Syndication feed
A syndication feed is a structured file — usually XML or JSON — that a dealer’s inventory system sends to a marketplace on a schedule, listing every vehicle for sale along with its photos, price, and specs so the marketplace can build a listing automatically.
Instead of re-entering every vehicle by hand on every site a dealer lists on, a syndication feed does it once: the dealer’s inventory system (or a photo and listing tool sitting in front of it) generates a feed in the format each marketplace expects, and the marketplace pulls it on its own schedule to update listings.
Marketplaces publish their own feed requirements, and they aren’t identical. CarGurus, for example, documents specific required fields including an “Image URLs” field and states that it caches submitted images “within 24 hours of processing the feed,” which is why a photo update doesn’t always show up on a marketplace instantly.
Feed problems tend to be quiet rather than loud: a field the marketplace expects is missing or malformed, an image URL points somewhere that’s since changed, or the feed simply hasn’t run again yet, and the result is a listing that looks stale or incomplete without any obvious error message pointing at the cause.
Source
“Images are typically cached within 24 hours of us processing the feed.”
CarGurus — Feed File RequirementsQuestions
Syndication feed, answered.
Why doesn’t a marketplace show my updated photos right away?
Feeds run on a schedule, not instantly — CarGurus, for example, documents that images are typically cached within about 24 hours of it processing the feed, so a photo change can take a while to show up.
Does every marketplace want the same feed format?
No — each one publishes its own required fields and format. A feed built for one marketplace’s spec generally needs to be reshaped, not just resubmitted, to work for another.
VehiclePhoto handles this automatically — clean backgrounds, matching angles, privacy masking, and grounded listing copy, built from the photos you already have.
See how it works