Google Merchant Centre UK Feed Specifications Simplified
Recent rounds of changes in Google’s merchant centre mean that many will need to generate new product data feeds to upload or risk their products not appearing.
The Summary of Attribute Requirements, can be hard to follow for the UK.
To simplify, only the data relating to the UK has been extracted here and also split into an easier to read format. See what requirements you need to meet by looking at those for your type of product.
- Apparel generally means clothes and shoes.
- Apparel with variants means clothes or shoes with different buying options, like size or colour.
- Non-apparel variants means other products that may have different options.
- R means required
- + means recommended, but not required
| Non-Apparel Variant | Apparel – Variant | Apparel Products (Non-variant) | Custom Made Goods | All Other Products | |
| id | R | R | R | R | R |
| title | R | R | R | R | R |
| description | R | R | R | R | R |
| link | R | R | R | R | R |
| image link | R | R | R | R | R |
| condition | R | R | R | R | R |
| availability | R | R | R | R | R |
| price | R | R | R | R | R |
| google product category | + | R | R | + | + |
| product type | + | + | + | + | + |
| additional image link | + | + | + | + | + |
| brand | 2 of 3 are R | Brand R ‘GTIN’/ ‘MPN’ + | Brand R ‘GTIN’/ ‘MPN’ + | + | 2 of 3 are R |
| gtin | |||||
| mpn | |||||
| color | Req if applicable | + | + | ||
| size | Req if applicable | + | + | ||
| material | Req if applicable | Req if applicable | + | + | + |
| pattern | Req if applicable | Req if applicable | + | + | + |
| item group id | Req if item is a variant. | Req if item is a variant. | + | + | + |
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Apparel and Product Variations Indicators
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Unique Product Identifiers
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Standard Requirements
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google product category: for Apparel & Accessories items only
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product type. Find a suitable top level if possible in the taxonomy
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Products with different price options
If you sell a product which is uploaded at one price for the titled product, but offer also for the purchaser to be able to upgrade and buy a bigger product then that is okay whilst you adhere to the merchant policies :
Prices
The price on the landing page has to be equal to the price on Google Product Search. If the landing page contains multiple prices, the price on Google Product Search has to be equal to the most prominent price on the landing page.Links, URLs and Your Website
It is okay to put all variations of a product on the same page.
http://www.google.com/support/merchants/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=188484
So, if you upload a product in your feed for 9.99 and you have options for larger or smaller at different prices, they are variants and are okay to be on the page whilst the main price for the product is very clear on the landing page.
Do you see this differently ? Let me know.
Merchant Centre Data not displayed here.
Columns for Media, Video game software and Books have been removed as it is not applicable to our sellers.
Variant options for gender and age group also do not appear here as not being applicable for our sellers and for the UK it is a recommended value in any case.
Information regarding delivery costs are not displayed. You can set these globally in the merchant account control panel. If you set a global calculation by weight, then you need to include the weight.
Merchants can still get warnings regarding “missing identifiers” in their merchant centre even though the particular field may not be required.
