The Google Shopping service allows you to place ads with your store's products in search results. A product ad looks like a thumbnail with a product photo, name, price, and other information and is placed above or to the right of the search results. The feature is available for Standard and higher plans.
To work with Google Shopping, you need:
Google account;
Merchant Center account;
Google Ads account;
Data feed for the Merchant Center containing products information.
In this article, we will show you how to create a data feed for Merchant Center in Cartum.
Warning: you must have online payment and address delivery options in your store, otherwise Google may block the feed.
Activating the feed
To get started, enable the Google Feed for Merchant Center feed in the Marketing → Marketplaces section of the admin panel.
After activating the feed, additional fields for Google feed appear on the product page.
The product will be added to the feed if all required fields are filled in, namely:
SKU
Alias
Title
Price
Image
Description for product feeds (if this field is empty, the standard Product description will be used)
Product condition: new, used, refurbished
For adults only (required field for products from 18+ categories)
GTIN (Global Trade Item Number)
Product vendor code (MPN, Manufacturer Part Number)
The GTIN and Product vendor code (MPN) fields are required for products that have these codes. If the product is a work of art or a handmade product, this attribute is not required.
Including products to the feed
In the properties of each product that should be included in the feed, you must specify Google Feed for Merchant Center. For manual change in the admin panel:
Go to the Products section and click on the desired product.
In the section Product description → Main info, check the Google Feed for Merchant Center box in the Export to product feeds section to include the product in the feed.
To remove a product from a feed, just uncheck the corresponding box.
Use import for bulk setup. The import file should contain the Export to Product feeds column with Google Feed for Merchant Center name.
If the products need to be unloaded in several feeds, you must specify all the feed names with a separator ";".
Important: products with the Show on storefront: No attribute will not be added to the feed.
Configuring categories
After activating the feed, you need to map the catalog categories to the categories according to Google's classification (to set the google_product_category attribute). If you add this information, your ads will be shown to those who search for products by category name.
Click on the Categories settings button. Before the first setup, click on the Synchronize categories button in the window that opens to download the current Google categories. Subsequently, you do not need to do this: synchronization will take place automatically every day.
After synchronization, assign each category of your site to the corresponding Google feed category. If you have not found suitable Google categories for some sections of the site, just leave the field unselected: the product will still be included in the feed, but without the specified google_product_category attribute.
Generating the feed file
The file is automatically updated every night to keep product information up-to-date. During the initial setup or to force an update, click Generate feed. After creating the feed, the xml file is available by clicking on the XML button.
Warning: if you get a 404 error when generating a feed, make sure that all products have a Category specified.
When you first generate a feed, a unique link of the form
https://domain.com/marketplace-integration/google-feed/****************alias***************/?langId=3 is created, where alias is a random sequence of 32 digits and Latin letters.
Managers in the owner role can change the unique link or add a unique extension to the link. To do this:
In the admin panel, go to Marketing → Marketplaces and click on the feed.
In the URL field, enter the alias for the link or click Generate to generate the alias automatically.
Click Save.
Warning: after changing the feed link, the old link will not work.
Feeds in different languages
After generating the feed, separate xml files will be available for each language version present on the site. A separate link is generated for the feed in each language.
Warning: if in any of the language versions for a product the mandatory fields that require translation are not filled in, such a product will not be included in the feed..
Additional fields
At the moment, the feed only implements the main required fields for working with Google Merchant Center. Gradually, we will expand the capabilities of the feed and add other fields.