google shopping-white-paper - part ii
DESCRIPTION
Google Shopping white paper covering best practices to structure your data. This is a follow up white paper from the product-specific PLA strategy I wrote about in part I. Please feel free to read both reports!TRANSCRIPT
Google Product Data Feeds:
Do’s & Don’ts
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
01 Google Product Data Feeds:Do’s & Don’ts800.330.9450
Data Feeds: Do’s and Don’tsIndex
While many ecommerce websites are al-
ready utilizing Product Listing Ads (PLAs),
it is imperative that companies understand
the “dos and don’ts” of how to properly set
up a product feed and optimize it accord-
ingly—particularly in the light of recent
changes from product
listing ads to Google
Shopping ads.
This is because PLAs
access both Google
AdWords and Google
Merchant Center (a.k.a
Google Shopping); ecom-
merce merchants need
to have full control of
their Google Shopping
data feed. Google match-
es search queries to the
data that is sent to Goo-
gle Merchant Center. On
top of this, Google has
feed specifications that need to be accurate
and up to date in order for the campaigns
to run properly. There are a multitude of
data issues that can arise when optimiz-
ing a data feed and enhancing data quality
02
Google Product Data Feeds:An overview
will help improve impressions, CTRs and
conversions.
Google defines a data feed as “a file made
up of a list of products which use group-
ings of attributes that define each one of
a merchant’s products in a
unique way.” By describing
products and using these
attributes, finding products
is much easier for online
shoppers.
The first important decision
to make is to choose the
format of the data feed. The
format needs to be selected
according to an individual’s
needs as a merchant as well
as the ability to create the
file. Using third party solu-
tions, SQL programming,
Microsoft Excel and Access,
along with other tools can help configure
and format product files. Google actually
supports data feeds in three general for-
mats: text (.txt), comma separated (.csv)
and XML (.xml).
“... it is
imperative that
companies under-
stand the
“dos & don’ts” of how to
properly set up a
product feed and
optimize it ...”
Google Product Data Feeds:Do’s & Don’ts800.330.9450
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 spread-sheet 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/160567which we will talk about later on in this report.
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 for-
mats. This works because so many programs support some variation of CSV
at least as an alternative import/export format.
.CSV Format
Data Feeds: Do’s and Don’tsFile Formats
Google Product Data Feeds:Do’s & Don’ts800.330.9450
.TXT 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.
.XML Format
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.
Google Product Data Feeds:Do’s & Don’ts800.330.9450
It is important to understand what field
attributes are available for data feeds. The
more relevant data sent to Google Mer-
chant Center, the better chance Google
has to match search queries to product
data. It’s important to know how the data
is formatted in order to optimize it accord-
ing to Google’s rules.
As the screenshot below shows, some
attributes are required, while others are
recommended. Items like clothing/apparel
or media might also need additional attri-
butes.
§ If required attributes are not includ-
ed 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 frequent-
ly in Google Shopping results.
It is also important to understand that an
item refers to a single variation of a prod-
uct as a SKU might come in multiple varia-
tions – different color, material, pattern, or
size. Parent-child relationships are espe-
cially important in the apparel category
where Google will police data policies the
most.
Visit Google Shopping to review http://
support.google.com/merchants/an-
swer/188494?hl=en product feed specifi-
cations.
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.
Product Feedspecifications
Google Product Data Feeds:Do’s & Don’ts800.330.9450
Product Feed Specifications: Required Attributes
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.
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.
Product type: This field categorizes the product submit-ted. 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.
Link: This is the URL that links directly to a product.
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.
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.
Availability: This declares whether an item is ‘in stock’, ‘available for order’, ‘out of stock’ or ‘preorder’.
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.
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.
GtIn: This is the Global Trade Item Number for the specific item.
MPn: This is the Manufacturer Part Number of the item, and it identifies the product to its manufacturer and speci-fies each item.
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.
shipping: Provide specific shipping estimates for items to override the shipping settings submitted in a Google Merchant Center account.
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.
Color: This defines the dominant color of an item but multiple colors can be added by using a ‘/’ in order of prominence.
Material: This attribute describes the type of material or fabric that makes up an item.
Pattern: Pattern or graphic print featured on an item.
size: Specific size of a product.
06 Google Product Data Feeds:Do’s & Don’ts800.330.9450
Google product category: This attribute is recom-mended 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.
Additional image link: Any images that show your product/item from a different angle, images of packag-ing or variants of the product.
sale price: This attribute shows the advertised sale price of the item and is recommended for items that are on sale.
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.
AdWords label: This attribute only works with CPC bidding but can hold multiple values.
AdWords redirect: This attribute allows advertisers to specify a separate URL that can be used to track traffic coming from Google Shopping.
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.
online only: This attribute clarifies whether an item is available for purchase only online.
Excluded destination: Attribute allows you to con-trol the destination of your items, and the period during which your items are valid.
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.
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.
Custom Label 1: See Custom Label 0 description above. Custom Label 2: See Custom Label 0 description above.Custom Label 3: See Custom Label 0 description above.
Custom Label 4: See Custom Label 0 description above.
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).
Unit Pricing Base Measure: The ‘unit pricing base measure’ attribute specifies your preference of the denom-inator of the unit price (e.g. 100ml).
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.
Product Feed Specifications: Additional Attributes
07 Google Product Data Feeds:Do’s & Don’ts800.330.9450
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:
Sign into the Merchant Center account.
Go to Data Feeds > New Data Feed.
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.
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3
1
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Choose Google Base as the format and enter a name for the .txt file.
MAnUAL UPLoAD
UploadingProduct Data Fields
08 Google Product Data Feeds:Do’s & Don’ts800.330.9450
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:
5
Once the feed has been uploaded, Google will process and test the feed. De-
pending 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 er-
rors 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 naviga-
tion 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.
09 Google Product Data Feeds:Do’s & Don’ts800.330.9450
Once the feed has been uploaded, it is
scheduled to expire after 30 days. In order
for products to continue showing in Goo-
gle Shopping results; the feed will need to
be re-uploaded. The feed will be need to
updated and re-uploaded on a daily ba-
sis or as frequently as products or prices
change.
While manual feed uploads are easy and
usually don’t take a lot of time (process-
ing the feed, however, may take longer
depending on the size of
the feed), an automated
schedule can be created to
have the feed upload auto-
matically without having
to worry about it. To ac-
complish this, click “create
schedule” in the data feed
overview, and the following
window will appear: Fill it
out with the desired fre-
quency, timing and location
of the feed and then click
“schedule” to complete the
set up process.
This upload method re-
quires the size of the file to
be less than 1 gigabyte, and the user-agent
“googlebot” cannot be blocked from the
directory containing the feed. Moreover,
the feed
URL has to point directly to the data feed
file in one of Google’s supported file for-
mats.
Important: The URL of the file location
must begin with http://, https://, ftp://, or
sftp://
AUtomAtinG the ProceSS:FEED sChEDULEs & UPLoAD FoRMAts
10 Google Product Data Feeds:Do’s & Don’ts800.330.9450
UPloADinG viA:GooGLE sPREADshEEtData 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 op-
tion, either use the existing template
that Google provides or submit a Goo-
gle 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.
11 Google Product Data Feeds:Do’s & Don’ts800.330.9450
FTP is an advanced method to submit data
feeds to Google Merchant Center. This
format has to be used for files larger than
20MB. The file also needs to be smaller
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.
§ To use FTP, go to the Settings link in the Merchant Cen-ter account and click FTP.
§ Enter a username and password for the FTP account and click Save Changes. It may take sever-al hours before the account cre-ation takes effect. Also, once the FTP account is created, the chosen username cannot be changed.
12
UPloADinG viA:FtP PRotoCoL
Google Product Data Feeds:Do’s & Don’ts800.330.9450
Methods for Submitting Data via FTP:
§ 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 win-
dow and wait for the file to transfer.
Using Web Browser:
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.
Using an FTP Program
13 Google Product Data Feeds:Do’s & Don’ts800.330.9450
Send the feed using the DOS command prompt without hav-ing to use an FTP client:
§ From the Start menu, select Programs, then select MS-DOS 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 user-name of the Google Merchant Center account.
§ Next enter the password, which was previ-ously 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 “trans-fer complete” acknowledgement.
Using a DOS Prompt
14 Google Product Data Feeds:Do’s & Don’ts800.330.9450
Once the product feed is created, it has
been uploaded to Google Merchant Center
without any errors and has been running
for a few days; the optimization process of
the feed can begin.
Besides consistently monitoring the data
feed for errors, account managers need to
also ensure a high-quality shopping expe-
rience for customers. This can be achieved
by accurately describing all items, up-
dating the status of your products on the
website at all times, and complying with
Google’s Shopping policies. Vertical Nerve
takes this process very seriously. Our
team ensures that your product titles, de-
scription fields, promotional texts, Google
category values etc. are optimized so that
each product is displayed with relevant
keyword phrases that have high conver-
sion ratios.
While most advertisers would now stop
and focus on building out their Product
Listing Ads campaign in Google and opti-
mizing the product ads within AdWords,
the product feed needs to be constantly
optimized as well to guarantee a strong
overall performance. To learn more about
Vertical Nerve’s Product Listing Ad optimi-
zation processes please ask for our recent
white papers on our product-specific PLA
strategy or request one of our PLA webi-
nars.
Just like an approach to website/content/
ad copy optimization, product feed opti-
mization includes incorporating keyword
research and testing different product
images, titles and descriptions.
Product Data Feeds:Performance & optimization
15 Google Product Data Feeds:Do’s & Don’ts800.330.9450
KEy PRoDUCt AttRIBUtEs
PRoDUCt tyPE AttRIBUtEsThis 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 exam-ple, would want to research whether it is best to use “clothing”, “clothes” or “apparel” to classify products.
tItLE & DEsCRIPtIon AttRIBUtEsThe 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 consis-tent 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 de-scription to gain an advantage over competi-tion. The titles and descriptions need to also fit
IMAGE AttRIBUtEsThis 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.
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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
Google Shopping results.
Google provides the following tips to en-
sure 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.
§ If an update is made to a web-site multiple times per day, re-member to submit the feed multiple times per day.
§ Try to minimize the amount of time that the data is being processed, if a third-party feed provider is used.
§ Make sure that any scheduled feed fetch from the server happens at the same time as the website is updated.
§ Use the Content API for Shopping if the product information chang-es very frequently such that four updates per day are not enough to meet quality standards.
Google Product Data Feeds:Do’s & Don’ts800.330.9450
Some aspects of managing PLA feeds can
be complicated, but the guiding principles
are simple: providing as many relevant
attributes as possible and keeping product
feeds up to date allows Google to show the
most relevant products to customers, lead-
ing to hiring sales for merchants. Quality
data that is relevant to products pages will
help improve impressions.
Google Shopping product data allows
merchants to control PLA impressions
because Google will match search query
results to that product data.
Please contact our sales team for more in-
formation on how Vertical Nerve can help
improve PLA impressions.
Written by Dice Nakamura
VP of Business Development / Ecommerce Strategist
Product Data FeedsConclusion
Vertical Nerve helps companies grow their online revenue
through highly effective Search Marketing and improve
their online conversions through Web Analytics, Conver-
sion Rate Optimization, and website Design & Develop-
ment. Serving national brands since 1999, Vertical Nerve is
a Google Analytics Certified Partner and Premium Autho-
rized Reseller, a Google AdWords Certified Partner, Bing
Ads Professional Agency and Optimizely Certified Partner.
Learn more at www.VerticalNerve.com.Contact Sales:
[email protected] 800.330.9450© 2014 Vertical Nerve Inc.www.verticalnerve.com