • It's very nearly impossible to replatform and expect your SEO to remain exactly the same.
  • If your main reason to replatform is because "the other guys" said your SEO will immediately be better, it is not true. One platform is not inherently better for SEO than another. Your web site's SEO is only as good as your content.
  • ... and along the same line, when you hear someone say that Yahoo Store is bad for SEO, that's not true either. This platform has more Internet Retailer Top 500 businesses than any other.
  • If you want to replatform because the other platform is mobile-friendly out of the box, that's probably not entirely true either (and as a matter a fact, it is not entirely true with the new Yahoo! 2.0 platform either.) You can have a mobile-friendly "canned" template, but it will not be unique to your business. If you want a custom designed web site, there is work going into making it mobile-friendly.
  • And, related to this last point, the current Yahoo! Store platform does allow mobile-friendly web sites. Email me for examples if you are interested.
  • Lastly, as tempting as it may seem to cure any number of perceived ills you are experiencing by jumping to another platform, you will still be faced with needing some level of custom design, custom development and consulting services, preferably from a trusted, experienced e-commerce solutions provider, a role that Y-Times continues to fulfill.

This may be a lot to absorb especially if you haven't been up to speed on the recent Yahoo! Small business developments. Feel free to email me or call, or contact your Yahoo! account representative if you need more information.

Istvan Siposs
Y-Times Publications, LLC.
www.ytimes.com
February 23, 2015 Email Newsletter

Matching Yahoo UPS Ground Shipping Rates to Google Shipping Rates

In Yahoo Store Shipping Settings, found under Store Manager > Shipping Manager > Ship Rates, it is possible to set up a UPS Ground Carrier-Calculated rate in addition to a Percentage of order total amount. The two amounts are combined to compute the final shipping charge for an order.

In Google Merchant Center Shipping Settings, it is NOT possible to set up a carrier rate and add a percent of order total to it. To solve this problem of adding multiple rates together in Google Shipping Settings, read on.

As a workaround, you can create multiple carrier rates for each order price level. For example, if you charge the UPS Ground carrier rate plus 5% of the order total, then you create the following rate:

  • Rate Name: UPS Ground $0.01-$20
  • Rate Type: Carrier Rate
  • Service: UPS Ground
  • Fixed Markup: $1.00

The above rate would be assigned in the Shipping Rate Table by Order Price to order price levels from $0.01 to $20.00. Five percent of $20.00 is $1.00, so that upcharge covers all order prices from $0.01 to $20.00.

Note that Google requires the shipping rates to be higher than or equal to the actual rate charge by your store.

You would continue adding rates like this up through your highest product amount. The next one might look like this:

  • Rate Name: UPS Ground $20.01-$40
  • Rate Type: Carrier Rate
  • Service: UPS Ground
  • Fixed Markup: $2.00 (five percent of $40)

Here is a screen shot showing a sample of how it would look:
UPS Ground Carrier Rate Plus Percent of Order Total in Google Shipping Settings

The more price levels you add, the more accurate your rates will be, but it will take more time to set up.

Download inventory and upload it to ftp.atensoftware.com on iPad/iOS

Install and Configure FE File Explorer App

  1. Install FE File Explorer free version (not Pro)
  2. Press '+' to add a new connection
  3. Choose FTP
  4. Enter the following settings:
    Display Name: leave blank
    Host Name/IP: ftp.atensoftware.com
    Port: leave blank
    Path: leave blank
    Protocol: Require explicit FTP over TLS
    Transfer mode: Passive
    Charset: UTF8
    User Name: as provided to you
    Password: as provided to you
  5. Press ftp.atensoftware.com under Connections
  6. You should see the list of files in the folder, or no files

Download inv.csv file

Note 1: If the inv file already exists in the Files app on your iPad, be sure to delete it first before following the steps below. Otherwise, the file will be downloaded as inv 2 and won't be recognized by our system unless it is renamed to inv

Note 2: iOS will not display the .csv file extension, but it will be there in the background. You can verify this by selecting Info after selecting the file in the Files app.

  1. Login to Yahoo Small Business
  2. Go to your Store Control Panel
  3. Click on Process > Inventory
  4. Click the Download button
  5. Choose All Tables and click the Download button
  6. Click Download when prompted Do you want to download "inv.csv"?

Upload inventory CSV file

  1. Launch the FE File Explorer app on your iPad
  2. Select FE File Explorer (Cloud) from the side-bar
  3. Select the Files App folder
  4. Select inv file that was downloaded earlier
  5. Select Copy to
  6. Select ftp.atensoftware.com under Connections in the Copy to dialog window
  7. Select Save
  8. If the Resolve conflicts dialog appears, press Replace
  9. All steps are completed at this point, and you can exit the app.
  10. If you wish to confirm the upload was successful, press ftp.atensoftware.com under Connections and verify the inv file time and size

Feedback