To ensure that your Etsy items are showing up in relevant product searches, you must periodically upload your items to Google Base. I didn’t know about this, but I have been hearing a lot about it on the Etsy forums, so I did some digging and found this on the Let’s Ets website:
Google Base is a service that lets you tell Google about the items you have for sale. After your items have been loaded in, they will appear above the normal search results for relevant Google searches. Our GoogleBase formatter takes item details from your Etsy store and converts them into a format that Google understands.
So, the info we upload will be included when someone makes a Google Product Search (www.google.com/products):
Or above a regular search as a “teaser:”
Let’s walk through the process for doing this using the handy formatter provided by Let’s Ets:
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Go to www.letsets.com
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In the “Google Base Formatter” box, enter your Etsy username and click “Fetch My Items”
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Scroll down to “Step Two” under your item list and click “Download Bulk File” to download this list as an XML file. A window will Pop-up asking you to open or save this file. Chose “Save to Disk” and chose where on your computer you would like to save it. If you have your computer set to download directly to your desktop, then you will not be given the option to save anywhere and the file will be ready for you on your desktop. If you are given a choice of where to save your file, make sure it is being saved as an XML file (.xml). It should automatically save as an XML file named after your username. For example, mine would be sixthandelm.xml
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Go to www.google.com/base
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If you do not used GoogleBase before, go to the right side of the screen and choose “Data Feed” from the options available (“One Time,” “Data Feed” or “API”)
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Sign in with your Google Account, or create a new one if you do not have one yet. If you have a Gmail, blogger, or Picasa account (or a few others) you already have a Google account.
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Accept the Terms of Service, if you agree with them
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Fill in whatever profile items you want, such as your website, and click “Next”
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It will take you to the next step automatically if this is your first upload, but if not, you will have to click on the “My Items” tab and chose your Data Feed, or “New Data Feed” if you didn’t get one made yet.
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Set up your Data Feed: Chose the Country (we will need to use United States since our file has the items listed in USD) and chose “Products” for item type. Product items will need to be updated every 30 days (or earlier if your items change quickly) or they will expire. Chose GoogleBase for the feed type and enter the name of the file in the “Name of Feed” space (For mine I would put sixthandelm.xml). Click “Register Data Feed” at the bottom of the page.
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On the next page you will see in the middle column Manual:upload file – Click on the upload file link. Browse to your saved XML file and click “Upload and Process.” The status column will change to “Processing,” which will take a few minutes to a few hours to finish. You cannot use the scheduler, listed above the manual upload link since Etsy’s RSS feed does not give images (or prices, I think).
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Once the feed has finished processing, the page (when you refresh) will show either “Success” or “Failed” (or a Partial Success message). If the upload was successful, you can now click on the “My Items” tab and view your active items. If it has failed, but sure to click the details link next to “Failed” to find out why. Help can be found in the GoogleBase help, or by searching the Etsy forum for “GoogleBase Errors” to see problems other sellers has come up against.
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When you want to repeat the upload, in 30 days (or less) you can keep the same file name and data field name and GoogleBase will just replace the old data, saving the number of clicks for each item as it recognizes that the new upload is a renew of any repeat items.
All Done!!

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3 Comments so far
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This is great to know about! Thanks for sharing and for the awesome step-by-step instructions!
kates latest blog post..Flower Ring
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By kate (1 comments) on 10.29.08 7:11 pm | Permalink
Glad you enjoyed it! I figure more detail, the better, just in case….
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By Anonymous (4 comments) on 10.29.08 9:32 pm | Permalink
Hi there - I’m another Etsy seller (bendingtreearts) and I found you on the Twitter Wiki. Thanks SOOO much for the above tutorial. I’m making a note of this post, so I can come back here and follow all the instructions.
Betsys latest blog post..Day of the Dead poem
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By Betsy (1 comments) on 10.30.08 9:27 pm | Permalink
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