For a long time XML feeds were a complete mystery to me, however with a bit of Yorkshire grit and determination, and a bit of help from Brian Edwards earlier this year I managed to make a bit of sense of them.

Many of you reading this will have different requirements from XML feeds to me so it will come as no surprise if the feeds I like are a thorn in the side to you.

Firstly I need to tell you what information I need to get out of a merchants XML feed, well I predominantly use XML feeds on a Fashion website so the following categories are a must:

  • Brand
  • Product Name
  • Product Price
  • Product Description
  • Product Thumbnail Image
  • Deeplink URL

Also its nice to have a second larger image.

In the feed reviews below some merchants are exceptions to the rule in almost all the networks, however these are my general findings.

The Networks I use for XML Feeds

Paid On Results (POR)

POR are my personal favorite, all fields are encased in CDATA which effectively eliminates parsing problems caused by strange or special characters in the feed. Another positive with POR feeds is the additional field “sales rank” which some merchants use, this is a fabulous field as it makes sorting the feed by best sellers much easier.

In the POR feed section you can see immediately which feeds have been updated.

One negative point is that in some of the feeds not all products have the brand field filled in, not a problem for many of you however when using that field to categorize it means these products don’t show up on my finished pages, perhaps a default of “uncategorized” or “other” could be used here.

Affiliate Window (Awin)

Close behind POR comes Awin, these feeds also get the job in hand done superbly in most cases, Awin have two versions of their feeds 1.0 & 1.2, I have used both but have more experience of the former.

Again it is easy to find out quickly which feeds have been updated.

Negative for me is the fact there is only one image in the feed, however in v1.2 there are two image url fields but the feeds I have looked at have the same image in both, I’m not saying this is the case with all feeds.

Webgains

I haven’t used many Webgains feeds up to now however I set one up earlier today and it is working fine so I am likely to add a few more in the coming weeks.

What I like about the way Webgains XML feeds are set up is that you can create a mash of 2 or more merchant feeds if you wish simply by adding the merchant codes to the url in the appropriate place with a comma between each.

Negative is the fact that no indication of when the feed was last updated is available, and not all merchants in this sector make full use of the brand field.

Buy.at

The Buy.at XML feeds page has the age of the feed clearly on show and most feeds include a thumbnail and full size image.

I have had odd problems with the description field on Buy.at feeds, sometimes special characters cause that field to not parse properly cutting it short, I have written a bit of code to sort this problem so its not an issue to me now.

One thing I would like to see on all networks is the ability to subscribe to email alerts for updated feeds.

The Networks I don’t use for XML Feeds but may do in the future

Deal Group Media (DGM) - I have had a quick look at these feeds and they look well formed and I expect that they will do the job.

Affiliate Future (AF) - I would love to use AF XML feeds as they have some great clothing merchants that I could use alas they only have CSV.

Tradedoubler (TD) - Can’t get my head round these feeds, most of the fields I require are pretty straight forward to extract however the Brand field uses a syntax I don’t understand, maybe one day :o)

These are the only networks I have looked at so if you are a UK network and you never got a mention please don’t be offended.

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