ShopSite Knowledgebase

new Google Product Search requirements for data feeds as of September 22, 2011

Product: Manager and Pro
Version: ShopSite 11 r1 and earlier
Platform: ALL

I received an email notification from 'The Google Merchant Center Team' that, beginning September 22nd, 2011, new fields will be required for all products submitted to Google Product Search. Does this affect my ShopSite-created Google Product Search data feeds? Is there anything that I need to do?

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Merchants using the Google Product Search feature may have received a notice from Google Product Search regarding new requirements for product submissions beginning September 22nd, 2011. This will affect ShopSite merchants using both the API and FTP submission methods to send product to Google Product Search.

ShopSite 11 was developed and released before Google announced the new requirements, so the new fields that will be required after September 22nd are not included in ShopSite 11 (or any earlier versions of ShopSite).

The new required fields were added to ShopSite 11 sp1, so upgraded to this version or newer should allow you to configure these new settings in each product's Edit Product Info menu.

If you are unable to upgrade to ShopSite 11 sp1 at this time, you have the ability to submit any of the ShopSite products' Extra Product Fields settings to Google Product Search, so you can repurpose one/some of the Extra Product Fields to fill most of these requirements using older ShopSite version.

The Google emails and blog and doc pages can seem a little fuzzy on what exactly will be required for which merchants. Basically, the only new required field not already provided by ShopSite 11 will be 'availability' unless you are selling shoes, apparel, books, music, movies, or video games. This field has the following accepted values:

in stock
available for order
out of stock
preorder

To configure ShopSite 11 or earlier to send the 'availability' field to Google Product Search, go to Preferences -> Extra Fields and name one of the Product Extra Fields (that you are not currently using for anything else) to 'availability' (minus the quotes) and click Save. Then go to Products -> List All Products, select all of the products in the resulting list, click Power Edit, select the Product Field you are using for 'availability' at the bottom of the 'Information' box, select the 'Global - same change to all selected products' option (note that ShopSite Manager merchants will not have the Global option in Power Edit), click Proceed, then on the next screen enter 'in stock' (minus the quotes) in the chosen Product Field, then click Save Changes. Then go to Merchandising -> Google Services -> Product Search -> Configure and at the bottom in the 'Attributes' section check the checkbox next to your 'availability' Product Field, then click Save. After this, submitting the Google Product Search feed data will include the new 'availability' field when you submit the feed to Google.

Note that you will also need to remember to put 'in stock' in this field for all new products you add. Also note that after you upgrade to ShopSite 11 sp1 that has the specific 'availability' setting added for each product, you will need to remember to go to the Merchandising -> Google Services -> Product Search -> Configure menu and deselect the Product Field in the Attributes section so that a duplicate 'availability' attribute is not submitted in the feeds.

If you are a ShopSite 11 or earlier merchant selling books, music, movies, or video games, then you will also need to submit an additional attribute (which can be set up the same way as 'availability') called 'google_product_category', that should contain the text of the full taxonomy path for the Google Product Category that you can get from this Google Page:
http://www.google.com/support/merchants/bin/answer.py?answer=160081
A new field specifically for the Google Product Category was added in ShopSite 11 sp1.

If you are selling shoes or apparel, then the new 'variant' requirements for these categories cannot be handled by the Extra Product Fields, but these variant requirements are handled via the product's Ordering Options ShopSite 11 sp1 and newer.

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