Google Shopping ads is a quick recipe to ace your product marketing strategy and multiply the conversion rates drastically. E-commerce vendors are grabbing this opportunity and making the best use of the service to promote their inventories and attract quality traffic to increase overall sales using Google Shopping Ads.
While creating the Google Shopping Ads, involves a crucial step of creating a Google Shopping Feed to guide the internet about your products.
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What is Google Shopping Feed?
Google Shopping feed is a product listing format where you can file all the products in groups and attributes. The spreadsheet containing organized product catalogs describes in a language that Google can easily identify and understand. To summarize, a Google Shopping Feed is the required data source that Merchant Center uses to display your products on Google.
While standard search campaigners bid on keywords for favor search results, Google Shopping Ads rely on the shopping feed fed to the Merchant Center to determine the relevance of the products and display the ads likewise.
If the seller has fewer products to feature, you can opt for manually creating the shopping feed in Google Spreadsheets, whereas if you have many product listings you can switch to apps/services that ease your inputting task with automated features.
Types of Google Shopping Feed
1)Google Merchant Center Feed
Why does Google need this Feed?
It’s the main feed that contains all the information about your products that will be sent out to Google Merchant Center. It must be uploaded in an .XML or .TXT format.
Mandatory fields in this Feed
Mandatory fields in this Feed are id, description, link, image_link, title, price, condition, availability, identifier_exists, brand, and gtin.
Clothing brands and retailers selling apparel are also required to fill additional fields like age groups, size, material, pattern, gender, and color.
Check out the comprehensive list of fields that needed to be filled to ensure safety and if it follows google requirements and guidelines. Make sure every product has Global Trade Item Numbers (GTIN) assigned in the feed.
How often should you update your feed at Google Merchant Center?
At least once a month, but it is advised to have daily updates for easy and accurate management. If your feed needs frequent changes then you can consider uploading it up to 4 times a day.
2)Google Online Inventory Product Update Feed
Why does Google need this Feed?
If you sell products that require frequent modifications like a price drop, sale updates, discount offers, etc, the changes are made in the Google Online Inventory Product Update Feed.
Retailers can also propagate the field with product availability and other consumer-friendly inventory updates to the Google Merchant Center.
The inventory feed helps the retailer to procreate the required changes, temporary candy offers, etc without hampering the main layout of the product feed.
The inventory feed contains 5 mandatory fields- id, price, availability, sale price, and sale price effective date. Make sure to match the ids of the products from the merchant center feed.
Product ID mismatch between the main feed and the inventory feed can result in conflicting results on the site.
The inventory data feed is designed for inputting frequent updates, therefore, the seller can make any number of changes in a day.
3)Google Promotions Feed
Why does Google need this Feed?
An enticing and promising promotional text on a product ad can increase the sales of the product to two folds. Google Promotions Feed provides a platform to add such promotional texts to the required category of product ads. Merchants can use the promotion feed to boost the CTR of the product ads listed on Google Shopping.
Currently, the feed update is available only in a few countries like Australia, France, Germany, India, the UK, and the US. However, the program is going to expand its reach to all the countries soon. Check the availability of the feed on the Merchant Promotion Page, to see if your country has been added to the list or not.
How to Enable this Feed type?
To enable the Promotion feed in your GMC, merchants have to fill in a Merchant Promotions Interest Form. Once your Google promotions application is accepted, there will be an extra feed type to choose from in the Google Merchant Center. It is advised to check the availability of the feed in your location before submitting the form.
The promotion feed requires 6 mandatory fields in the output section- promotion_id, offer_type, product_applicability, long_title, promotion_effective_dates, and Redemption_channel.
4)Google Local Inventory Ads Feed
Why does Google need this Feed?
The local Inventory Ads Feed is specially designed to add physical functionalities and information about your local store. The field encompasses inventory information tabulated like location, store timings, and directions to reach your local store.
Local Inventory Ads Feed is a great way to multiply your offline sales using online parameters.
How to Enable this Feed type?
To utilize the opportunities offered by Local Inventory Ads, merchants have to create 3 additional feeds, along with the list of all the products they sell in stores.
1)Business information feed – In this field, you can list all your business location information in detail.
2)Google Local Products Feed – This field includes information about the products sold in your local store. You can also include item information sold both online and offline.
3)Google Local Product Inventory Feed – This feed will include stock information and the price of the products for each physical location.
You can easily match all the feeds including Google Local Products Feed, Google Local Product Inventory Feed, Google Business Locations, and Google Products Feed automatically using the ”item_id” attribute.
How often should you submit or update these feeds?
The local products feed is required to be updated at least once a week, whereas the Local product inventory feed needs regular updates (minimum once a day).
5)Product Rating Feed
Why does Google need this Feed?
Building trust among your potential clients is very essential to scaling your business and improving profit numbers. Product reviews and customer ratings are some of the simplistic ways to build trust among your customers.
This feed accommodates information regarding product ratings and Google Merchant Center reviews.
Google shoppers heavily rely on product reviews and ratings while shopping for the smallest item online/offline. The ratings and reviews mentioned under each product ease the buyer in making purchase decisions.
Product star ratings do not comply with the shipping or website services. The star ratings are purely based on the product of the brand irrespective of the seller platform.
How to Enable this Feed type?
To opt for the Google Customer Reviews program, you need to have an account in the Merchant Center. You can enable the product rating feed from any of the following 3 methods.
1)Upload your reviews feed: This option requires at least 50 reviews mentioned under each product. You can submit all the review records in the Google Merchant Center after submitting the interest form and completing the onboarding procedure.
2)Use a third-party review aggregator: If you’re working with an approved Product Rating aggregator, they can help you in sharing legitimate ratings and reviews of the product from multiple sources. Contact them directly on submitting Product Ratings.
3)Join Google Customer Reviews: You can enroll in this free service to collect the ratings and reviews gathered by team Google. Join the program by adding optional lines of code to collect product reviews and participate in Google Customer Reviews.
How often should you submit or update these feeds?
The feed needs to be submitted with updated information at least once per month. Storing inaccurate data for over a month can hamper the quality of information broadcasted on the website.
Please note: Not following the above-mentioned requirements can lead to your ineligibility to participate in the product feed program.
Availability of the product rating feed
You can enable the product rating feed in the Google Merchant Center, only if the Google Shopping Ads are available in your country.
6)Dynamic Remarketing Feed
Why does Google need this Feed?
How many times have you observed a potential shopper abandoning the cart and not completing the shopping process? The reason for the cart abandonment could be many, but it is important to remind and further entice such shoppers to complete their shopping process to increase your conversion rates.
This feed helps you retarget such customers who have multiple items in their cart but haven’t shopped yet.
You can pass on tailor-made ads to remind and attract these past customers. If the customers have left some items in the cart, it means the customer likes the product. Therefore a simple reminder or an enticing offer will surely increase the conversion rates.
To use the Dynamic Remarketing feed, there are a few steps that need to be followed. Submit your regular feed to the Google Merchant Center in a. XML or. TXT format in the first place.
Also apart from the regular fields, Dynamic Remarketing Feed requires a few additional fields to be submitted. The fields required for this Feed are display_ads_id, display_ads_title, display_ads_similar_id, display_ads_link, excluded_destination, display_ads_value, adwords_grouping and Adwords_labels.
7)Google Manufacturer Feed
Why does Google need this Feed?
Each company has its demeanor on how the customer needs to perceive the brand. Google Manufacturer Feed offers liberty to the manufacturer to present his goods in a standardized way with complete accuracy on google shopping and other google services.
At Google Manufacturer Center, you can customize and upload rich and authentic content that defines the uniqueness of your brand, and showcase it to both shoppers and retailers alike. Not only will this regain your control over your brand, but will also drive more traffic to your website and increase the conversion rates.
Also, it is very important to assign the right GTins to all your products. This way, it is easy for Google to match your products listed by the manufacturers in Google Manufacturer Center and the merchant’s products in the Google Merchant Center.
Google Manufacturer feed requires 6 mandatory fields to be submitted: id, gtin, title, description, image link, and brand. Nevertheless, it is recommended to fill in additional attributes too, to make your customers find your product on google search easily.
Availability of the Google Manufacturer feed
Currently, the manufacturer center is available to a limited number of brands in the US market. However, non-US-based manufacturers can use the feed if your product markets in the US.
List your products on the Manufacturer Center by filling out this form. Certain requirements need to be followed, once it is met google will contact you.
If your form gets accepted by Google, claim ownership of your brand. Google will review your brand and once accepted, proceed with submitting the product data to the Manufacturer Center.
FAQs on Google Shopping Feed and Google Shopping Feed types
a)How to create a Google Shopping feed?
Each product needs to be assigned detailed information of the product, keeping the customer’s needs in mind. To create a Google Shopping Feed, you need to have an account in the Google Merchant Center.
The Merchant Center provides two categories namely, primary and supplementary. Choose your product category and create your program feed. The program you have signed up for can be then put into action by adding the created program feed into it.
On your Merchant Center account, spot products in the navigation bar. Click on the feeds subpage. Select if you want to establish your product as primary or supplemental.
The chosen programs will consider this place as its potential location for the feed. Tick on the box next to the program and add your newly fabricated feed.
You can add more products as well by clicking on the add program and creating more product feeds for the same by using the above-mentioned steps.
b)How do I upload products to Google Shopping?
To upload your products to Google Shopping, you will first need to have an account in the Merchant Center. Refer to the guidelines provided in the Merchant Center and follow the instructions accordingly, identify the product category your items fall in.
- Log in / Create your Google Merchant center account.
- Click “Shop” from the Top Menu.
- Find the product that you need to add or update and click the “Edit Product” icon next to it.
- Click “Product Identifiers” from the top tabs.
- Fill in the required fields like GTIN, UPC, EAN, JAN, ISBN, MPN, and Brand.
Once you have set up your products to comply with Google Merchant Center, you can download your feed ready to use.
Once your file is uploaded, you may see notifications on your display screen if the ad was a success.
The popularity of any feed can be discovered on this Data feeds page. It takes up to 24 hours for your file to be up to date in your account.
C)What are all the types of Google Shopping Feed?
As mentioned in this article, there are 7 Google Shopping Feed types,
- Google Merchant Center Feed
- Google Online Inventory Product Update Feed
- Google Promotions Feed
- Google Local Inventory Ads Feed
- Product Ratings Feed
- Dynamic Remarketing Feed
- Google Manufacturer Feed
d)What is the Google shopping process?
To make your products pop in the Google search results immediately when the relative keywords are used, you need to undergo a simple procedure.
To register with the Merchant Center, you solely require a Google account as nicely as an AdWords account. Merchant Center registration can be done at merchants.google.com.
For beginners, it is advised that you first try out some test feeds. These test feeds are available in the Google Merchant Center, which will not be published.
e)How much does it cost to get on Google Shopping?
Merchants will now not have to pay any price for listing their products for Google Shopping.
Under the Shopping tab in Google Search, customers can search for merchandise and see expenses from multiple retailers.
Google doesn’t have a minimum bid or a minimum value for Google Shopping / Product Listing Ads. You can select a price per click as low as $0.01, and there is no minimum everyday budget, so you have a lot of flexibility with how much you spend on Google Shopping.
Conclusion
It may be overwhelming to bring your products online and market them with aforesaid stepwise manuals, but the automated shopping ad service by Google is worth all the anxiety.
Also getting started with Google Shopping ads and filling Shopping feeds is not rocket science anymore. For a better beginner experience, you can upload test feeds, to find and review potential errors. These feeds do not create items eligible for Google Shopping results.
Also, remember that there is a requirement for a separate feed for each country to submit products and you can have up to a maximum of 20 feeds per country.
Google Shopping is an excellent medium to market all your goods (online/offline) and reach a larger spectrum of potential customers. The platform is affordable and user-friendly, increasing the conversion rates significantly.
We hope this article provided all the required information on Google Shopping Feeds, Google Shopping Feed Types, and the types of product data to be submitted, depending on your eRetail objectives.
Do not step away from exploring the Google Shopping service anymore, this marketing strategy will surely bring abundance to your business with substantial growth in your sales.
