Google Shopping team have just made an important announcement that will have a major impact on online shops. Google is changing the specification of the shopping feed and shops with incorrectly formatted feeds will lose out.
Google is calling these improvements and it will drive up advertiser quality by banning misleading shipping ads. But implementing these requirements will be difficult and costly for some online shops. Those shops with the technical expertise or allocated budgets will be able to adapt quickly, and others will lose out.
The specific updates that Google have announced to the Google Shopping Feed Specification include:
- Mobile landing pages. Any mobile landing page links should be submitted separately to direct mobile shoppers to the right experience
- Merchant-defined custom bundles need defining. An example of a merchant defined custom bundle is a camera with additional case and lens. This must now be defined as such to be identified as such in order to be displayed appropriately on Shopping
- Clothing improvements. Apparel attributes are added to allow more detailed descriptions of your apparel products
- Item availability simplified. The item availability (in/out of stick) will be simplified to allow a clearer distinction between different availability states
- Mandatory character limits on attributes. A better specification clearly stated for each attribute to help the right product information being displayed
Google have stated that “Beginning September 30, we will start enforcing the updated feed specification globally”. So from this date any merchant center feed without the correct attributes will be at danger of being disqualified.
A similar announcement was made last year when many changes were made to the Google Shooping feed.
