Frequently Asked Questions

General

Yahoo Store Integration

What servers does the search engine run on?

The search engine for your store will run on Shoptivate's load-balanced cluster of servers located in a data center in Phoenix, Arizona.

Can I buy the software and run it on my servers?

At this point, no. Since the Shoptivate search engine works instantaneously as the user is typing, it is crucial that we maintain control of the servers so we can keep it as fast as possible.

What fields get read from my Yahoo product catalog?

These are the fields that we use from the Yahoo product catalog:

• ID
• Name
• Price
• Sale-price
• Orderable
• Image
• Caption
• Product-url (If blank, we use http://store.yahoo.com/STORE_ID/PRODUCT_ID.html.)

We can use other fields that you specify, including custom fields. Please contact us for more information.

How often does the search engine get updated with changes from my product catalog?

In trial mode, the search engine is synchronized with your product catalog about once a day. For paying subscribers, it is done at least once every 15 minutes.

How do I stop a page from appearing in any search results?

Add "<!--nosearch-->" to the caption for the page. This is an HTML comment, so it won't appear on the actual page, and it is Yahoo's standard way to prevent a page from appearing in the search results. This means that if you allow users to keep using Yahoo's standard search engine, any pages you mark this way will not appear in those search results either.

The setup program says I need a thumbnail export file. How do I create one?

If you don't know how to use Yahoo's RTML editor, then please contact us. We can create the template for you for a small one-time fee.

If you know how to use Yahoo's RTML editor, you can proceed as follows:

1. Create an RTML template called "shv-image-export" that looks like this:

WITH= variable linefeed
      value ELEMENTS sequence GRAB
                                COMMENT
                     first 8
  TEXT "begin_image_data"
  TEXT linefeed
  TEXT @publish-timestamp
  TEXT linefeed
  FOR-EACH-OBJECT WHOLE-CONTENTS
    WITH= variable imagevar
          value OR
                  @icon
                  @image
      WHEN imagevar
        TEXT id
        TEXT " "
        TEXT IMAGE-REF RENDER image imagevar
                              max-height 100
                              max-width 100
        TEXT linefeed
  TEXT "end_image_data"
  TEXT linefeed

2. Create a page called "image-export" (type: "main.") which uses the "shv-image-export" template.