How to set up and optimize your Google Shopping Data feed. Tips and advices on listing your products on Google product search.

2. Google shopping was launched in Australia in May 2011 Google Product Search is currently available in the U.S., U.K., Australia, Germany, France, Japan, China, Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain.

3. Getting Started

4. Setting up a Google Merchant Account You can sign up with any of your Google accounts It is highly recommended to use the same log-ins for both Merchant account and Web master tools account To submit Data feed with web page URLs you first need to register the relevant domain with the MC account. If you submit feeds of multiple websites, set up a “Multi-Client Account”

5. Setting up a Google Merchant Account Claiming and verifying a website - Verifying http://www.example.com only covers the www sub-host and any paths underneath, but not the entire domain. To cover the entire domain, you must verify and claim the root domain, e.g. http://example.com Merchant Center is different from “Google Base” MC is for uploading product data. Google Base is used to upload other types of structured data such as real estate data.

6. Creating & Submitting a Data Feed Two File formats are supported Text (.txt) – Feed can be created with MS Excel and saved as a tab-delimted file XML It is very important to follow the “Products Feed Specifications” as set out in Merchant Center Guidelines. If the nature of the store/products is such that the data changes every moment where daily updates are not enough, then the ideal solution should be “Content API for Shopping”

7. Submitting a Data Feed Before submitting a data feed, it needs to be registered in Google Merchant Center to let Google know to expect the file. There are 3 basic ways to upload the data file Direct Upload (Files under 20 MB in size) FTP Upload (Files under 1GB in size) Automatic Upload (Scheduled Fetch) (Files under 1 GB in size) If you're submitting your items for the first time to locales other than U.S., U.K., and Germany, it may take several weeks for items to be reviewed and begin appearing in the search results.

8. Optimizing

9. Optimizing Shopping Data Feed Keyword Rich Product Titles and Descriptions If you already rank well for some product keywords, there is a high chance that you get better rankings in Shopping Results as well Price competitiveness of your products Size and Trust associated with the Merchant Reviews and Ratings from Trusted Shopping Review Sites Completeness of your feed attributes

10. Optimizing Shopping Data Feed Frequency of updating the feed (Data Freshness) Real-time updation )Via API, Few times a day or at least once a month (Google anyway expire all data in 30 days unless they are updated) Any discrepancy of data between the feed and website can result in suspension of the item from the Shopping results Use of Custom Attributes (enables your products to show up for more long tail searches on Google Shopping) Selection of right product category (as suggested by Google, with your own refinements) It is very important to follow the “Program policies and Requirements” set out in the Google MC

11. Monitoring

12. Measuring Performance This can be done in Three ways Adding tracking parameters to web page URLS submitted via the data feed Reporting Feature in the Merchant Center Products tab in the MC which reports impressions and clicks of each item submitted

13. How We Can Help You We at Netstarter were ahead of the game and have already built the tools to connect our client's ecommerce sites with Google Shopping. Feel free to contact us if you would like to get expert and professional consultation in optimising your Google Shoppinglistings.

14. Sources http://www.google.com/intl/en_us/products/submit.html http://google-au.blogspot.com/2011/05/google-shopping-arrives-in-australia.html http://www.google.com/support/merchants/ http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-rank-well-in-google-products-search-a-big-list-of-places-to-get-reviews http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/15915/How-to-Optimize-Your-Google-Shopping-Data-Feed.aspx#ixzz1RmnJiL9a http://blog.cpcstrategy.com/2011/04/product-feed-management-tips-%E2%80%93-optimize-keywords/ http://cpcstrategy.com/oi/googlewp.html http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/10670/eCommerce-Marketing-Google-Shopping-vs-Google-Organic-Search.aspx#ixzz1RmoJFlyQ