Set up Google Shopping Feed

Note: This article is from 1/8-2018. There have been different variants of Google Shopping Feeds in the past and it is still possible to create your own feeds. This is the latest feed that we support and recommend.
Below you can read how to set it up and customize it, and what it supports.

What does the shopping feed require?
To get the most out of Google Shopping, your products should have a category. These are categories that Google has chosen. You can see all categories here.

You can assign a Google Shopping category to your product in two ways:

You can choose for the product to have the same shopping category as its main category. This is the easiest and quickest way to do this, as you've probably already chosen the main category for your product. Here you choose which Google Shopping category your main category should belong to. Once you've done this, your products will automatically "inherit" the same category. This is one method.
If you have individual products that should have a different category, you can go into the product and set a specific Google Shopping category for those products. This is the second method to assign a different Google Shopping category.
The way you do this is as follows for categories:

1. Go to Navigation → Categories
2. Edit the category you want to assign a value to.
3. Scroll down to "Google category" and type a keyword in the field e.g. "goggles" and click "Find".
4. A pop-up will open with all the Google Shopping categories. Select the one that fits best and click "Save". The pop-up will close again.
5. Click "Save" on the category.

The way you do this is as follows for products:

1. Go to Products
2. Edit the product you want to assign a value to.
3. Select the "Fields" tab.
4. Scroll down to "Google category" and type a keyword in the field e.g. "goggles" and click "Find".
5. A pop-up with all the Google Shopping categories will now open. Select the one that best suits your product and click "Save". The pop-up will close again.
6. Click "Save" on the product.

Note: If the product has both a main category with a Google Shopping category attached and a Google Shopping category attached, the latter will be shown in your feed.

Activate your shopping feed

Now you just need to activate your feed. You do this as follows:

1. Go to Account in the left menu
2. Select Online Shop and open General
3. Click on the Feeds tab
4. Check "Enable Google Shopping Feed"
5. If you want the best-selling products to be marked as "bestseller" with a label, you can select a number. If you enter 30, we will mark the 30 best-selling products in the last 24 months.
6. If you only want products with a certain profit margin in your feed, you can fill in the field that says "Only include products with the lowest profit margin". Here you need to enter the amount in the shop's currency (not as a percentage). So, for example, enter 30 if you want a 30,- profit on the product. This assumes that you have entered the cost price of your products.
7. Click "Save".

The URL for your shopping feed is located just below the feed setup.

How often is the feed updated?

The feed updates automatically in the background. You don't have to press a button or do anything active to see your changes. There is no manual "refresh feed" function in Shoporama because it runs all by itself.

Here's how it works in practice:

• When you edit a product (price, stock, images, description, categories, etc.) the product data in the feed is updated immediately after you save. The complete feed is also marked as out of date, so the next time someone downloads the feed, a fresh version is delivered.
• The aggregated feed is also automatically built in the background every two hours if there have been changes to your products. If there have been no changes, Shoporama skips this rebuild to save resources.
• Theper-product cache in the feed typically lasts 2 to 6 hours, but is refreshed immediately when you edit the individual product. So changes to a product appear faster than the time limit might suggest.

If you as a store owner want to ensure the fastest possible update at Google, you can set a daily fetch of the feed under Google Merchant Center at a time that suits you (e.g. early in the morning). For critical fixes, Google also has a "Fetch now" feature in Merchant Center that forces an immediate fetch of your feed URL.

Extra customization

By default, the product name will appear in the title field of your feed. But this is not always the most appropriate. For example, you might have some dark blue shorts from Ralph Lauren called "Polo Ralph Lauren Prepster". But that won't trigger your ad when a user searches "blue ralph lauren shorts". Therefore, you can insert a different text to use in your shopping feed. You do this under the product. Select the "Fields" tab and then fill in a different title in "Possibly. Google Shopping title". You will then get the new title in your feed instead, so you can place yourself ahead of the competition.

Variants
If you have variants, they should all appear as an item_group. Note that the feed only includes products that are online and in stock.

Extra things you should know

Discounted products
If your product has both a price and a sale price, they will both appear in the feed.
There will also be a "discounted" label on the product.

Other information
If your product has a GTIN, MPN or brand associated with it, these will also appear in the feed.

If you have marked a profile attribute with a "Special purpose" (size, color or gender), we will be able to pull this out in the <g:size>, <g:color> and <g:gender> fields. Note that for <g:gender> there are only three valid values, which are Male, Female and Unisex.

The main category of the product will appear as <g:product_type>

Custom Labels for Google Ads

The Google Shopping feed supports custom labels(custom_label_0 to custom_label_4). Custom labels are used in Google Ads to divide your products into campaigns and control bidding, so you can bid higher on bestsellers or discounted items.

Automatic custom labels

Shoporama automatically sets two custom labels for you:

• custom_label_0 is automatically set to discounted for products with a promotional price.
• custom_label_1 is automatically set to bestseller for top-selling products if you have configured bestseller count in Settings → Feeds.

Custom labels via product labels

custom_label_2, custom_label_3 and custom_label_4 can be controlled via product labels. Here's how you do it:

1. Go to Products → Labels in the menu.
2. Create a new label (or edit an existing one).
3. On the label edit page, select a Google Shopping custom label slot (custom_label_2, 3 or 4).
4. All products with that label will automatically get the label name as the custom label value in the feed.

You can easily label many products at a time directly from the ABC analysis and Stock statistics overview, so you can, for example, mark all your A-products or dead stock with a specific label.

Alternative method: You can still use additional fields(google-custom-label-2, google-custom-label-3, google-custom-label-4) to set custom labels per product. However, product labels are easier to handle in bulk as you can assign and remove them from many products at once.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need to press a button to refresh the feed?

No, you don't. The feed updates itself as soon as you save a change to a product. There is neither a "refresh feed" button nor a setting for how often the feed should be rebuilt. It runs automatically in the background.

How long does it take from when I save a price until it appears in the feed?

The Shoporama feed itself is typically updated within seconds to minutes after you save the product. How quickly the change appears in Google Shopping or a price robot depends on how often they fetch the feed, which you control in their systems (typically once a day).

How often does Google Merchant Center fetch my feed?

You decide the frequency in Google Merchant Center, but the most commonly used setting is once a day. You can also use Merchant's "Fetch Now" feature to force a fetch if you've made an important correction and don't want to wait until the next scheduled fetch.

I just corrected a typo. How do I get it out quickly in Google?

Save the product in Shoporama. The feed itself will be updated immediately. If Google is in a hurry, log in to Google Merchant Center and use "Fetch now" on your feed. Google will fetch the latest version immediately instead of waiting for the scheduled fetch.

Do price robots respond faster than Google?

It varies from price robot to price robot. Most major price robots fetch feeds daily, often overnight. Some have more frequent intervals for large customers. It's the individual price robot's setup that determines the speed, not Shoporama.

If I do a bulk update of many prices, will the feed be updated for all products?

Yes, it will. Every time a product is saved (including from bulk tools or imports), its data is updated in the feed. The overall feed is also marked as obsolete and is rebuilt at the next download or automatic background refresh.

Can I see when the feed was last built?

The clearest indicator is to fetch the feed URL in a browser and look at the content. You can also see in Google Merchant Center when Google last fetched the feed and if there were any issues with it. Shoporama doesn't show a timestamp feature directly in the admin.

Does a cache delay affect my ads?

It can happen that a product's price or stock status in Google Shopping is a few hours behind your online store. This is usually due to Google's own fetch rate, not Shoporama. Make sure you have realistic buffer times, especially around promotions and sales periods, so that a product is not listed as available for purchase in Google when it is actually out of stock.

What happens if I take a product offline?

The product will be removed from the feed at the next update because the feed only includes products that are online (and in stock by default). So, it will disappear from Google Shopping at the next fetch over there.

Do you need help? Contact us at support@shoporama.dk.