541.201.9965 Support_Email
Website
Contents
Display Legacy Contents

Search:
Home > Channels (Feeds) > Google Shopping > Google Changes 2013 *ARCHIVED*

Google Changes 2013 *ARCHIVED*

 

Are you ready? Google gets us thinking . . .

Change #1

See this? (It's a new feature of Google/Shopping). That could be your product, right there.


Want to know how to get listed in key places on Google's shopping portal? 


Google insists on knowing what it is that you are selling. At the base of that page (above) they also show brand name, part number and "GTIN" (which is the UPC code, or the ISBN if you sell books.) 

Google has announced that as of July 15th, for each of the products you sell you must provide at least two of those three pieces of data. 

Brand. Manufacturer's part number. GTIN. [Important note: DotFeed has always allowed you to feed this data to Google. Go ahead - use DotFeed to show Google that you're paying attention. Not sure how? Then please consider joining our e-workshop right away.



Change #2

What if the product(s) you sell don't possess a UPC code? What if the Manufacturer doesn't provide such information? What if you make your own goods?

This is new. Google is now accepting a new value "identifier_exists". If you don't provide a value, then Google assumes that for every one of your products the answer is TRUE ... i.e. the manufacturer has supplied a GTIN and part number. So, as long as you are feeding those values to Google, then you should leave the identifier_exists alone (set to TRUE). However, if your product does NOT have a GTIN or other recognized Manufacturer part number/brand identifiers (or if you are the manufacturer) then you can put a value of FALSE here. Heaven help you, though, if you decide to cheat! Google has suggested serious penalties. After July 15th, non-compliant items might be disapproved and disappear from Google Shopping. 



For more information on Unique Product Identifiers, read here


Change #3

What if you DO sell a product with a unique identifier, and yet you REALLY don't want to line up side by side with identical products?

This is new and really very exciting. Google is giving you potential here, with multipacks and product bundles, to be truly creative. You don't have to sell products alone, like everyone else. You can sell multiples or sell bundles. Read about it here or ... if you can't figure out how to make it work to your advantage, then please consider joining our e-workshop and/or coming to Denver with us. 

Other features of this latest Google change

Change #4

Get Creative with High-Resolution Images

In an effort to stay current in this digital age, Google is recommending higher-quality images, specifically 800 x 800 pixels. The idea here is to give shoppers a better visual illustration of the products you sell. Currently, it's just recommended that you should submit second level, high pixel images, and we haven't yet seen if this is for 'image zoom', but we should all be getting prepared.

Setting up DotFeed to pull an 800 x 800 image is simple. Start by adding these images to your "large" image folder (via ftp). Once you have added all your images, jump into your "Configuration" tab in DotFeed and set your image size to "large". DotFeed will now pull these images from your large folder.



Change #5

Family Safe Products

If you have a family-safe website that sells non-family safe items you can now tag individual items as non-family safe. This will prevent these products from feeding to Google Shopping when shoppers have safe-search settings on their browsers. Read more about Google's adult policies here.

DotFeed has added the attribute "adult" to the Google Shopping feed - if you leave this blank, then the default is FALSE, so you will need to add a rule if you want to feed a value of TRUE for any/all of your products.



See also