Boxes - Exclude Products (legacy document)
Excluding and whitelisting products from your export feed is a crucial part of data optimization. For this reason we offer multiple boxes and features for skipping, blacklisting or whitelisting products. All of them can be prioritized for a more advanced skip logic.
Prioritization
All of our Skip, Blacklist and Whitelist boxes can be prioritized. You can enter positive and negative numeric values into the box to define which rule is stronger than another rule.
Per default the priority of all boxes is "0" and Whitelists are stronger than everything else: Whitelists overwrite Blacklist, Skip and ROI rules. You can learn more about the prioritization in ROI Strategy in this article.
Use Case
Imagine you want to exclude products of a certain brand, whitelist top sellers even if they are from one of the blacklisted brands, but blacklist products that are out of stock.
Problem without using prioritization:
By adding two "Skip Row if Value In" boxes, one in the brand column and one in the availability column you could satisfy the blacklist needs. When adding the "Whitelist Row if Value In" box for your top sellers, it will be stronger than both of the skip boxes and thus result in "out of stock" top sellers to be in the feed.
Solution with prioritization:
Add a "Skip Row if Value In" box in the brand column. Add the brand names and assign a priority of 10.
Add a "Whitelist Row if Value In" box in the ID column. Add the IDs of the products you want to whitelist, even if they are from one of the blacklisted brands. Assign a priority of 20.
Add a "Skip Row if Value In" box in the availability column. Add "out of stock" and assign a priority of 30.
The higher the priority, the stronger the box.
Best Practice Advice:
We recommend leaving some space between your priorities in order to add prioritized rules in between already existing rules. Leaving a space of 10 in between two priorities will give you enough room to do this.
When you want to make all your Skip and Blacklist boxes stronger than a Whitelist, don't bother updating them all, but change the priority of the whitelist into a negative value. The other boxes will stay at the default value of "0" and thus be stronger automatically.
Adding a "Comment" box on the connection you added a rule with priority to, will make it easy to check the priorities directly in the Dataflow. Remember that the "Comment" box does not change the data in the feed, but is solely for documentation purposes. The comments are visualized as comment bubbles in the Dataflow and you can see the content when hovering over them.
Box Overview
1. Blacklist
A blacklist is a list of products that will not be exported due to a characteristic that they contain, as specified by the user, or an export channel restriction.
The Blacklist box refers to an individual list that needs to be created first in the menu item Lists. The feature will skip all items matching the defined words in that list.
2. Negative Blacklist
The Negative Blacklist box helps you define which products should be excluded from your export. This list has to be set up in the menu item Lists at first with words and terms. All products that don't match one or more of these words will be skipped from the export. Basically, it works like the Skip Row If Value Not In box.
More information about this feature can be found in the Rule boxes cheat sheet.
3. Skip Multicondition (2x)
Use this box to exclude products if both defined conditions are met. Set both conditions by selecting the column, defining the operator (less/greater than, less/greater or equal, equal/not to, contains/not), and adding the value.
Please note: The products will only be skipped if both conditions are met.
4. Skip Row By Content Length
Skips a row if content length is greater than, less than, equal to or is not the compare value you entered.
5. Skip Row If Empty
This box is used to exclude products if there is no value (information missing) for a relevant or mandatory field.
This is useful if your product is missing an image, a link, or a price in particular.
6. Skip Row If Isn't URL
Use this box to skip products from the export if there is no valid URL in a column.
7. Skip Row If Match
This box is used to exclude products because certain values are in a specific column. This box uses a preg match. More information about Regular Expressions can be found here.
Example:
Title:
"Brother DCP 660 CN printer cartridge compatible Lc-1000-Y red"
To exclude products "compatible with Lc", enter the following regular expression: #compatible Lc#
8. Skip Row If Not Empty
Exclude products with this box if there is a present value. Products with no values in the column will be exported.
9. Skip Row If Value In
This box is used to exclude a product if it has a certain value in the column where the box is applied. You can choose if the match should be broad or exact. Both options allow you to add multiple search terms to this box, one term per line.
Example:
"Rocket Science Starter Kit + Apollo 13 (Bundle)"
To exclude all bundled products choose the option:
Broad Match:
Every time the term "bundle" is included in the column the product will be skipped from the export.
Exact Match:
If you choose the "exact" match option the search term needs to match to the whole string. This is for more specific exclusions.
Instead of inserting just "Bundle", you would search for "Rocket Science Starter Kit + Apollo 13 (Bundle)".
Please note: Exact Match is so specific that it is case sensitive as well.
Advanced Approach with various conditions:
To exclude products with a price lower than 10 EUR as well as those items that are not in stock, you can combine the Skip Row If Value In box with the Set Value If Contains box. In this example, all boxes and the assigned values would be added to a separate column for a better overview.
Please note: To get an overview of the products that will get excluded, you can pause the Skip Row If Value In box.
10. Skip Row If Value Not In
This box is used to skip the row from export if one or more values are not in the column where this box is applied. Insert multiple search terms in different lines.
Please be aware to select the right match type, exact or broad.
11. Whitelist
A whitelist is a list of products that will be exported due to a characteristic, term or value that they contain. The whitelist has the highest priority, meaning that if a product is excluded from the feed because of a rule in ROI Strategy, a box, or a_ Blacklist_, it will still be exported if it is included in a whitelist.
The Whitelist box refers to an individual list that needs to be created first in the menu item Lists. The box detects all items matching the defined words in that list. More information about this feature can be found on the following page:
12. Whitelist Row If Value In
This box is used to whitelist certain products and to ensure that they are exported although it would be skipped from export because of a rule in ROI Strategy, a box, or a Blacklist. Use this box if you only have a few terms in your whitelist. Insert the terms per line and choose if the match should be exact or broad.
13. Whitelist Row If Value Not In
This box is used to whitelist certain products and to ensure that they are exported although it would be skipped from export because of a rule in ROI Strategy, a box or a Blacklist not including one or more terms in the column where this box is added. Use this box if you only have a few terms that are relevant. Insert the terms per line and choose if the match should be exact or broad.
