Editing Google Product Feed Export

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We recommend the use of single product pages via the Extended Info page and not via creating individual sections for each product.

Custom variables deal with the SEO issues that are thrown-up as a result of working in this way, however, one of the main drawbacks is the Google product feed export which will use the parent section URL as the link for each product, rather than the Extended Info URL.

We currently guide clients to structure Extended Info URLs in a particular format which aids SEO for the page itself and then allows them to use a simple excel formula in the Google export spreadsheet to create the correct product URL based on the other fields that are present.

It all works really nicely and we haven't had an issue in a couple of years. However, it would be better to be able to edit the report to pull in the correct field instead.

Has this been done? How is this report generated?

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Sorted!

We couldn't find how this export is generated in Actinic so we started to build a tool that will create the Google product feed outside of Actinic to ensure that the Extended Info URL is present in the file rather than it's parent section URL.

Whilst doing this we discovered a true/false field in the Actinic database that tells Actinic to use the Extended Info Page in the Google field. We had a search through Actinic to find where this field is being set but could not find it anywhere! Nevertheless we manually changed the value of this field to ‘True’ in the database and ran the Google export again. Out popped the correct Extended Info URLs!

So, it looks as though the database has a trigger to make the correct URL export in the Google feed, however, we have no idea where this can be edited from within Actinic! As a result any new products added will likely use the default 'False' value and so will not be accompanied by the extended info URL in the Google Export. So, before you run the export from Actinic you need to set this database field to ‘True’.

To make this easy (and also if you don't run a DB editing tool) we wrote a little SQL query that does it for you. If you do this prior to each Google export you will find that the export file contains the correct link to the product page and no manipulation is needed.

Download the following VBS file and save it somewhere safe on your computer. Then when you are ready, double click the icon and you will get a prompt for the folder in which your Actinic database exists.

You need to select the folder in which the Actinic database file is stored (just the containing folder, not the .mdb file itself). This can be different in each case. Once you have selected the main site folder containing the Actinic database click OK and in the next pop-up insert the following statement into the white box:

UPDATE Product SET bUseExtPageInGoogleFeed = True

...and then click OK. Click 'Yes' on the next screen too and you are done.

You are now good to go and can open Actinic and do the Google export as normal. Just spot check the file it generates and you will see the Product Link is now the Extended Info Page Filename... you need to do nothing more to the file, it can be uploaded to Google.