Product Feed Optimization Guide for Vergelijk.nl Product Feed
Learn the required fields, format specifications, and optimization strategies for Vergelijk.nl Product Feed feeds.
What is Vergelijk.nl Product Feed?
Vergelijk.nl is one of the Netherlands' long-standing price comparison platforms, operated by Compare Group, with strong positioning in consumer electronics, home appliances, and travel categories. Although smaller in raw volume than Beslist, Vergelijk.nl users skew slightly more affluent and tech-savvy and convert at notably higher rates in higher-AOV categories. For Dutch ecommerce merchants - especially those selling electronics, white goods, or photography equipment - it is one of the highest-ROI comparison channels per click.
Vergelijk.nl ingests product data through a CSV product feed (UTF-8, semicolon-delimited) hosted on a URL polled daily. The schema is Vergelijk-specific but maps cleanly to standard ecommerce data models. Required columns include id, title, description, brand, price (EUR VAT-included), delivery_time, delivery_cost, stock, category, deeplink, and image_url. Vergelijk also strongly prefers EAN/GTIN for cross-merchant comparison and exposes optional columns for promotions, warranty, and energy labels.
Vergelijk's commercial model is CPC: merchants pay per click sent to their storefront, with bid amounts configurable per category. Within categories, listings are ranked by a weighted combination of price competitiveness, delivery time, stock, and merchant rating. Vergelijk is more lenient than Beslist or Idealo about minor stock or price drift but compensates with stricter quality requirements on titles and descriptions - listings flagged as low-quality (keyword stuffing, duplicate descriptions across SKUs, all-caps titles) are demoted aggressively.
At a Glance
Vergelijk.nl Product Feed Field Requirements
Required and optional fields for your product feed
How Vergelijk.nl Product Feed Feeds Are Structured
Key structural rules and formatting requirements for this feed type
- 1
Use UTF-8 with semicolon delimiter and quoted fields
Vergelijk.nl expects UTF-8 (preferably with BOM) and semicolon-separated columns. Quote any field containing the delimiter, newlines, or double-quote characters. Embedded double-quotes are escaped by doubling them (RFC 4180 style). Excel's default Save As CSV in NL locale produces semicolon files automatically, which is convenient but produces Windows-1252 encoding by default - always specify UTF-8.
id;title;description;brand;price;delivery_time;..."SKU-001";"Nike Air Max 90 - Hardloopschoen, ""special edition""";"...";"Nike";"149.95" - 2
Submit prices in EUR with VAT included
Vergelijk.nl requires gross prices (BTW included). Use a period (.) as the decimal separator: 149.95, not 149,95. Currency symbol must be omitted. The price is cross-checked against the deeplink landing page on each refresh - mismatches trigger 24-to-48-hour suppression. Same rule applies to delivery_cost.
price: 149.95delivery_cost: 5.95 - 3
Use parseable delivery_time formats
Vergelijk parses delivery_time numerically for ranking and filtering. Use formats like 1 werkdag, 1-2 werkdagen, 2-4 werkdagen, 1-2 weken. Free-form text (Snel beschikbaar, Direct uit voorraad) cannot be parsed and the listing is treated as having an unknown delivery time, pushing it to the bottom of the comparison.
delivery_time: 1 werkdagdelivery_time: 1-2 werkdagen - 4
Use category paths with > separators
Vergelijk accepts free-form category paths with > separators or its own taxonomy strings (downloadable from the merchant portal). Auto-mapping covers ~80 percent of free-form paths but Vergelijk's taxonomy strings produce the most precise category-page placement. Update mappings annually because the taxonomy is revised periodically.
Mode > Schoenen > Sportschoenen > Hardloopschoenen - 5
Express stock as integer count, not boolean
stock is a unit count. 0 suppresses the listing; 1+ keeps it active. Stock count is also used as a minor ranking input - higher stock outranks lower stock when other factors tie - so do not pad with artificial 999 values. Use realistic counts; if your system tracks only in_stock vs out_of_stock, use 10 as a default for in-stock items.
stock: 12stock: 0 <!-- suppressed --> - 6
Include EAN whenever possible
Vergelijk uses EAN for cross-merchant matching. Listings without EAN appear only on standalone product pages, missing the side-by-side comparison views where most clicks happen. Aim for 90+ percent EAN coverage on branded SKUs. For private-label products without GTIN, leave the field empty rather than inventing codes.
ean: 0194501234567
Vergelijk.nl Product Feed Optimization Tips
Proven strategies to improve your feed performance and product visibility
- 1
Write titles in clear Dutch with sentence-case capitalization
Vergelijk.nl's low-quality detector flags ALL-CAPS titles and titles with excessive special-character usage (asterisks, exclamation marks, emoji). Use sentence case or title case in clean Dutch. Lead with brand, then product name, then key attributes (gender, color, size).
Goed: Nike Air Max 90 Heren Hardloopschoen Zwart Maat 42Slecht: NIKE AIR MAX 90!! ★ HARDLOOPSCHOEN ★ ZWART - 2
Avoid duplicate descriptions across SKUs
Vergelijk's quality detector flags catalogs where 30+ percent of products share identical description text - common when descriptions are generated from category templates. Even small per-SKU customization (mentioning the specific color, size, or model variant in the description) clears the flag and improves placement. The fix is usually a one-line change in your product data export to splice variant attributes into the description template.
Generic (avoid): De Nike Air Max 90 is een populaire sneaker.Specific (better): De Nike Air Max 90 in zwart, maat 42, met klassieke Max Air-demping. - 3
Pursue any Compare Group merchant verification programs available to your account
Compare Group runs merchant trust signals across its comparison properties; the specific program names and eligibility rules vary by locale and are configured in the merchant portal rather than published as a uniform spec. Confirm with your account manager which trust certifications are available, and the eligibility thresholds (typically: clean activity tenure, low dispute rate, strong delivery ratings, and a published return policy of 14+ days). Trust badges on listings consistently lift CTR by 8 to 12 percent in this category of platforms.
Generic prerequisites: clean tenure, low disputes, strong delivery ratings, 14+ day returns - 4
Surface energy labels and warranty terms in higher-AOV categories
Vergelijk users in electronics and white goods categories actively filter on energy_label and warranty. Listings with declared values receive 10 to 20 percent higher CTR in those categories. Pull the data from your product database (often already tracked for compliance) and plumb it through to the Vergelijk feed.
energy_label: A++warranty: 2 jaar fabrieksgarantie - 5
Refresh feed daily, twice during peak windows
Vergelijk polls daily by default. During Q4 and major promo windows, schedule twice-daily fetches at 06:00 and 14:00 CET to catch warehouse and promo updates before competitors. Stale prices during high-demand periods cost more in lost rank than the engineering effort of more frequent refreshes.
Off-peak: daily 03:00 CETPeak: twice daily 06:00 + 14:00 - 6
Configure CPC per category reflecting margin and AOV
Set CPC bids in the merchant portal per category. Higher-AOV categories can sustain higher CPCs because absolute margin per click is larger; thin-margin categories need conservative bids. The Vergelijk audience converts well in electronics/white-goods/travel - those categories often warrant CPCs 50-80 percent higher than the platform default.
Witgoed CPC: 0.55Tuinmeubels CPC: 0.20
Common Vergelijk.nl Product Feed Feed Errors
Frequent feed issues and how to resolve them
- Error
Price mismatch with landing page
SolutionVergelijk verifies the deeplink price on every refresh. Differences greater than 0.01 EUR trigger 24-to-48-hour suppression. Diagnose via the Issues tab in the merchant portal. Most causes trace to timezone-mismatched promo windows or feed cache; fix at the source.
- Error
Encoding error on Dutch characters
SolutionVergelijk requires UTF-8 (preferably with BOM). Excel-default Windows-1252 produces corrupted accented characters (é -> é). Use a programmatic export (Python, Node) and explicitly set UTF-8 with BOM. Verify the first three bytes are EF BB BF.
- Error
Duplicate description quality flag
SolutionCatalogs with 30+ percent identical descriptions across SKUs are flagged as low quality and demoted. Splice variant attributes (color, size, model) into the description template at export time. Even a single varied sentence per SKU clears the flag.
- Error
Delivery_time not parseable
SolutionFree-form text like Snel beschikbaar cannot be parsed. Use parseable formats: 1 werkdag, 1-2 werkdagen, 2-4 werkdagen, 1-2 weken.
- Error
Image fetch failures
SolutionVergelijk's crawler uses VergelijkBot. Whitelist VergelijkBot in robots.txt and CDN bot rules. Verify with curl -A 'VergelijkBot' from outside your office network.
- Error
Category fallback to generic node
SolutionFree-form categories that don't auto-map fall back to a generic node and lose category-page placement. Download the latest taxonomy from the merchant portal and map explicitly. Schedule annual review.
Feed Performance Metrics to Track
Key metrics that indicate how well your product feed is performing
Click-Through Rate (CTR)
Vergelijk CTR averages 2 to 3.5 percent for non-top-3 listings, 7 to 12 percent for top-3 positions. Below 1.5 percent typically indicates a weak product image or pricing more than 8 percent above the lowest competitor on the same EAN.
Average Position
Average rank in category and search-results pages, segmented by category. Top-3 captures 55 to 65 percent of clicks. Position is determined by price, delivery_time, stock, merchant rating, and CPC bid (above the category minimum).
Conversion Rate
Percentage of click-throughs completing a purchase. Vergelijk traffic typically converts at 4 to 7 percent across categories - higher than search traffic because users are deep in consideration. Below 2.5 percent points to a landing-page issue (slow load, mobile UX, missing trust signals).
Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)
Total CPC spend divided by attributed orders. Healthy CPA: 5 to 12 EUR for fashion, 8 to 18 EUR for electronics, 12 to 25 EUR for high-AOV categories like white goods. Track per-category and adjust CPC bids to keep CPA below 30 percent of average order value.
Dispute Rate
Percentage of orders resulting in Vergelijk-mediated disputes. Above 3 percent triggers ranking demotion; above 5 percent triggers manual review. Most disputes trace to declared-vs-actual delivery time mismatches.
How to Set Up Your Vergelijk.nl Product Feed Feed
Step-by-step guide to creating and optimizing your product feed
Register a Vergelijk.nl merchant account
Sign up through the Vergelijk Compare Group business portal. You will need a verified domain, a registered business entity (KvK), a published return policy, and a customer service contact. Approval typically takes 5 to 10 business days. New merchants enter a probationary tier; this lifts after 30 orders with dispute rate below 5 percent.
Generate the semicolon-delimited UTF-8 CSV
Build a UTF-8 (with BOM) CSV with semicolon delimiters. Include all 11 required columns plus EAN where available. Validate with the Vergelijk online validator before submission. Host on an HTTPS URL accessible without authentication.
Map categories to Vergelijk taxonomy
Download the latest taxonomy from the merchant portal. Map your internal categories to Vergelijk's categories, embedding the mapped strings in your category column. Auto-mapping handles ~80 percent of free-form paths but explicit mappings produce noticeably better category-page placement.
Vergelijk.nl Feed Optimization Checklist
Download the complete Vergelijk.nl playbook including the CSV template, the per-category CPC framework, the quality-detector mitigation guide, and the path to whatever Compare Group merchant trust badges your account is eligible for.
- Ready-to-use Vergelijk.nl CSV template with all required columns and example values for fashion, electronics, and home & garden categories
- Quality-detector mitigation playbook covering title casing, description deduplication, and the variant-attribute splicing pattern that fixes most flagged listings in a one-line code change
- VergelijkBot whitelist configuration for Cloudflare, Akamai, AWS WAF, and Fastly
- 60-day clean-tenure playbook with the dispute-prevention checklist and the post-delivery rating-solicitation framework that earns whatever trust badges your Vergelijk account is eligible for
Frequently Asked Questions
Common questions about Vergelijk.nl Product Feed product feeds
Google Product Category Lookup
Full taxonomy list, IDs, and how to map your products correctly.
Explore More Feed Guides
- Inventory all product sources
- Define your attribute schema
- Normalize brand names
- Add alt-text to every primary image
The product feed optimization checklist
Ten hard steps that bring your rejection rate down and your CTR up — from title templates to source-side structured data.
- Record your current rejection rate first as a baseline
- Per-channel title templates (no copy-paste)
- Pipe errors into Slack/email for same-day triage
One email, no follow-up spam. Print it and get to work.
Generate every feed automatically from one catalog
The WISEPIM Feed Hub turns your central product data into ready-to-publish feeds for every channel in this guide — and dozens more. Map fields once, schedule refreshes, monitor errors per channel, and push fixes back to the source. No manual exports, no format-juggling, no chasing rejections one channel at a time.
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