What is Google Product Search?
Taken from the Google Product Merchant Center Help Page:
“Google Merchant Center is a tool which helps you upload your product listings to be used for Google Product Search, Google Product Ads, and Google Commerce Search.”
Google Product Search allows shoppers to quickly and easily find your product listings on Google. As a seller, Google Product Search offers you the following advantages:
- Attract more potential buyers. Google Product Search helps you to reach shoppers while they are searching for items to buy on Google.
- Submit your product listings for free. Google Product Search is a free service to sellers.
- Control your product information. With Google Product Search, you can maintain the accuracy and freshness of your product information, so your customers find the relevant, current items they’re looking for.
Some Google Product Speed Specifications:
- Basic Product Information: Attributes to describe the basic information about your products, such as title, description and type of product.
- Availability & Price: Attributes to specify the availability and prices of your listings.
- Unique Product Identifiers: Attributes to ensure your products appear on the right product page, such as brands, UPCs, and EANs.
- Apparel Products: Attributes to describe apparel products, such as color or gender.
- Product Variants: Attributes to correctly describe variations of a product that only differ by color, material, pattern, or size.
- Tax & Shipping: How to include information to supply tax and cost of shipping information for your products.
- Nearby Stores (US & UK only): How to include information to show your physical stores in addition to your online store
- Loyalty Points (Japan only): Attributes to specify the loyalty points Google Shopping users gain when buying the item.
- Multiple Installments (Brazil only): Attributes to specify multiple payment programs to buy items.
- Additional Attributes: Other attributes to describe your products.
How to Submit Your Products:
You can submit your product feed one of two ways:
1.) Data Feed – You can send your product feed through your Google Merchant Center account, or by FTP.
2.) API – The API option is designed for web developers who can easily upload the information through API, which allows you to update your product feed the same way as the manual data feed.
Once you log into Google Merhcant Center for the first time and agree to their terms of service, you will be able to start configuring your account with your store name, description, website URL, address, etc. It’s surprisingly a very short and simple process.
After you fill out the above information, you will then be able to upload your product feed by choosing to upload via Googlebase, Shopping.com, or Shopzilla.
Once you upload your product feed, you will come to a window that says it has been completed.
Now that your data feed is complete, you can look up your products by ID and activate, deactivate, or delete products at your own convenience. You can also check on your data quality and create performance reports.
Now that your product submission is complete, you should be all set. If you have any questions regarding your Google Merchant Center account, you can always visit the Google Merchant Center Help page.
This is a nice overview, but Google is very specific about how your feed is constructed and the “Basic Product Information” category alone contains nine attributes REQUIRED to be in your feed or Google will reject it. Other attributes may be required or not depending on the specific products you sell, and if you sell handmade or vintage items with no numerical identifiers you can get an opt-out form from Google as well. Making sure you have the correct fields in your product’s data so it can be properly “mapped” to Google’s categories can take some initial work, but once set up is fairly painless as an ongoing project.
Anyone wanting to set up a feed really needs to visit the Product Feed Specification page first:
http://www.google.com/support/merchants/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=188494#US
Kaycee, Thanks for sharing that additional insight. I’m sure it comes with much experience (trial and error). Setting up the initial feed can sometimes be a bear!
Great post Rachel and added commentary Christy. On top of that, first make sure your products and data comply with Google Product Search Program Policies:
http://www.google.com/support/merchants/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=188484
If you don’t follow any of those bigger program policy rules your account can be suspended indefinitely. It’s one of the hardest suspensions to get lifted.
Thanks for your input Andrew. Perhaps a “what not to do” with product submissions could really help our readers. Thanks for the tips and please stop by again!
Absolutely! The requirements are really hard to understand, figuring out what lines not to cross is a good first step before you get too deep into feed development. Here’s a perfect example, Google requires shipping and tax info for all products submitted, but is not enforcing that requirement:
http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2115655/Rule-Abiding-Merchants-Abandoned-by-Google-Product-Search
We’re already halfway to creating a “what not to do” from your tips! Thanks for adding this helpful link for our readers 🙂