UPC codes

[yankeestonk]

http://saveongolf.net/store

It was suggested to me by the owner of one of the golf retail stores that I'm using in my site that I'm returning too many results when a particular club is typed in. He suggested I filter using the UPC codes. I have a few questions:

1. Where can I get the UPC codes? Are they in the datafeeds at all or do I have to contact all the manufacturers?

2. If I have a broad category like "Taylormade Drivers". It will have all of the Drivers made by Taylormade golf. If I want to narrow that down by UPC code would a good way to do that be have the catagory "drivers", then a sub-catagory "Taylor-made Drivers"..then a 3rd sub catagory for the differnt models and search just those by UPC code?

3Finally...If I set it up as above in #2. If someone types in say a Taylormade R11 driver that I have indexed by UPC code, will it come up for them? Or would THEY have to search for the UPC code to pull it up through search? (if that makes sense)

Any suggestions/tips would be apprecitate.

Thanks!

[Eric]

Hi,

1. The merchant will supply UPC codes.

2. UPC codes will not help you narrow down a category. Instead UPCs will return just 1 product because UPC's are specific to a single product.

3. No, UPCs will not come up in the search results.

"Taylormade Drivers" is not a single product. It's a group of products (ie. a category). Customers don't know UPCs so it's useless to allow them to search via UPC.

Personally I think you've done a very good job of narrowing down your selection of products and organizing them very well!

Eric

[yankeestonk]

Thanks Eric!
Do you think it would be useful for me to contact the manufacturers for the UPC codes? For instance if I do decide to narrow down the "Taylor-made Drivers category into say 6 Taylor-made drivers. Would I get better results at that very narrow category using the UPC code only? In your experience do all the datafeeds from all the retailers include UPC's in them? It would be nice to have JUST the one product come up and not have some random stuff show up where manufactures keyword stuffed the tags and such. I have one retailer I can't use because in his tags for say "Taylormade R11 Driver" it will say Taylormade, Nike, Mizuno, Wilson, Ping, etc... ) I guess they figure they want the club to be included in searches for any driver, but makes the datafeed very hard to use. So I don't!

[Eric]

Hi,

No I don't think that would be useful. Most merchants don't provide UPCs. That's the main reason I don't think it would help.

Eric

[yankeestonk]

Thanks Eric