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Filter, Remove, or Exclude Products

How to Filter, Remove, or Exclude by Individual Product
  1. Go to My Account
  2. Click Manage for the desired feed
  3. Click Search by Keyword
  4. Type letters of the product ID or keywords from the title until the product appears in the search results
  5. Click the product in the search results
  6. On the Product Detail page, click the exclude button Exclude Icon at the top of the page. The icon will be disabled if the product is already filtered out.

How it Works

The steps above will automatically add a filter on the product ID, which will remove it completely from the feed file. The product will appear with strike-through text in your account.

To review the filters on the feed, go to Manage Feed > Product Filters.

To remove the filter, click the Include button Include Icon from the Product Detail page, or delete the filter for that product ID from the Product Filters page.

Limitations

The instructions above are suitable for filtering a handful of individual items in one specific feed. To filter larger number of products, have filters apply to multiple feeds, or filter by rules, refer to our other support articles in this topic.

How to Filter, Remove, or Exclude a Large Batch of Products by ID
  1. Prepare a list of product IDs in your favorite spreadsheet or text editor
    • Only one identifier is needed per product
    • You can select any identifier field that is added to the feed on the Define Fields page
  2. Ensure that there is one product ID per line
    • Duplicates and blank lines are OK (will be ignored)
    • Product IDs are case-sensitive and should not have any leading or trailing spaces
  3. Select the list of product IDs in your application and copy them to clipboard.
  4. Go to My Account
  5. Click Manage for the desired feed
  6. Click Product Filters
  7. For Criteria, select the identifier field, e.g. 'id', and equals as the comparison operator
  8. Paste the product IDs into the text box
  9. Click the Add Filter button

A separate filter will be created for each ID in the list. You will see a warning for duplicate IDs, and only one filter will be created for that ID.

There is no limit to the number of filters you can add. However, if you have over 5000 filters, the filters page will become difficult to work with. Check the other articles in this topic for better techniques.

How to Filter, Remove, or Exclude Products using Rules on any Field

Product Filters (Rules on any Field)

Product filters are analogous to email filters, and allow you to exclude items from the data feed. Your feed can also be configured to include only the items matching the filters. You can set up filters from the "Manage Feed > Product Filters" page.

You can add a filter on any field For example, you can add a filter to exclude items where 'price' < 1.00, 'title' contains "gift certificate", or 'qty' = 0.

Using your Store's Catalog to Filter

Rather than configuring filters in our system, it may be more convenient for you to control which items are excluded and included directly from your store catalog. To set that up, follow these steps:

  1. Add a custom field to your store catalog, like 'exclude-from-nextag' with values 'y' and 'n'.
  2. Add a catalog field to your feed for this custom field from the "Manage Feed > Define Fields" page, and mark it disabled.
  3. Create a filter like 'exclude-from-nextag = "y"'.

Use the Manage Feed > Analyze Source Data tool to see the values in the raw data for your boolean field. Use those values to set up the filters accordingly. For example, a 'false' may be represented by a blank value, and 'true' may be represented by a 't'.

Viewing Filtered and Unfiltered Items

After making your changes, look in the "Product List" to review the filtered and unfiltered items. Filtered items will appear with strike-through. Then, run a Submit task from "Submit a Task" to send your updated feed to its destination.

Although we do not recommend this, you can also manually remove items. Download your data feed file from the "Data Feed File" page, remove the items using a spreadsheet program, and then upload it manually. This is not recommended because you would have to repeat the manual clean-up every time.

Regular Expression Filters

Filters can be added using regular expressions. Regular expression syntax is essentially an extremely terse programming language. So they are very powerful, but also very hard to learn how to write. You can use this MySQL Regular Expressions Documentation for reference, or contact us for free setup of regular expression filters.

How to download a list of filtered items
  1. Go to Manage Feed > Advanced Settings
  2. Change the Product Filters setting to Include products matching the filters. (If it is already set to that, change it to Exclude products matching the filters instead.)
  3. Go to Manage Feed > Download Data Feed File
  4. Click the Refresh button.
  5. Return to Manage Feed > Download Data Feed File when the task completes.
  6. Click the Download button.
  7. After downloading the file, be sure to change the Product Filters setting back to its original value.
How to download all items (filtered and unfiltered) in a feed
  1. Go to Manage Feed > Advanced Settings
  2. Change the Product Filters setting to Include products matching the filters. (If it is already set to that, change it to Exclude products matching the filters instead.)
  3. Go to Manage Feed > Product Filters
  4. Add a temporary filter that matches all the items, like id does not equal 'xyz'
  5. Go to Manage Feed
  6. Click the Refresh button.
  7. Return to Manage Feed > Download Data Feed File when the task completes.
  8. Click the Download button.
  9. After downloading the file, be sure to change the Product Filters setting back to its original value, and remove the temporary filter.
Exclude or Filter Out Items That Do Not Meet Google Requirements

Our system has the capability to validate your Google feed and exclude items that do not meet Google requirements. This feature is currently only supported for Google feeds.

Set up a filter to exclude the items with errors by following these instructions:

  1. Go to Manage Feed > Product Filters
  2. Select the item_errors field, select does not equal, click String, and leave the text box empty.
  3. Click Add
  4. Refresh or Submit the feed

As you correct the errors in your store, the items will automatically be included and submitted in the feed.

For a summary of all item errors and warnings, go to Manage Feed > Validation Report.

Adding the validation fields

All Google feeds should contain two special fields, 'item_errors' and 'item_warnings'. If you have a Custom feed and these fields do not exist, follow these instructions to add them:

  1. Go to Manage Feed > Define Fields
  2. From the Add Field form at the top, select Template - Placeholder and click Add
  3. Uncheck the Enabled checkbox, enter item_errors as the Name, and then click Add
  4. Repeat the above for the item_warnings field.
Hand-picking most profitable items for inclusion in PPC sites

You can use the strategy below to optimize your pay-per-click campaigns.

If you prefer to control the items from your store catalog without having to log into our site, please see the Using your Store's Catalog section in our article on configuring filters.

Set the Filtering Mode

  1. Go to Manage Feed > Advanced Settings.
  2. Set the Product Filters to Include Products Matching the Filters.
  3. Click Update to save the settings.

Include Groups of Items

  1. Go to Manage Feed > Product Filters
  2. Add filters for groups of items you want included in the feed. Examples:
    • product_type contains "best sellers"
    • price greater than 100 (use the number data type)
    • title starts with "Armani"
    • brand equals "Coach"

Include Specific Items

  1. Go to Manage Feed > Search by Keyword.
  2. Type in a portion of the product ID or title, and click the item listing to see the Product Details.
  3. On the Product Details page, click the green plus icon to mark the product for inclusion.
  4. Repeat for each item.

Review the Results

  1. Go to Manage Feed > Product List.
  2. In the Filtering State (Items) drop-down box, select Unfiltered Only to see the items that will be submitted.
  3. Select Filtered Only to see the excluded items.
How to view all products matching one or more specific filters

Use the instructions below to only enable a specific filter (or set of filters), and then view the products that match that filter in the product list.

  1. Go to Manage Feed > Product Filters
  2. Note the filter status, i.e. which ones are enabled and disabled. You can take a screen shot.
  3. Click the Check All button
  4. Click the Set to Disabled button
  5. Check the filter or filters you want to view
  6. Click the Set to Enabled button
  7. Go to Manage Feed > Product List
  8. Select Filtered Only in the Filtering State drop-down

    The product list will show all filters matching the selected products. Strike-through text formatting means the product is filtered out.

  9. Repeat the steps above to restore the original filter status (enabled/disabled).

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