The following are common data issues that can arise when we process your Merchant Review feeds. We provide descriptions of each data issue and steps you can take to resolve each issue. When a data issue is detected in your feed, the store ratings aggregator support notifies you of the issue.
Most data issues can be resolved by delivering new feed files to your endpoint. We suggest that instead of consolidating fixes with your daily feed of new merchants and reviews, you create a separate file containing all fixes for outstanding issues. Also, take note of the filenames which contain fixes. The filenames are needed in case a fix doesn't resolve a data issue and you need to contact the support team for assistance.
Below are the typical steps involved in fixing a data issue.
- You deliver a daily feed file to your endpoint: 2017-11-10.xml. This file contains an Invalid rating.
- You deliver a second daily feed file to your endpoint, which has no data issues: 2017-11-11.xml.
- After the support team notifies you of an issue, you deliver a new feed file, 2017-11-11_fix.xml,
which contains a valid rating for the previously delivered invalid review. This valid record has
an updated
last_update_timestampto indicate that this review has a valid rating to resolve the data issue.
As you read this guide, keep the following points in mind:
- Your feed files are downloaded in periodic fetches. If a data issue is detected in a fetch, new data from that fetch or subsequent fetches won’t be served until all data issues have been resolved.
- While there are outstanding data issues in your feed, your feeds will continue to be fetched and processed for new data issues.
- When all data issues are resolved, all data that has been downloaded from your endpoint will be served.
- There’s a root cause for every data issue, whether it’s invalid data in your database or a bug in the way the data was generated. Before providing a fix feed for outstanding data issues, first ensure the root cause of the issue is resolved. Resolving the root cause prevents new issues of the same type from occurring. After fixing the root cause, you can work on delivering fix feed files.
- Fix files (i.e. files that end in "_fix.xml") should not include records that are not intended to fix outstanding data issues.
- If your fixes don’t automatically resolve data issues, contact the support team by replying to the communication that notified you of the data issue.
- As these fixes for data issues often involve delivering merchant and review entities in your feeds, it helps to review the XML schema documentation before reading each data issue.
- For the sake of simplicity, the documentation below assumes you’re fixing a single data issue of a particular type. In practice, multiple data issues can occur at the same time. When delivering fixes, you may consolidate fixes for multiple issues into a single feed file. Similarly, when contacting the support team, consolidate communications across different data issues.