Google Shopping

Product Feed Upload Methods

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How does Product Feed Get to Google?

Option 1: Manually (Direct Upload)

Text XML
file file

Your product Merchant Center,

catalog data from where you keep your
your webshop Shopping product data
SFTP/ Shopping
Google Scheduled
FTP/ Content
Sheets Fetch
GCP API

Option 2: Automatically

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 Upload Methods
Manually Automatically

Direct Google Scheduled SFTP / Google Content API

Upload Sheets Fetch FTP /
GCS

File Size 20MB 20MB 4GB 4GB N/A

Technical
Requirements

Who Good for retailers which have
consistent product items.
- Product feed: at least every 30 days
- Online product inventory update feed:
every day
Good for retailers with variable Good for tech-savvy retailers,
product items. and require implementation in
merchant’s systems.

Help Center Link Link Link Link Link

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Online Product Inventory Update Feed
Larger advertisers with frequent price / availability changes that want to retain control of
Link
update frequency
● Allows updating of
price/availability/sale price
for partial items separately
from updating the regular
product feed.
● Requires separate feed in
specific format.
● Requires existing regular
product feed in Merchant Center
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 Uploading a feed - Step1

- Products
- Online Product Inventory Update

Select “Taiwan”

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Uploading a feed - Step2

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Uploading a feed - Scheduled fetch

The feed is hosted on

retailer’s web servers.

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Uploading a feed - Manual upload

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Uploading a feed - SFTP / FTP / GCS

The feed is transferred to

Google’s servers.

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Uploading a feed - SFTP / FTP / GCS

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Uploading a feed - Advanced settings

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When should Feeds Ideally be Updated?

Regular updates
● We recommend an update to data
feeds as often as your offer
information changes -- up to once per
day
● Preferably schedule data feed to be
updated automatically
● Remember to at least upload a new
feed at least once every 30 days

Best upload time

● Ideally schedule your feed to refresh
in the middle of the night when your
merchant site traffic is low
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Product Feed Feed Rules

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What are Feed Rules?

A way to transform data in an existing feed via

Google Merchant Center (GMC).
● Map existing feed fields to Google required attributes
● Map existing values to required Google values
● Populate attributes with a single value or different values based on conditional criteria
● Combine values to form or augment existing values
● Exclude items from Google Shopping

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Use Case 1 - Map field to attribute

Specify a field to update an attribute.

Select any field from the merchant’s

feed to map to a defined Google feed
spec attribute.

Example

Retailer sends a field called “stock status” that

indicates if the item is in stock or out of stock.
Map the “stock status” field to the “availability”
attribute.

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Use Case 2 - Map existing value to spec value

Specify an existing value to update a required value.

Map an existing value in a merchant’s Example

Retailer sends “yes” or “no” in the availability field. Map
feed field to a Google feed-spec required
these to “in stock” or “out of stock”.
value. Typically combined with mapping
an existing field to an attribute.

Attribute Mapping Attribute Mapping

Field name in feed: Mapped to:

‘stock status’ ➜ ‘availability’

Value Mapping
Value in feed: Mapped to:
‘yes’ ➜ ‘in stock’

‘no’ ➜ ‘out of stock’

Value Mapping
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Use Case 3 - Create Static Value

Populate a static value into an attribute for all products.

Populate or overwrite missing or

Populating Values
incorrect values with the same value
‘condition ‘ value in feed: ‘condition’ value set to:
for an attribute across all products in
the feed. [missing] ➜ ‘new’

Example

Retailer only sells products in “new” condition.

Set the value for the attribute “condition” to
always be “new”.

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 Use Case 4 - Create combination values

Create a value for attribute by combining values.

Create a value for an attribute by Example

The retailer does not have Brand or Size in their titles.
combining values.

Target attribute

Combining a static value

with an existing field.

Select “Overwrite…”
to replace existing
incomplete values

Note: You cannot use a feed rules-modified attribute or value in a subsequent rule.
‘brand’ Space ‘title’ Added Text ‘size’ ‘title’ value set to:
‘Victoria’s
‘Victoria’s + + ‘Crazy Awesome + + ➜ Secret Crazy
‘ ’ ‘, Size: ’ ‘Small’
Secret’ Swimsuit’ Awesome Swimsuit,
Size:
Confidential Small’
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Use Case 5 - Create Value Conditionally

Create a value based on conditional rules.

Create a value based on

conditionally-matched criteria in the
feed.

Example

GTIN is not available for 25 products in the feed.

A retailer can set GTIN based for these products
through simple “if … then” statements.

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Use Case 5 (continued) - Order of Operations

Create a value based on conditional rules.

Conditional rules are evaluated in

order. Evaluation stops after the first
match.

Example

Age group is missing. By searching the title for

keywords, this attribute can be populated.
However, keep in mind if 2 values are in the
attribute, only the first conditional value will be
executed.

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Use Case 5 (continued) - ELSE functionality

Create a value based on conditional rules.

Remember to use the ELSE function

correctly!

Example

Gender is “unisex” for all products, but can be

changed by checking the product_type or GPC
which is provided.

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Use Case 5 (continued) - Comparison Operators

Create a value based on conditional rules.

Conditional rules are very useful for

custom label management!

Example

If a retailer needs to set custom labels based

on price points, then set-up rules like this:

● Add the custom label attribute

● Create a value based on criteria in a
feed field

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Use Case 6 - Harvest Values

Extract a value from one attribute to populate another attribute.

Select an attribute to extract values

from in order to populate into another
attribute.

Example

Retailer does not send the “color” attribute, but

provides colors in titles. Add the “color”
attribute and select “Extract values from an
existing field”. Then enter the color search
terms.

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Use Case 7 - Exclude Item

Exclude an item from Google Shopping.

Use excluded_destination to exclude

an item from the feed.

Example

Retailer sends a group of items that can be

flagged for policy violations in their feed. By
excluding on GPC, the retailer can proactively
avoid a suspension.

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How Do Feed Rules Work?

● Rules are applied to an individual product feed in GMC.

● Rules automatically run after feed upload. It may take a few hours to see
changes processed and reflected for larger feeds.

● The Feed Rules tab may suggest attributes with processing errors.

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How Do Feed Rules Work? (continued)

● There is no test environment,

but rules do work on test feeds.

● View the changes via List section in GMC.

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