How to commit search suicide..

The ability to be found or seen in search queries is absolutely essential. Keywords, text formatting, attributes all play a part in the formula for search visibility. But there is a foundational concept that sellers often forget. and that is their user id.

I often hear Bonanzle sellers saying that no buyer ever searches for a seller by user id... Is that really what a Bonanzle seller want? To be so "forgettable" that no buyer will ever look for you by name..?? Do the Bonanzle sellers forget to type in "Bonanzle"? When was the last time that you forgot you picked up a great gadget at Bed, Bath and Beyond?. Or that you found a perfect pair of shoes from Zappos.. You know those sellers names. Why do you want to be so "forgettable" that a buyer will not remember you by name?

The first step in committing search suicide is to create a user id that is hard to remember or more effective in your suicide efforts is to use punctuation in the user id such as an apostrophe. Using punctuation such as the apostrophe means a browser will not interpret the apostrophe correctly, most buyers do not know they must use an underscore where the apostrophe is at so it renders correctly. And the seller can't be found by name.

Bonanzle sellers booths are branded quite well. Every listing page URL contains the seller's user id right in the address bar. Keep that important little tidbit tucked away for a minute. As it is extremely relevant to committing search suicide quickly and efficiently.

The sellers decides they have made a grave mistake with their user id. Let's change it. No worries, easy to do. contact support, and voila' user id changed. Life is all good. Or is it. we won't even talk about how the user id change can impact business identity, marketing and your bottom line. We will talk about what happens to all those booth items that are already published to google shopping.


So the seller hops over to Google shopping, types in their user id,, and no items are served up.. Great all items associated with the previous user id are gone from Google shopping. Or are they?

Remember the little tidbit about the Bonanzle listing page URL containing the seller's user id... Well on Google shopping the marketplace name must be displayed underneath the price. But the Bonanzle booth URL allows each seller to be branded hence someone can find a particular seller by user id. So it looks like all the sellers product is gone because the seller's user id is changed.

But use item title line search. And well I'll be. There is the item. So the seller presumes their items are in google shopping new user id and all. If the title is clicked,, an Item not found in inventory " error appears. oops, broken link which is a google product policy violation. And the seller just committed search suicide. Until the old listings that are associated with the former user id are either removed by the uploader OR expire in 30 days so a new xml file containing the seller's New user id can be uploaded, the seller can't be found.

There are definitely correct circumstances to change a seller id. But make the changes slowly. Take into consideration all aspects such as all the blogs you are connected with, twitter, facebook, squidoo and how the change impacts google shopping results. Otherwise you will be committing search suicide.