Google shopping-white-paper - part ii

Google Product Data Feeds:

Do’s & Don’ts

Data Feeds: Do’s and Don’ts
Index

I. Overview
II. Formats
§§ TXT
§§ CSV
§§ XML

III. Product Feed Specifications
§§ Required Attributes
§§ Additonal Attributes

IV. Uploading Data Feeds
§§
§§
§§
§§

Manual Upload
Automatic Upload
Google Spreadsheet
FTP Protocol

V. Optimizing Feeds
§§
§§
§§
§§

Product Type Attributes
Title & Description Attributes
Image Attributes
Keeping Data Fresh

VI. Conclusion

sales@verticalnerve.com
800.330.9450

01

Do’s & Don’ts

An Overview
While many ecommerce websites are al-

will help improve impressions, CTRs and

ready utilizing Product Listing Ads (PLAs),

conversions.

it is imperative that companies understand
the “dos and don’ts” of how to properly set

Google defines a data feed as “a file made

up a product feed and optimize it accord-

up of a list of products which use group-

ingly—particularly in the light of recent

ings of attributes that define each one of
a merchant’s products in a

changes from product
listing ads to Google

“... it is

unique way.” By describing

Shopping ads.

imperative that

products and using these

companies under-

is much easier for online

This is because PLAs
access both Google
AdWords and Google
Merchant Center (a.k.a
Google Shopping); ecom-

shoppers.

stand the

“dos & don’ts”

The first important decision
to make is to choose the

merce merchants need

of how to

to have full control of

properly set up a

their Google Shopping

attributes, finding products

format of the data feed. The

data feed. Google match-

product feed and

es search queries to the

optimize it ...”

format needs to be selected
according to an individual’s
needs as a merchant as well
as the ability to create the

data that is sent to Goo-

file. Using third party solu-

gle Merchant Center. On

tions, SQL programming,

top of this, Google has

Microsoft Excel and Access,

feed specifications that need to be accurate

along with other tools can help configure

and up to date in order for the campaigns

and format product files. Google actually

to run properly. There are a multitude of

supports data feeds in three general for-

data issues that can arise when optimiz-

mats: text (.txt), comma separated (.csv)

ing a data feed and enhancing data quality

and XML (.xml).

800.330.9450

02

Do’s & Don’ts

Data Feeds: Do’s and Don’ts
File Formats
.TXT Format
Smaller merchants are likely to prefer the use of a .txt format, as it requires
the least technical knowledge and can easily be created using a spreadsheet editor, such as Excel or a Google Doc. The screenshot below shows an
example of the spreadsheet version of a product feed. Field attribute names
need to be included as headers in the first row, while the rows thereafter
describe items according to the attributes. When adding products and the
corresponding attributes to the feed is complete, the file needs to be saved
as a tab-delimited file.
You can access the Google Feed Specifications at:
https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/160567
which we will talk about later on in this report.

.CSV Format
A comma-separated value is very common and looks just like excel. This file
format is very similar to .TXT in that it requires the least amount of technical
knowledge to use. The format is widely supported by consumer, business
and scientific applications. The most common use of this format is moving
tabular data between programs that natively operate on incompatible formats. This works because so many programs support some variation of CSV
at least as an alternative import/export format.

800.330.9450

03

Do’s & Don’ts

.XML Format
XML is for more technically advanced merchants and the data feed can also
be submitted as the extended version of RSS 2.0 or Atom 1.0. These files
can be created and edited using any text editor tool. Merchants using RSS
2.0 need to know that there are three pre-defined elements at the item level:
title, link, and description, where all three are required for product data
feeds.
In order to include additional required elements as well as more detailed
information about each product, Google extended RSS 2.00 by adding the
Google Merchant Center feed namespace.

The screenshot below shows an overview of required and recommended attributes that need to be included in
the data feed before it can be uploaded to Google Merchant Center.

Besides declaring the Google Merchant Center namespace (see yellow
highlighting), a prefix within every attribute tag must be added to distinguish
attributes from elements defined in RSS 2.0. Without the prefix, all of the
attributes and values would be ignored. Atom 1.0-based data feeds differ
from RSS 2.0 feeds in that they require five pre-defined elements at the entry
level—title, id, link, summary, and updated.

800.330.9450

04

Do’s & Don’ts

Product Feed
Specifications
It is important to understand what field

It is also important to understand that an

attributes are available for data feeds. The

item refers to a single variation of a prod-

more relevant data sent to Google Mer-

uct as a SKU might come in multiple varia-

chant Center, the better chance Google

tions – different color, material, pattern, or

has to match search queries to product

size. Parent-child relationships are espe-

data. It’s important to know how the data

cially important in the apparel category

is formatted in order to optimize it accord-

where Google will police data policies the

ing to Google’s rules.

most.

As the screenshot below shows, some

Visit Google Shopping to review http://

attributes are required, while others are

support.google.com/merchants/an-

recommended. Items like clothing/apparel

swer/188494?hl=en product feed specifi-

or media might also need additional attri-

cations.

butes.
§§ If required attributes are not included for an item, that item will not
show up in Google Shopping results.
§§ If recommended attributes are
not included for an item, that
item will show up less frequently in Google Shopping results.

The screenshot (above) shows an overview of required and recommended attributes that need to be included
in the data feed before uploading to Google Merchant Center.

800.330.9450

05

Do’s & Don’ts

Product Feed Specifications:

Required Attributes
Brand: This needs to be the brand name of the item, not
the store name, unless the product is manufactured by
that store. This field is one of the three unique product
identifiers that are required to process data.

ID: Each item has to have a unique identifier and the ID
cannot be re-used between feeds.
Title: This describes the item, so be sure to include any
characteristics such as color or brand to differentiate one
item from another. The title can be up to 70 characters
long.

GTIN: This is the Global Trade Item Number for the
specific item.

Description: Use up to 10,000 characters to include
further information about an item. Be aware that this is
displayed in the shopping search results.

MPN: This is the Manufacturer Part Number of the item,
and it identifies the product to its manufacturer and specifies each item.

Product type: This field categorizes the product submitted. It’s imperative to utilize Google category values at
the most granular level as well as including product type
(merchant category value). This allows Google to place
products in the most targeted search query results.
Note: It is possible to insert both Google and merchant
category values in this field but not vice versa.

Gender/Age Group/Color/Size: This is required for
apparel products.
Tax: This attribute is only accepted in the US and can be
used to override any merchant level settings in a Google
Merchant Center account.

Link: This is the URL that links directly to a product.

Shipping: Provide specific shipping estimates for items
to override the shipping settings submitted in a Google
Merchant Center account.

Image link: This attribute will display an image of the
item. The accepted image formats are GIF, JPG (or JPEG),
PNG, BMP, and TIF. High resolution images are a good
practice as Google will show pictures with higher image
quality over other devices like mobile and tablets.

Shipping weight: This attribute is required in order
to set up a shipping rule in the Merchant Center that is
based on weight.
Item group ID: This is required for all variant apparel
products in the US.

Condition: This lets the buyer know if an item is ‘new,’
‘refurbished’ or ‘used.’ This is a required field and very
important to show if a product is being sold at a discount.

Color: This defines the dominant color of an item but
multiple colors can be added by using a ‘/’ in order of
prominence.

Availability: This declares whether an item is ‘in stock’,
‘available for order’, ‘out of stock’ or ‘preorder’.

Material: This attribute describes the type of material or
fabric that makes up an item.

Price: The price needs to contain the most prominent
price on the landing page and must include a currency
according to the ISO 4217 Standard.

Pattern: Pattern or graphic print featured on an item.
Size: Specific size of a product.

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06

Do’s & Don’ts

Product Feed Specifications:

Additional Attributes
Google product category: This attribute is recommended as long as it is not required to further describe
your item by category. There are over 4,000 Google
product categories merchants can choose from at http://
support.google.com/merchants/answer/1705911.

Expiration date: This is the date that an item listing
will expire. If you do not provide this attribute, items will
expire and no longer appear in Google Shopping results
after 30 days. You cannot use this attribute to extend the
expiration period to longer than 30 days.

Additional image link: Any images that show your
product/item from a different angle, images of packaging or variants of the product.

Custom Label 0: This attribute can be used to group
the items in a Shopping campaign by calues of your
choosing, such as seasonal or clearance. You can create
up to five custom labels, numbered 0 through 4, for each
item in your feed. You may submit one value per item for
each custom label attribute.

Sale price: This attribute shows the advertised sale
price of the item and is recommended for items that are
on sale.

Custom Label 1: See Custom Label 0 description
above.

Sale price effective date: This is used in conjunction
with the sale price attribute and indicates the date range
that applies to the sale price.
AdWords grouping: This attribute groups products in
an arbitrary way. It can only hold one value and can be
used with CPC or CPA bidding.

above
.
above.

AdWords label: This attribute only works with CPC
bidding but can hold multiple values.

above.

AdWords redirect: This attribute allows advertisers to
specify a separate URL that can be used to track traffic
coming from Google Shopping.

Unit Pricing Measure: This attribute allows you to
specify unit pricing information for an item. The attribute
defines the measure and dimension of an item, e.g. 135
ml or 55g. The unit price refers to the volume, weight,
area, or length of the product without any packaging
or the net drained weight of the product (in the case of
food).

Gender/age/size: While these attributes are required
for all apparel items, it might also make sense to include
them for any other items to further describe the products.
Color: This attribute describes items by color.

Unit Pricing Base Measure: The ‘unit pricing base
measure’ attribute specifies your preference of the denominator of the unit price (e.g. 100ml).

Online only: This attribute clarifies whether an item is
available for purchase only online.

Energy efficiency class: The ‘energy efficiency class’
attribute allows you to specify the energy efficiency class
for certain product categories as defined in EU directive
2010/30/EU.

Excluded destination: Attribute allows you to control the destination of your items, and the period during
which your items are valid.

800.330.9450

07

Do’s & Don’ts

Uploading
Product Data Fields
Manual Upload
Once a data feed has been successfully created, it is time to upload it to a Merchant Center
account. For entering data manually, follow these steps:

1

Sign into the Merchant Center account.

2

Go to Data Feeds > New Data Feed.

3

Choose where to display products (by country), in order to target different
countries; submit a feed for each individual country as some countries have
different attribute requirements.

4

Choose Google Base as the format and enter a name for the .txt file.

800.330.9450

08

Do’s & Don’ts

5

Save the changes, then go to “manual upload” to upload the feed. Third-party
technologies can also be used to automate the feed by using an FTP or SFTP
protocol. This is illustrated below:

Once the feed has been uploaded, Google will process and test the feed. Depending on the size of a file, it may take a while to process the feed. Check back
on the status of the uploaded data feed by clicking on the dashboard in the
Google Merchant Center. A linked status will appear next to the file. Click this
link, to view the details about the feed validation. It will show any errors that
need to be fixed before trying to upload the feed again. Make sure that any errors and bad formats can be fixed otherwise it’s much more likely that products
will be disapproved.
To review the quality of a data feed, go to the Products link in the left navigation bar within Merchant Center. This page displays the status of each product
and will display up to 10,000 products randomly. If there are more than 10,000
products, a user must search by status in order to view them individually.
Note: it may take up to 24 hours for products to start appearing in Google
Shopping results.

800.330.9450

09

Do’s & Don’ts

Automating the Process:
Feed Schedules & Upload Formats
Once the feed has been uploaded, it is

be less than 1 gigabyte, and the user-agent

scheduled to expire after 30 days. In order

“googlebot” cannot be blocked from the

for products to continue showing in Goo-

directory containing the feed. Moreover,

gle Shopping results; the feed will need to

the feed

be re-uploaded. The feed will be need to

URL has to point directly to the data feed

updated and re-uploaded on a daily ba-

file in one of Google’s supported file for-

sis or as frequently as products or prices

mats.

change.

Important: The URL of the file location
must begin with http://, https://, ftp://, or

While manual feed uploads are easy and

sftp://

usually don’t take a lot of time (processing the feed, however, may take longer
depending on the size of
the feed), an automated
schedule can be created to
have the feed upload automatically without having
to worry about it. To accomplish this, click “create
schedule” in the data feed
overview, and the following
window will appear: Fill it
out with the desired frequency, timing and location
of the feed and then click
“schedule” to complete the
set up process.
This upload method requires the size of the file to

800.330.9450

10

Do’s & Don’ts

Uploading via:
Google Spreadsheet
Data feeds can also be submitted via
Google Spreadsheets. If a smaller sized
company doesn’t have the technologies
to automate data manipulation rules
and feed rules, it is possible to submit
via Google Spreadsheets. For this option, either use the existing template
that Google provides or submit a Google spreadsheet that can be created by
an individual:
§§ Click on the new data feed and
provide the target country,
format and data feed file name
§§ Select the checkbox next
to “I want to use Google
spreadsheet” to store, edit
and upload the feed.
§§ Data can be uploaded by
generating a template feed or
by using an existing Google
spreadsheet that contains
all of the individual product
information. The spreadsheet
must be viewable to everyone
with a link. The advantage
of this option is that it is
simple to create and to
update as content is uploaded
directly from the information
given in the spreadsheet.
However, this format cannot
be used to upload a large
volume of data: files must
be no larger than 20MB.

800.330.9450

11

Do’s & Don’ts

Uploading Via:
FTP Protocol
FTP is an advanced method to submit data

§§ To use FTP, go to the Settings
link in the Merchant Center account and click FTP.

feeds to Google Merchant Center. This
format has to be used for files larger than
20MB. The file also needs to be smaller

§§ Enter a username and password
for the FTP account and click
Save Changes. It may take several hours before the account creation takes effect. Also, once the
FTP account is created, the chosen
username cannot be changed.

than one gigabyte.
If a file is larger than one gigabyte, it can
be split up and uploaded in several parts.
This is the process Vertical Nerve uses to
submit product data.

800.330.9450

12

Do’s & Don’ts

Methods for Submitting Data via FTP:

Using Web Browser:
§§ Open a browser window
§§ Type ftp://uploads.google.com and click enter
§§ Enter the FTP username and password, then select log on
§§ Drag and drop the feed into the browser window and wait for the file to transfer.

Using an FTP Program
An FTP program must be installed on the computer to use this
method. The computer will need to be configured so that it
can connect to Google’s FTP server:
§§ Host name: uploads.google.com
§§ User: the FTP username set up in Google Merchant Center
§§ Password: the FTP password set up in Google Merchant Center
§§ Logon-type: it should be set to normal, not anonymous.

800.330.9450

13

Do’s & Don’ts

Using a DOS Prompt
Send the feed using the DOS command prompt without having to use an FTP client:
§§ From the Start menu, select Programs, then select MSDOS Prompt, or from the Start menu, select Programs,
then select Accessories, then select Command Prompt
§§ When the black prompt screen appears, use ‘cd’ to
get to the directory that the file is saved in.
§§ Type in ftp uploads.google.com
§§ When the FTP connection is made, the prompt
will ask for the username. Enter the FTP username of the Google Merchant Center account.
§§ Next enter the password, which was previously set up in Google Merchant Center.
§§ Type put <filename>. This command will send the
file from the computer to Google’s FTP server.
§§ Everything is complete after the “transfer complete” acknowledgement.

800.330.9450

14

Do’s & Don’ts

Product Data Feeds:
Performance & Optimization
Once the product feed is created, it has

While most advertisers would now stop

been uploaded to Google Merchant Center

and focus on building out their Product

without any errors and has been running

Listing Ads campaign in Google and opti-

for a few days; the optimization process of

mizing the product ads within AdWords,

the feed can begin.

the product feed needs to be constantly
optimized as well to guarantee a strong

Besides consistently monitoring the data

overall performance. To learn more about

feed for errors, account managers need to

Vertical Nerve’s Product Listing Ad optimi-

also ensure a high-quality shopping expe-

zation processes please ask for our recent

rience for customers. This can be achieved

white papers on our product-specific PLA

by accurately describing all items, up-

strategy or request one of our PLA webi-

dating the status of your products on the

nars.

website at all times, and complying with
Google’s Shopping policies. Vertical Nerve

Just like an approach to website/content/

takes this process very seriously. Our

ad copy optimization, product feed opti-

team ensures that your product titles, de-

mization includes incorporating keyword

scription fields, promotional texts, Google

research and testing different product

category values etc. are optimized so that

images, titles and descriptions.

each product is displayed with relevant
keyword phrases that have high conversion ratios.

800.330.9450

15

Do’s & Don’ts

KEy Product Attributes

As a rule of thumb, it is important that the
customer who clicks through a website
and sees the same product information
(price, availability, etc.) as is presented in

#1

Google Shopping results.
Google provides the following tips to ensure fresh data:
§§ Create or update a product feed
right after the database is updated.
§§ Submit the feed to Google at the
same time as the website is updated.

#2

§§ Try to minimize the amount of time
that the data is being processed, if a
third-party feed provider is used.

#3

§§ Use the Content API for Shopping
if the product information changes very frequently such that four
updates per day are not enough
to meet quality standards.

800.330.9450

This attribute classifies the product in order to
closely match the organization of products
on a website. However, it is also important
to choose a powerful description to reach the
highest potential of traffic but with the least
competition. So a clothing retailer for example, would want to research whether it is best
to use “clothing”, “clothes” or “apparel” to
classify products.

Title & Description
Attributes
The text of the title attribute will be shown
on the general search results and Shopping
results pages. The description will only be
shown on the Shopping results page. First,
make sure the title and description is consistent with the image of the product. Secondly,
make sure that it includes an exact description
of the product being offered. Include trends,
holidays, or other current events in the description to gain an advantage over competition. The titles and descriptions need to also fit

§§ If an update is made to a website multiple times per day, remember to submit the feed
multiple times per day.

§§ Make sure that any scheduled feed
fetch from the server happens at the
same time as the website is updated.

Product Type Attributes

16

Image Attributes
This is a very important attribute that often
gets overlooked. To ensure an excellent
customer experience, the image needs to
exactly match the product that users a are
looking for, down to the color, size, material,
etc. Google also recommends high resolution
images so that users can see quality pictures
through smart phones and tablets. This is an
optimization strategy the Vertical Nerve team
recommends to improve mobile marketing
strategies. It may also be beneficial to use
unique product images in the case that one
or more products being sold are the same as
the competition. Just as testing occurs with
different ad copy choices in AdWords, it is
also crucial to test different images and build
on the results that are seen. These tests need
to be performed on regular basis to keep the
product feed fresh and attractive to customers.

Do’s & Don’ts

Product Data Feeds
Conclusion
Some aspects of managing PLA feeds can

Google Shopping product data allows

be complicated, but the guiding principles

merchants to control PLA impressions

are simple: providing as many relevant

because Google will match search query

attributes as possible and keeping product

results to that product data.

feeds up to date allows Google to show the
most relevant products to customers, lead-

Please contact our sales team for more in-

ing to hiring sales for merchants. Quality

formation on how Vertical Nerve can help

data that is relevant to products pages will

improve PLA impressions.

help improve impressions.

Written by Dice Nakamura
VP of Business Development / Ecommerce Strategist

Vertical Nerve helps companies grow their online revenue
through highly effective Search Marketing and improve
their online conversions through Web Analytics, Conversion Rate Optimization, and website Design & Development. Serving national brands since 1999, Vertical Nerve is
a Google Analytics Certified Partner and Premium Authorized Reseller, a Google AdWords Certified Partner, Bing

Contact Sales:
800.330.9450
© 2014 Vertical Nerve Inc.
www.verticalnerve.com

Ads Professional Agency and Optimizely Certified Partner.
Learn more at www.VerticalNerve.com.

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