A Shopify Product Feed Integrated To Google Merchant Center Is Critical To Your Online Store’s Success
The first step for most people that are researching a product online, their first step is often Google. Brands often think that selling their products on Google simply means that they can have their products show up on Google Shopping… but it extends beyond that microsite.
A comprehensive feed that’s integrated into Google Merchant Center uses the feed to format your product information not only for Google Shopping, but other Merchant Center programs, including shopping ads, free product listings, and Buy on Google. These product feeds are heavily integrated with the default search engine results page (SERP) as well.
Google’s SERP And Shopping
For instance, here’s a search for 2xl jogging shorts men. You’ll see that this is a default search engine results page, but it has Shopping Ads, Shopping, Online Store carousels, image searches, and other entries included in the search results. It even enables Buy on Google across other sites like YouTube.
Getting your site ranked on an organic search result for a default search can be incredibly competitive. However, getting displayed in Google Shopping results or Google Shopping Ad results within a SERP can be far easier… especially if the product feed that you’ve integrated with Google Merchant Center has additional fields included for relevant search results.
Google Channel on Shopify
If you’re a Shopify site, for example, there are additional Google Merchant fields that are not automatically populated by your Shopify data and that must be filled out to ensure your products are found with relevant searches on Google. Shopify has an outstanding tutorial that you should read for adding Google as a sales channel:
Shopify and Google Merchant Center Feed
Google E-commerce Feed Fields
When publishing an e-commerce feed to Google Merchant Center, there are several important fields that you should pay close attention to in order to ensure that your products are accurately represented and eligible for display in Google Shopping. The most important fields include:
- Product Identifiers – This includes fields such as GTIN (Global Trade Item Number), brand, and MPN (Manufacturer Part Number). These identifiers help Google match your products with the correct information and can improve visibility in search results.
- Product Title – The title should accurately describe the product and include the brand name and product type. It’s very important to ensure this matches the search phrases that users look for as well as a means to differentiate your brand or product.
- Description – The description should provide a detailed explanation of the product features and benefits. Again, it’s very important to ensure this matches the search phrases that users look for as well as a means to differentiate your brand or product.
- Product Identifiers – This includes fields such as GTIN (Global Trade Item Number), brand, and MPN (Manufacturer Part Number). These identifiers help Google match your products with the correct information and can improve visibility in search results.
- Image Links – High-quality images are important for attracting clicks and providing customers with a clear understanding of what the product looks like.
- Availability – Google uses this field to determine whether a product is in stock or out of stock. It’s important to keep this information up to date to avoid disappointment for customers.
- Price – The price field should include the current selling price for the product, including any applicable taxes and shipping costs.
- Shipping – This includes fields such as shipping cost, shipping weight, and shipping label. This information is used by Google to provide shipping information to customers.
- Link to the product page – This field should include the URL of the product page on your website so that customers can easily navigate to the page to purchase the product.
All of the information above, when properly filled out, will appear in Google Merchant Center with your Shopify feed connected. However, it doesn’t populate the additional fields that help your products get found through specific queries and product filters for Google users. For those, you’ll need to navigate to Google Fields on a product page:
Critical Google Fields in Shopify
In this screen, you’re met with quite a few additional fields that can assist Google users find your products within relevant searches, queries, and filters:
- Google Product Category – This is an absolute must and should be directly copies and pasted from Google’s list of product categories. This is a hierarchical entry and you should be as specific as possible.
- Condition – Whether or not the product is new.
These fields are required for free listings and for shopping ads.
- Gender – if your product is specifically designed for a gender, you should include this here.
- Age – this isn’t the actual age, it’s an age group. This can be extremely useful for consumers that are searching specifically for newborn, infant, toddler, kids, or adult products.
- Color – this would be the common color(s) that people would be using to search for your product.
- Size – the size of the product(. Use only one attribute per product that’s the size value for your target country. Don’t submit values such as “n/a”, “none”, or “multisize”.
- Size system – the country’s size system that you’ve included the size from.
Not required but should be included when it’s a distinguishing feature:
- Material – if there are relevant searches for the materials you make your products from, include them here.
- Size type – this can be extremely useful for consumers that are searching specifically for maternity or big & tall sizes.
Another additional set of fields is the unit.
- Pricing units (base and actual) – ounces, pounds, etc. This is used mostly with regard to hardware, office supplies, food, beverages, flooring, business cards, perfume, and other products where “price per unit” is used by buyers.
By accurately populating these fields, you can help ensure that your products are accurately represented and eligible for display in Google Shopping, leading to increased visibility and sales.
Watch The Lesson: Shopify Google Shopping Feed Optimization
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