Product feed

A product feed is a machine-readable list of the products a store sells. Each entry usually includes a title, description, price, currency, availability, image link, product link and identifiers such as a SKU or barcode.

Stores create feeds so other systems can read their catalogue:

• Shopping ads, where an ad platform builds ads directly from the feed
• Catalogue ads on social networks, which show each visitor the products they viewed
• Price comparison sites and marketplaces

Many store platforms also publish public catalogue data. Shopify stores, for example, usually answer a public products endpoint with product titles, variants, prices and the date each product was created or updated. Together with the store's sitemap, this is one of the cleanest public sources for tracking what a store sells and when it adds new items.

RivalSonar reads public product feeds and catalogue data to build product lists, detect new products and spot price changes. It never logs into a store or reads private admin data. For tracked stores, catalogue changes are checked every hour and used to refine the store's estimated orders, as the sales tracking entry explains.