Become an affiliateStart your program

Technology and tracking

Product feed (data feed)

Also called product feed, data feed, product data feed, shopping feed.

Short answer

A product feed (data feed) is a file – usually XML or CSV – in which a store publishes its products with fields such as ID, title, price, link, image and stock status. Affiliates, price comparison sites and ad platforms fetch the feed automatically and show up-to-date products without manual work.

Definition of Product feed (data feed).

A product feed is the store's catalogue in machine-readable form. Each row or node describes a product with a fixed set of fields: unique ID, title, description, price, any sale price, currency, product URL, image URL, EAN/GTIN, brand, category and stock status. The feed is published at a URL that the recipients fetch automatically on a fixed schedule.

Example: a line in a CSV feed might consist of ID 1042, the title Running Shoe X, the price 899.00 DKK, stock status "in stock" plus the address of the product page and the image. If the store changes the price, the new price is in the feed at the next fetch – and therefore everywhere the product is shown.

The consumers are everyone who needs to show the store's products outside the store: price comparison sites that match products on EAN, content sites that build product boxes and comparison tables, and ad platforms such as Google Shopping via Merchant Center. In affiliate marketing, the feed's product links are wrapped in tracking links, so every click from a product display can be attributed to the affiliate who showed the product.

The feed's quality determines the quality everywhere it is shown. A wrong price or a discontinued product in the feed is repeated on every site that has fetched it – which is why feeds are typically fetched between once an hour and once a day, and the price field must match the price on the product page exactly. Large catalogues are often split into several feeds per category or per country, so each consumer only fetches the slice that is relevant.

From feed to affiliate link

The feed contains the store's own product URLs. When an affiliate uses the feed, each URL is replaced or wrapped in a tracking link that carries the affiliate's ID – often as a deep link straight to the product page. If a user clicks a product box built from the feed, the click is recorded like any other affiliate click, and any order can be attributed correctly.

For the affiliate, the feed means automation instead of manual work: price modules, comparison tables and product carousels are rebuilt at every feed fetch, so prices and stock status follow the store. Combined with sub-IDs per placement, the affiliate can afterwards see which product boxes generated clicks and orders – and remove those that do not.

How it goes wrong

  • 01

    Missing or wrong EAN numbers

    Price comparison sites match on GTIN/EAN. Without the number, the product is not shown next to identical products from other stores, and the feed's most important channel is effectively lost.

  • 02

    Feed price and page price differ

    The price in the feed must be the price the user meets on the product page – including VAT for consumer-facing feeds. Discrepancies lead to rejection by consumers such as Merchant Center and to users who feel misled.

  • 03

    The feed dies silently

    A feed that stops updating keeps being shown – with old prices and products that no longer exist. Monitor a timestamp for the latest generation and react when it gets too old.

At Affilyflow

Product feed (data feed) in practice

Affiliates can search a store's products with price, stock and an estimate of what they earn per sale, and link straight to the product. We fetch the catalogue every night: from Shopify and WooCommerce when the catalogue is public, otherwise from the store's Google Shopping or CSV feed – a feed always wins over the catalogue. The store can hide individual products or everything that is sold out.

Frequently asked questions

What is a product feed?

A product feed is the store's product catalogue in a machine-readable file, usually XML or CSV, with one line per product and fields such as ID, title, price, link, image and stock status. Other systems fetch the file automatically, so they always show the current products and prices.

What should a product feed contain?

At a minimum a unique product ID, title, price with currency, product URL, image URL and stock status – and in practice also EAN/GTIN, brand, category and description. The more correct fields, the more channels can use the feed without manual adjustment.

What format should a product feed be in?

CSV and XML are the common formats, and Google Shopping's XML specification works in practice as a shared standard, because many consumers can read it directly. Whatever the format, the character set should be UTF-8 and the field separation consistent.

How often should a product feed be updated?

As often as prices and stock status change – in practice feeds are typically generated between once an hour and once a day. If the store runs offers or sales, the feed must follow the same day, otherwise consumers show the wrong prices.

What is the difference between a product feed and an API?

A feed is a file with the whole catalogue that the consumer fetches on a fixed schedule – simple to supply and consume in bulk. An API answers individual requests in real time and suits lookups of single products. Many stores offer both, each for its own use.

Read on