Sept. 22 changes on Google Product Search Feed Specification

Hi all,

Google will be making changes to their search feed

http://base-forum-announcements.blogspo ... oduct.html

How will that impact our opencart versions?

I am currently running 1.4.9.4

Please advice

The biggest impact will be for clothes sellers as they have to adhere to more required attributes.

Our current data will not need an update?

Most definitely the data feed as is will not meet the criteria.

Will we get some sort of patch to avoid disruption?

We'll worry about it on Sept 21st

grin

of course there are extensions available that go a long way to meeting those requirements.

Just updating mine now for 1.4.x versions (or rather backdating as I am a OC newbie)

uksitebuilder wrote:of course there are extensions available that go a long way to meeting those requirements.

Going a long way doesn't mean it meets specifications.

OC has been lacking this feature which is important to merchants. Even the enhanced one doesn't offer such tags as free shipping.

The only thing that my extension doesn't do at the moment to satisfy the requirements for most (apart from clothes/apparel sellers) is the Google_Product_category

I am halfway through implementing this.

Google's taxonomy has over 3500 categories and it has different taxonomy structure/naming for the UK / US and other countries.

I am concentrating on the UK / US taxonomies at present and have them all in database tables.

Just working on the easiest way to get these into the product edit/insert screen. No-one wants to scroll a list of 3500+ categories each time they add a product.

This will be done in the next 7 days.

--

Then I will move on to the clothes/apparel sellers requirements, such as gender, age group, product variants

@uksitebuilder: Will this module support shops that are in the US with a target country United States?

Hi, yes it will support the US -> US Google

Also when the next update to my script happens 'Google Product_Categories' it will also support Google's Product Categories Taxonomy in addition to the UK.

Other Google Country sites available will also have their Google Product Category Taxonomy updated shortly after.

Qphoria wrote:We'll worry about it on Sept 21st

It is now Sept 21st and as far as I'm aware none of the changes have been addressed for 1.4.9.6.
Considering that Google product search accounts for almost 90% of all new traffic to my (and I'm sure many other peoples) site could we at least get a temp fix put in place to make the feed compliant and the product listings stay.

will it affect all products on opencart 1.4.9.4 ?

We won't know until the change has been made?

It will effect all products on all opencart versions.

You can view the source of your feed as it is.

yo can check what attributes Google requires for your product type(s)

You should then know if your current feed will meet the requirements.

Chances are the default feed will not.

There are extensions available that do.

If you sell clothes or apparel and use product options (or what Google calls variants), you will need a custom feed script writing.

well

most i use is brand, model, name and description

I'll try and break it down for you

If your products are not (clothes, apparel, custom made, media or books)

You need to supply:

id, title, description, link, image link, condition, availability, price, and 2 out of 3 of these (brand, manufacturers part number, barcode)

If you sell books

You need to supply:
id, title, description, link, image link, condition, availability, price, google product category, and ISBN Number

If you sell media

You need to supply:
id, title, description, link, image link, condition, availability, price, google product category, and barcode

If you sell custom made products only, then you can contact Google and request to be exempt from UPI's -

Use following link to do this: http://www.google.com/support/merchants ... _exemption

Your feed then only needs to contain: id, title, description, link, image link, condition, availability, price

If you sell clothes
You need to supply:
id, title, description, link, image link, condition, availability, price, google product category, size (US Only), colour (US Only), gender (US Only), age_group (US Only)

I am using 1.4.9.4 and now my products are not showing on google merchant
Can anyone help?

miradoro wrote:I am using 1.4.9.4 and now my products are not showing on google merchant
Can anyone help?

The first thing I would do is upgrade to 1.4.9.6 so that you have the most recent version of the software (without going up to 1.5).
Then you need to decide what exactly you need to be supplying google merchant as per the outline above by UKSiteBuilder.
Then locate the file /catalog/controller/feed/google_base.php
I advise making a backup before you edit anything.
If you need to supply a UPC then do the following:
Find the line and change it to This makes the SKU field for your products the UPC field, this is where you would enter barcodes from your products.
Below this you will also want to add: Assuming all goods you sell are new, otherwise you'll need to modify some other code to select it on a per-product basis.
You also need to add in a product category, again this can be a single line i.e. Or in the case of multiple products from multiple categories, you'll need to find a way to assign it per product.
You also need to provide an indication of the availability of the product and this must match googles terms, the following should work: You will also need to change the localisation in the admin section for the availability for preorders from "Pre-Order" to "Preorder" or google will throw out any preorder products you list.

I think this covers everything, I may have missed something, I'm not really a PHP coder (as I'm sure you can tell) I hacked this together at the beginning of the month to get my merchant feed back on track.
As always you need to weigh up the cost involved in trial/error and learning it for yourself with the "off the shelf" product already available in the extensions store, again see UKSitebuilders signature.

Also be aware that if you submit false data to google they will suspend your merchant account, the terms of this go from 7 days up to 30 days to permanent exclusion for your site if you can't follow their rules. I strongly advise you to read through all the documentation on what exactly you are required to submit, ensure that your postage/tax rates are set in the merchant centre and supply full high-quality data in your feed to avoid termination of your listings.

Hi SINik your guide works for me but I had to replace >In Stock< with >in stock<.

As far as the UPC goes the SKU is not a valid UPC. SKU is just a number that you can generate to keep track of your stock in your own store and UPC must be assigned by the manufacturer. Like you said submitting wrong information to Google might get you in trouble. I don't know what to do here since I sell new products but can't find the UPC for them anywhere. And Google says :"
Unique product identifiers such as UPC, EAN, JAN or ISBN allow us to show your listing on the appropriate product page. If you don't provide the required unique product identifiers, your store may not appear on product pages, and all your items may be removed from Product Search."
Another thing I'm confused about: if I already had the tax and shipping set up in open cart do I still have to set it up in the merchant account? Isn't this going to calculate the wrong price? Like double tax and double shipping?
Thanks.

grandpha wrote: As far as the UPC goes the SKU is not a valid UPC. SKU is just a number that you can generate to keep track of your stock in your own store and UPC must be assigned by the manufacturer. Like you said submitting wrong information to Google might get you in trouble. I don't know what to do here since I sell new products but can't find the UPC for them anywhere. And Google says :"
Unique product identifiers such as UPC, EAN, JAN or ISBN allow us to show your listing on the appropriate product page. If you don't provide the required unique product identifiers, your store may not appear on product pages, and all your items may be removed from Product Search."

You are right, however what we are doing here is making use of the SKU field to hold the UPC of the product where it is a known quantity for the seller. You could easily use the location field or anything else that is blank (and long enough) in the product details. I myself have one product that has no barcode, UPC, ISBN, etc on it and it still shows in google product search so it's not a big issue. As far as I can see it just prevents the item from being included in the multi "Compare prices" listing.

grandpha wrote:Another thing I'm confused about: if I already had the tax and shipping set up in open cart do I still have to set it up in the merchant account? Isn't this going to calculate the wrong price? Like double tax and double shipping?
Thanks.

You will need to check with your RSS output to see what base price the cart is spitting out, if it is the pre-tax price then you will absolutely need to set up tax in the google merchant centre. I assume you have set a tax level and shipping modules rather than just add both figures to your cost. Depending on where you live the law has things to say about not showing price breakdowns.
Regardless of any shipping in the cart you will need to set up shipping in google merchant or you risk your products being removed and given 30 day bans.

If you don't follow the standards, provide accurate data, give correct shipping prices and tax information, anyone can file a report against your site with google and they will review the data; again you may receive a 30 day sanction at first to give you time to correct your feed, following that it increases in length by an extra 30 days every time I believe (so 30, 60, 90 days). There is an appeal process but that in itself can take 10 days or more just to get a first response out of them.

I hope this helps, depending on what items you are selling you might be able to find the UPC for them in the UPC database: http://www.upcdatabase.com/