Thanks to Auctiva Commerce "fairness" to all store owners, you can have your store listed on the left side of the Shop page.
Buy anything cheap in a large quantity, say a pair of batteries. If you can afford to buy 3000 items (I can't), create a listing and copy it 2999 times to have 3000 items in your store (don't list it once with quantity set to 3000).
Your store will be on top until someone lists 3001 items.
Thanks Auctiva for a very fair presentation of all stores!
On the first page I agree that the left hand column is not very helpful. But when you search for key words it seems to be more helpful. For example if I type in Opera, I get 63 items in my search and Athens Collectibles comes up on the left. If I search for Opera music, nothing comes up (interesting...) If I search for Opera Cd, 2 items come up and again Athens Collectibles comes up on the left. 1 of the 2 featured items is Iron Maiden Beast Over Hammersmith which certainly doesn't appear to be opera.
What I found interesting in your CD listing is that nowhere did you use the word music. You may have used it in your keywords or google description, I don't know. But take a look at your listing, see if anywhere in those places you have the words "Opera Music" you have "Opera Lovers" but not "Opera Music." So you could systematically try putting the words "Opera Music" in different spots (one each time) waiting the 15-30 minutes or so in between tests to see where the search is pulling from. If I were to look for Opera music as a gift lets say, I don't know that I would search for Opera Cd. I might first try Opera. Then when I saw how big my results were and that they were not limited to Opera Music, my next thought would be Opera Music. If I type in Opera Lovers, yours is the only item that comes up. But I don't know that anybody would search on Opera Lovers.
It certainly appears though that the search is not just bringing in results from the item title. From a small test I did on my own items I can see it is definitely pulling from the google description section. And based on the way I was given some advice to set google description up (I haven't passed this advice along), I will want to change my google description. Because when I typed in fiction books, my fiction books all came up and when I typed in non-fiction my fiction books came up.
I think for sellers who are not into keyword spamming, we are trying to do this right and learning as we go along. I don't want to perturb a potential customer by their seeing all my fiction books come up in a search for non-fiction books.
Michelle
Due to health issues I am no longer doing Auctiva Commerce webdesign or training.
Posts: 8137 | Location: The Beautiful Mountains in Colorado | Registered: June 30, 2006
Morning George, I agree with you, even the old shopping page, one of the items I sell was not coming up under a search because somebody else had listed every one indvidually and mine were listed under 1 or 2 items, with a template that you could choose the one you wanted, after going throug 13 pages of items to find my item, some weren't even the same item, I relisted listed mine seperatly, but that is a lot of extra work. Rose
This Is My Code, Let Me Know If You Add Me And I will Add You To My Pages Right Away. Let Me Know What Category You Would Like And A Description For The Googgle Friends Page.
Don't take me as an example. I still haven't done any work on the items, they are just as transferred from eBay listings.
What I wish to point out is that the same stores will always appear on the left before a search is made. A visitor entering the Shop page may easily assume that these are the only shops in the virtual mall. In any case, the same shops are always having a featured position like the sponsored links on top of Google searches (but you pay a lot for a sponsored link, this is free sponsorship).
To be fair to all, the list of shops had to be random and changing daily or on page refresh. That's my understanding of fairness.
This Is My Code, Let Me Know If You Add Me And I will Add You To My Pages Right Away. Let Me Know What Category You Would Like And A Description For The Googgle Friends Page.
Originally posted by Athens Collectibles: Don't take me as an example. I still haven't done any work on the items, they are just as transferred from eBay listings.
What I wish to point out is that the same stores will always appear on the left before a search is made. A visitor entering the Shop page may easily assume that these are the only shops in the virtual mall. In any case, the same shops are always having a featured position like the sponsored links on top of Google searches (but you pay a lot for a sponsored link, this is free sponsorship).
To be fair to all, the list of shops had to be random and changing daily or on page refresh. That's my understanding of fairness.
George, That's what I was trying to get at as well... All of those stores are listed BEFORE you start a search...so thanks for mentioning it again. Doesn't seem quite fair to me either.
Hey George!! I don't think the inventory count has anything to do with the left side. I am currently at 2800 items (with luck over 3000 today) and I have never been on the left side and my search only shows 159 items for cross stitch. Another mystery yet to be solved and possible a topic or a new chapter in your future book.
It looks like your store is active, was it submited to goole base I don't know about the new one but I know until my items were published and shearchable I could not find them on the old one (when it was working). Rose
This Is My Code, Let Me Know If You Add Me And I will Add You To My Pages Right Away. Let Me Know What Category You Would Like And A Description For The Googgle Friends Page.
Sue, a search now shows your store on the left side with 554 items. To solve the mystery, can you tell us when these were listed? Is it possible that you have been listing all day long and the 554 is the first pick of the search engine? If yes, another search later should show a higher number.
Sue, the count is now to 595 and that seems to confirm my initial assumption. It takes some time for your listings to be picked up by the search engine but the number increases as you add items.
George, I could not get into the AC all day so my numbers did not change at all and I was hoping to reach 3000 by Monday And No, the amount showing of 595 has been listed for well over a few weeks ago, not recently. I go hot and cold trying to decide if I want to continue or not. I was an early shop and still have not had a sale although I do all the google feeds, advertise on a few websites, and do all the same things you all do. I have a Dreamweaver site as well and have been referring all my customers to this site. I planned to close it down 1 June my target date or once I transferred all my inventory which has been slow going lately. (hence the nearly same name and same logo) The other site uses Cold fusion. I have not looked today but will and see what is showing. I have over 20000 books alone to list.
George, I just went to look and got in. What is showing is the data from my google feed. And it is current. Things I added today are there. I have exclude from feed for all the threads and some of the other items. Of the 2676 items I now have listed, I am only submitted 597 to google and I just did a new feed last night. So now we know what is showing is taken from the google feed data at least. Going to see if I can log on and add more inventory now. I also made the left side of the screen - yeah, now if I could only get a sale. Wanted to let you know how much I love Greece. I headed a team that went to Athens to install a computer system at Nea Makri when I was working in Rota Spain and we were there nearly a month. We worked day and night to get free days to tour.
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