Product Spreadsheet for Google Merchant Center

Google has announced a service called Google Merchant (Formerly Google Base) which allow online retailers to add their products to Google Products Search, products ads, and search offerings. This service accepts data from specific feed file.

As a expert for Google Merchant, I will show you how this service work and what you will require for this.

Firstly Google Merchant accepts data through data feed, this data sheet can be in XML or txt file format. This file contains all the data as per Google specifications. When I say Google Specification means, a specific format of the data columns defined by Google. Google specification means accurately describing items using the attributes which allows users to find and search products accordingly.

The most important feature of this service is you can add data in spreadsheet like price, name, description, SKU, UPC and many other things.

Google Product Search is an online shopping search engine that Google maintains. Results are displayed on this site from the data added by online store users.

So this is very important that you add your products to Google Merchants that your products can easily be search on the internet and traffic can be generated on your site through this.

The Mercent center feed can also be used with PPC advertisement, but it is very high chance that you can get traffic without this service.

Finally, this service can be used to divert traffic to your site by using Google search engine, actually you are making your website Google-powered by using this service.

Google Merchant Data Feed Specification:

As I have mentioned above, Google has very detailed data specification. This specification is divided into different sections and applies according to geological basis. each section has several required and non required attributes.

Below are quick look for them.

Basic Product Information

• id is a unique product identification. It can be any combination of numbers and letters, but once it has been set and submitted it cannot change. Rather it will also be used to refer to a particular product as long as the product is listed.
• title is the name of the product. For example, “Converse All-Star Shoe.” Google recommends including identifying attributes like color or size in this title, so “Converse All-Star Shoe – Navy Blue – Size 10.”
• description is up to 1,000 characters of text explaining or describing the product. Google recommends using at least 500 characters.
• google_product_category is only required for products that are being submitted to the “Apparel and Accessories,” “Media,” and “Software” categories in the Google product taxonomy, but Google does recommend this attribute for all products. It is also important to note that you may only specify a single product category in this field, so choose the most applicable. The data you insert will take the form of “Apparel & Accessories > Shoes > Sneakers.” You will need to spend some time with the Google product taxonomy to discover what you should submit here.
• product_type is a somewhat redundant column that accepts a Google product category just like the google_product_category attribute mentioned above. Here, however, you may submit more than one category.
• link is a URL aimed directly at the product on your site. This field must begin with “http://” or “https://.” It must not link to a landing page or any page requiring registration. If symbols are used in the URL, those symbols must be replaced with URL encoded entities — see the explanation from W3Schools. For example a “?” is replaced with “%3F” and a “=” is replaced with “%3D.” Finally, the link must be to a domain you have already validated with the Google Merchant Center.
• image_link is not a required field, but it just makes sense to include a link to a product image. The image is stored on your servers, and must be at least 250 pixels by 250 pixels, although a larger image would be better, say 660 pixels by 660 pixels. Remember this is a link to the image, not a file name only, so “http://some-domain.com/some-img.jpg.”
• additional_image_link is specifically for providing additional product views, so from different angles as an example. You may include up to ten additional images, separating each image with a comma in your spreadsheet field.
• condition is a required field that may contain one of three options, “new,” “used,” or “refurbished.”

Price and Availability Information

• availability is a field that may contain one of four values: “in stock,” “available for order,” “out of stock,” or “preorder.”
• price is the item’s price before tax in the United States and with the value added tax in other nations. The field’s value will look something like “100.00 USD,” where “USD” stands for United States Dollars.
• sale_price is, as its name implies, a special price for a product. The field format is identical to the price field. When this option field is used, the product detail page associated with the product must display both the regular price and the sale price.
• sale_price_effective_date is a date range describing when a product should be considered to be on sale. This field takes the format of four-digit year, two-digit month, two-digit day, and time based on a 24-hour clock. For example, if an item was to go on sale on December 21, 2011 at 1:00 p.m., it would be “2011-12-21T13:00.” Notice that the “T” prefaces the time. A slash may be used to separate a starting and ending sale date. For example, if the sale above was to end on December 25, 2011 at 2:00 p.m., it would be “2011-12-21T13:00/2011-12-25T14:00.”

Unique Product Identification

• brand is the brand name of the product. It is required for all items except books, media, and custom made goods.
• gtin is the field for capturing a Global Trade Item Number like the UPC or ISBN code. It is not required if brand and manufacturer part number are used, but is still recommended if it is available.
• mpn is the manufacturer’s part number.

For Apparel

For U.S. merchants, Google requires some additional information for apparel products. Merchants in other nations are not required to submit this information, but Google has indicated that it may become required in the future.

• gender is answered with one of three options, “male,” “female,” and “unisex.”
• age_group is used to distinguish between “adult” and “kids.”
• color is used to describe the item’s dominant color.
• size is used for size information like XL, 30/36, or similar.

Tax and Shipping

• tax is a relatively complicated grouped field that contains tax rate information for each jurisdiction for which the merchant is responsible to collect. Each jurisdiction is identified by an ISO 3166 country code, like “US” for the United States, followed by a region. In the U.S., the region can be a two-letter state abbreviation or zip code range where the “*” is used as a wildcard (i.e. 836*), representing any combination of numbers. The tax rate is included as a percentage. Finally, you must tell Google whether or not tax is charged on shipping. If you wanted to specify state tax for the U.S. State of Idaho at 6 percent and indicate not to charge tax on shipping, you would use “US:ID:6.00:n.” So that “US” stands for the United States, “ID” stands for Idaho, “6.00” percent is the tax rate, and the “n” means not to charge tax on shipping. If more than one jurisdiction should be specified, separate the values with a comma. Note that the colon must be present even if some value is omitted. So imagine a national U.S. sales tax of 9 percent in addition to the state sales tax., “US::9.00:n,US:ID:6.00:n .”
• shipping is used to specify estimated shipping charges for each product. This is optional, since general shipping information can be set up when you create a Google Merchant Center account. If you do use this field, it takes a format similar to the tax field in that there are groups that specify a country, region, service level, and price. So if ground shipping to New Mexico were $9.99, you would use, “US:NM:Ground:9.99.” Additional values would be separated with commas.
• shipping_weight is used to describe the weight of the item in pounds, ounces, grams, or kilograms. All told there are eight accepted units specifications, lb, pound, oz, ounce, g, gram, kg, kilogram. An example value would be “5 pounds” or “16 oz.”

For Multi-Channel Merchants

If your business sells both online and from a physical store and if that physical store is listed with Google Places, you can tell Google whether or not a particular item is available in that physical store.

• online_only is used to tell Google whether or not the item is available online only. Simply use a “y” to indicate that it may only be purchased via eCommerce or “n” to indicate that it is also available in a physical store.

In the Spreadsheet

Each of the above description represents a column head in your spreadsheet. Each row in the excel should represent a single product. Once the spreadsheet is completely filled out, you need to save it as a tab-delimited text file.

If you were working in Microsoft’s Excel, you may choose “Save as” from the File menu. In the Save as box, choose “Text (tab delimited). Then save. You may be asked to confirm.

You Will Need an Account

Before you can actually submit your products to Google Merchant Center, you will need to create a account and verify your domain. Once you are ready with this you can begin submitting products to google.

P.S.: Google feed is valid for a month only, so you need to submit products every month, or you can add frequently as well like 5 times in a month.