I have noticed that when sending my feeds to froogle the "order_id" field must be different for each entry. if there are duplicate "order_id"(s), then froogle will select the first one and not index the others.

in my example, i have 4 games for sale : Atlanta Braves vs. Philadelphia Phillies

if the order_id remains consistent for each entry, it only shows the first game. if i change it for each game (as i did for the 4 game series of Atlanta Braves vs. San Francisco Giants) it will index all 4 games.

Am i correct in my assumptions? has anyone experienced the same thing or perhaps something different?

I don't see where order_id is a valid field. Did you mean offer_id?

offer_id: A unique alphanumeric identifier for each item in the feed, which stays constant forthe same item across feeds. Could be your internal ID code, or SKU. “code” is also an acceptable name for this field.

http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:_P5rFDdGhwoJ:www.siteall.com/froogle/datafeed.pdf+datafeed.pdf&hl=en

yeps. i meant "offer_id"

:-)

yea, i know froogle's stance on it, but i can't seem to get multiple items, with the same offer_id to show (as per my previous example)

must just be industry-specific example. i simply changed my way of doing it and allow access to "autonumber" that field.

problem solved.

cheers.

That seems a bit odd that you use autonumber to solve this problem, although if you're happy with it, that's perfectly fine.

Your original problem was with duplicate numbers. From Froogle's point of view, these were the exact same products. Of course, from your point of of view, all four were different products. Generally speaking, unique items are assigned an SKU (Stock Keeping Unit) number, which uniquely identifies that particular product.

In your example, it seems like your internal item numbering structure scheme would make a distinction between the different series (for the same game).

Example:
SKU Item Description
001-1 Atlanta Braves vs. Philadelphia Phillies (Series I)
001-2 Atlanta Braves vs. Philadelphia Phillies (Series II)
001-3 Atlanta Braves vs. Philadelphia Phillies (Series III)
001-4 Atlanta Braves vs. Philadelphia Phillies (Series IV)

Froogle's data feed is suggesting to use this internally assigned (SKU) number to be used as the offer_id.

I don't think it makes a huge difference from your standpoint, as long as your feed processed properly without any record rejections. Just thought to clarify the intent.

good points; however, quite honestly, we have no "internal" SKU. the tickets are imported to the web and given UIDs from mySQL that would be overkill for that froogle column.

in my case, autonumber work perfect. here's what i did:

- i scripted an .asp page to pull the information needed from mySQL and create a counting column for offer_id

- chose keywords that would be static and placed them strategically within the query

- the .asp script writes a TXT file to my local machine

- i open the 3MB file in excel and make any edits that may be required on some events

- re'save the file and upload to FROOGLE.

- i now have thousands of event tickets live and we are finally seeing sales from this new little beta gem.

watching what google has done ...with google, i expect froogle to follow suit as the bugs get worked out.