How long has feed optimization been around?
For those of us that have been doing Base feeds since it was only Froogle and were accepted early into the beta, this game has changed a lot. When I first entered the Froogle Beta program, there were a lot of feeds that were just database dumps. Those didn’t do much against what a good feed was doing, and I started optimizing pretty much right away. That would have been 3 - 4 years ago.
As for competitive listings, that’s really been going on for 1 - 2 years. That’s when we started seeing others actually start optimizing feeds a little and the marketplace started getting competitive. But most people haven’t yet taken this as serious as those of us really doing well with Base.
Who is a great example of optimization? eBay, as much as I hate to admit it, has done a pretty good job. So has shop.com, although I don’t agree with some of their tactics from an ethics standpoint. You can find my previous post about them to read more. Amazon has done well on and off, but I really haven’t seen them showing up all that well lately.
There are other, smaller players that have really excelled at Base optimization, though. They’re names you’ve never heard of and optimize in niches, so they’re tough to pick out as examples. Basically, look at who is showing up well for keywords related to the products in your area and watch those stores. You won’t be able to pick everything they’re doing out, but look at image URL’s, product URL’s, the section of the description that shows up and product naming strategies. There are a lot of people that you’d never think of that are doing this quite well.