Feed Management RSS, XML, Atom - What is it and how will it allow me to use the Web more efficiently

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An XML feed is a structured real estate database presented in XML format. This is a text file that allows Yandex to process and structure information. Its use saves time and facilitates the work of real estate professionals, eliminating the need to independently add and edit information in ads.

What is an XML feed

In the process, companies that provide intermediary services between seller and buyer feel the need to connect the site to the popular information integrator system - Yandex.Real Estate. The integrator is designed to publish and search for ads on the sale / rental of apartments, houses, land and commercial territories.

An XML feed needs to be created in case of a large number of objects. It allows you to work with many ads, greatly simplifying the task for employees. Today, almost every agency uses this tool. It is generated directly from the website of a real estate agency or an offline database in XML format, after which the ad goes to the real estate board. There are several ways to create a feed:

Create a web resource with a built-in XML upload module. This is the most reliable and fastest type of data transfer. When creating, we recommend using the script of the real estate site designer CMS Sitebill. It offers users several modules for generating a feed in XML format Yandex Real Estate, CIAN, AFY.
Use of external services. There is CRM application software that allows you to generate XLM feeds from ads. The most famous services are ReCRM and JCat.

These services allow you to save time and contain the optimal ratio of necessary functions. However, using them requires an investment of money, and in order to publish ads on popular boards on the Internet, you need to transfer them from the base of the site to the base of the service.

How to create a feed

There are several ways to create an XML feed. The first and easiest is to find a specialist. For independent work on the Internet there are special generator services. They allow you to automatically generate XML files for Yandex.Real Estate. The process of working in them is extremely simple: you must specify a link to a web resource, set individual parameters and start generation.

Another way to create a feed is through manual tuning. To facilitate the process, it is recommended to use ready-made examples from Yandex and, using them, create files for your own site. Here you will need Excel or another free text editor that provides the ability to edit text and automatically create backup copies of saved files. Upon completion, you must save the feeds in CSV format and upload the finished result to Yandex.

There are a number of guidelines to keep in mind when filling out a feed. In particular, it should contain only relevant ads that are present on the web resource. In addition, each category of ads should contain a separate set of parameters. If you do not follow these rules (it is incorrect to display the accuracy and number of parameters), the semantic correspondence to the search query for ads will decrease, and they will occupy low positions in the search results.

The ad text should not contain elements of the HTML code, and the feed indicates the parameters noted by the advertiser for Yandex.Real Estate. It’s important to exclude all web property settings related to geographic coordinates so that this information does not appear in ads.

How to edit and validate an XML feed

Export XML files are validated using the Yandex XML feed validator. The tool simplifies the debugging of export files and significantly reduces the time it takes to get into the database of affiliate programs. The validator allows you to check the structure of the file, but not its contents.

After the files are uploaded, the user can see detailed information about all the announcements, find out what errors have occurred, and what needs to be done. But that’s not the end of XML feed validation. There are types of errors that neither the validator nor the loader can recognize.

First of all, you need to get a Notepad ++ free text editor program, because an ordinary Excel spreadsheet will not be able to correctly display data. Notepad ++ has a lot of advantages, the most important of which is the ability to see the feed as it will be presented in Yandex. Here you need to check:

The completeness of the downloaded data. To do this, select a random ad from the site, find it by IP in the downloaded file in a text editor and check how much the content of the site matches the data presented in the file itself.
The correctness of the data format. You need to check whether the existing format meets the basic requirements for the xml feed on Yandex. Real estate: correct spelling of numbers, units of measure, text content, etc.

If the site database contains a large number of ads (from several thousand to tens, hundreds of thousands of ads) and therefore the XML file is too large, we recommend using gzip compression and recovery utilities. This will speed up the boot process and protect against network failure.

Yandex feeds

The instruction consists of four steps:

Overview and Connection

Yandex feeds are feeds written in an XML-based language for sending up-to-date information about materials available on the website to the relevant Yandex sections: Real Estate (YRL) and Jobs (YVL).

The module allows you to generate feeds that can be sent to Yandex. As a result, the site receives additional traffic from cooperation with the Yandex.Work and Yandex.Real Estate sites. On these services, users look at the basic information of ads, and, to find out the details, go to your site.

Additionally, content submitted through feeds will have a beautiful look in the search:

To start using the Yandex.Feed module, connect it on the main page of the site control panel:

Module setup

Go to the “Yandex.Feed” section and select the module you want to use to transfer materials to feeds in the menu:

Regardless of the selected module, you will need to make the settings:

Activate feed. Enables the use of feed for the selected module.
Feed type - “Real Estate” or “Jobs”. Each of the types must use a separate module.
Linkon which the feed will be placed. This link must be used when validating the feed.
All categories. This option allows you to use a separate category when generating a feed. This is necessary when not all categories of the module contain information about real estate or vacancies.
Attribute / Material Field. According to Yandex documentation, there are a number of parameters that should be described in the feed. Material fields are used to describe them. In this settings section, you must map the attribute and the material field. Ensure that the required information is added to the material field. Here you can add other information about the ad, use the area with the image "+".

The technical requirements of Yandex for feeds are described on this page.

After completing the settings, click on the “Save” button and check the feed at //example.com/module/feedya, where module is the address of the module that is connected to the feed, for example, news or blog.

Feed Validation

Before publishing a feed, you must necessarily pass validation. To do this, follow the link

With the development of information technology and the increase in the number of Internet users in the Russian language, a lot of new words have appeared, the meaning of which is so far understood only by programmers and other specialized specialists.

However, knowledge of the meanings of technical terms will be useful to ordinary users. What is a feed and who needs it? Even if this word is not useful in everyday life, it is always useful to increase your level of education and

What is a feed?

From the English language, the word feed translates as "graze" or "feed." From a technical point of view, such a translation accurately enough reflects the essence of this term: it is an information display format created by Google, the purpose of which is to provide information

To understand what a feed is, it’s enough to submit a news feed that lists the names of articles, their authors, publication dates and other information useful to the reader.

How does a feed help site development?

Website owners are interested in getting to the first page of search results: this ensures a steady influx of new visitors. Thanks to the feed feed, Google’s robots can quickly learn about new materials published on the page, index data for a shorter period of time, which as a result can help the site rise higher in search results.

Feeds can also be used by various aggregators to automatically distribute information on social networks and other similar sites, notify blog subscribers about new publications, and generate email newsletters.

It is likely that other search engines, such as Yandex or Mile.ru, use the feed to collect data, but there is no confirmation of this information. Search ranking algorithms are a secret of corporations and inaccessible to ordinary users.

Knowing what a feed is, the owners of Internet resources can put it into practice, but no one can guarantee that this will affect the position of the site.

How to make feed feed on your website?

When the owners of web portals learn the meaning of the word "feed", they usually have a desire to install a similar tape on their site. To make the site more convenient and understandable for the Google search robot, you need to go through a simple registration at feedburner.google.com, enter the data of your sites, set up the flow of information and observe the result.

For ordinary users, a feed can be useful when you need to collect interesting data from several sites on one page. Information is displayed on a computer, tablet or smartphone in a compressed form, so that you can read the news much faster. By understanding what a feed is, it’s easy to make a resource interesting and visited.

In modern online stores, thousands or even tens of thousands of products. Manually launching contextual advertising on the entire range of products is simply impossible, so Yandex and Google offer users to use product feeds (they are also called YML or XML feeds).

Product feed is a systematic and structured list of data on product offers or services. As a rule, the main formats for product feeds are CSV, TSV, XLS, XLSX. Names are indicated in rows, and attributes of goods or services are indicated in columns.

Product Feed Example:

Why do I need a feed

Create and quickly adjust a large number of advertisements.
Automatically adjust advertisements depending on the presence or absence of certain goods in the warehouse (display only relevant ads).
Filter ads by category, price and other parameters.
Add additional product features.

How to use the product feed in Yandex.Direct

When dynamic ads run on the search network, their content may change depending on the content of the feed. That is, ads are easy to update. This largely explains the high conversion rate of such ads.

How to create a dynamic feed ad

In the future, the campaign can be optimized, for example, using the Get Direct service.

Yandex allows you to create dynamic ads only on a limited range of topics:

electronics and accessories;
appliances;
industrial equipment;
clothes;
furniture;
garden;
sporting goods;
construction Materials;
children's products;
tires and wheels;
cosmetics and perfumes;
property For Sale;
sale of new cars;
sale of used cars;
airticket sale;
hotels, hotels.

How to use feed in a campaign with smart banners

To get access to smart banners, you need to contact the Yandex.Direct support service, since this toolkit is still in beta testing. The essence of this type of ads is to launch banners based on data from the feed. Smart banners, as well as dynamic ads, have high conversion rates. Pay per click.

Smart banner example:

When creating a campaign with smart banners, you need to specify “Feed” as the data source, select the desired feed from the list and add banners. You can load no more than 50 banners, while one banner can be tied to several positions in the feed.

For details on how to set up a campaign with smart banners, read in the case.

It is worth adding that smart banners consist of two parts: constant and variable.

The permanent part of the smart banner includes:

advertiser logo
special offer;
link leading from a special offer to the advertiser's website;
information about promotions and discounts;
call to action button.

The changing part includes:

image of a product, work or service;
product offer;
old price of a product, work or service;
the new price of a product, work or service;
the size of the discount on a product, work or service.

retail goods;
property For Sale;
cars sale;
sale of auto parts;
hotels, hotels;
airticket sale.

How to use feed in Google Ads

Dynamic remarketing and dynamic display ads let you show ads for products that interest a particular user. In the case of dynamic remarketing, ads can be set, for example, to users who have previously visited the site. Of course, when creating such advertising campaigns, a product feed is also used.

How to create dynamic ads for ads on Google search

To create a dynamic search campaign, you need to set the type of the new campaign “Search Network Only” - “Dynamic Search Ads”:

In this type of campaign, the feed allows you to target specific web pages. To add a feed, select "Commercial data" - "Page feed":

Done! There are no restrictions on topics.

2. Click "Download feed":

4. Download the feed XML file.

In the process of creating a campaign, we can associate remarketing terms with a previously uploaded feed.

How to use feed in product listing ads

This type of ad is implemented using Google Merchant Center . Product Listing Ads Now Available not in all countries.

To create a Product Listing Ads campaign:

create a Google Merchant Center account
create a Google Ads account
upload a product feed to the Google Merchant Center
establish a link between the Google Merchant Center and Google Ads
verify site URL rights.

Choose the type of download and upload the file. After that, click "Continue":

There are no restrictions on topics.

How Dynamic Ads Work - Hamleys Toy Store Case

Result:

From July 1, 2017 to July 31, 2017, an advertising campaign was launched using the XML feed for the Hamleys offer. Moreover, all the settings in the tested advertising campaigns were identical. Campaigns differed only in the method of generating ads.

Result of working with dynamic product feed ads:

findings

Product feed used:

When you run dynamic ads on the Yandex and Google search networks.
In campaigns with smart banners in Yandex.Direct.
In the dynamic display campaigns of Google Ads.
In product listing ads, use the Google Merchant Center.

The feed allows you to unlock the additional potential of contextual advertising. In addition, the ability to customize and run ads with a product feed allows you to make it more “flexible” and effective.

These tools on Google have been around for a relatively long time. At Yandex, they are in open beta testing and are likely to change. However, ad campaigns with product feeds have already worked well.

Yandex.Direct offers a number of tools that will help automate the creation of contextual advertising. In particular, it will be useful for online stores to create product feeds - original databases of goods that, with certain manipulations, can appear in Yandex.Direct ads without additional tedious manual work.

What are direct feeds?

Feeds are primarily used to create and. That is, these types of ads in which there is a certain template where you can simply substitute the names of the goods, price, some other data, and create a couple of clicks ads for hundreds or thousands of products.

A product feed is a file in one of the following formats:

YML (Yandex Market Language) - a format created specifically for

Using a feed is very convenient because it makes it easier to update information on the availability of goods, prices, stocks, add product specifications, group ads based on product category.

How to create a feed for Direct

As mentioned, feeds work for dynamic ads and smart banners, where there are limitations on the subject of goods. Perhaps the number of topics will expand over time.

We’ll take a look at creating feeds for retail.

The feed for retail products must be in YML format (CSV or XML are possible for other topics). It, like a document in XML format, uses one element: . A list of all product offers is in the item. , and the element contains information about one product. To make it clearer how it looks:

There are several ways to create a YML file. We recommend that you try automated, using the service mysitemapgenerator.com.Here you will need to go to the section YML generator.

As seen in the example above, there are a number parametersthat can be entered into an XML file (or YML). For retail, for example, the list is as follows.

As you can see, there are many settings. There is a list with its own features for each topic, and the full set of parameters can be found in Yandex Help.

Create dynamic feed ads

When uploading a feed, select its type and enter a name.

We’ll move on to creating a campaign.

And in its settings, specify a feed as a data source.

There’s nothing supernatural about setting up feeds. This may take a certain time, from an hour or more, which will take to compile the file and select all the necessary parameters, but in the end it will turn out to be a saved time if you plan to actively use smart banners or dynamic ads.