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How to add your products to Google Shopping

Want to get your products on Google Shopping? This this is the guide for you.

While you can use search engine optimization to list your products in the normal Google search results, you can also have your products listed as Google Products in the Google Shopping listings.

These Google product listings appear often at the top of search results, when a potential customer searches for a specific product, and link back to your store from within Google's product portal.

Google itself does not actually provide you with your own Google Store - it will only list your products as part of it's portal. However it does create a kind of Google shop by grouping your products together.

To get started, you have to add your products to ShopFactory, set their Google definitions and then create the Google product feed which you can upload.

To add a product to Google Shopping, you must add a number of properties to your product which allow the product to be properly integrated into the Google Search and displayed with the correct properties.

You can then export your products with ShopFactory  Marketeer in the format required by Google Shopping to upload it to the Google Merchant Center.

These properties are defined as part of the  Google Product Feed specification, which you can enter directly in ShopFactory, using the Product Wizard.

Just open the product Wizard for a product and select the option Google Information from the left menu.

This new information is used when you do a Google Base export with ShopFactory Marketeer, which is included with ShopFactory Gold.

You can also import Google Product information with the Import Wizard.

Google Shopping product properties

Where it is possible, we will use values you have already entered in ShopFactory to create the Google data feed. However some of the Google specifications are unique to Google, and have to be provided by you separately in this wizard page.

The available fields are as follows;

Field Example 
Product category Clothing & Accessories > Clothing > Dresses
Product Type As above more than one type can be defined.
Condition One of 'new', 'used' or 'refurbished'
Gender One of 'Male', 'Female' or 'Unisex'
Age group 'Adult' or 'Kids'
Color Black for example or for multiple values, separated by '/'
Size The size of the item, see this article for more information.

Note that the gender, age group and color and size only needs to be entered for clothing items e.g. when the product category is set to 'Clothing & Accessories' or one of its sub categories. For more information about what information and in what syntax, see the link above from Google.

The product feed information added to a product can easily be copied to other existing products using the Product Template functionality.

If you want to apply the same Google information to multiple products, you can copy this product into PRODUCT TEMPLATES page (drag the product to "Product Templates" to copy it).
 
You can use Product Template to Google specific information such as product category, condition or gender to multiple products.
You can simply right click on multiple products and then select “COPY VALUES FROM A PRODUCT TEMPLATE TO ALL SELECTED PRODUCTS” option
 
Add your EAN (barcode number – 13-digit code) code per product. Double click on a product and click on MORE button -> check that the EAN is correct and not treated as 5.21879E+12
 
Once you have set this up in your shop, you can now export the product using Marketeer.

Please refer to the FAQ on how to this.

How do I create a Google Shopping XML file using Marketeer?


Marketeer is included with ShopFactory Gold 11. Follow the steps below to create your Google Product feed.

1. Click Start -> All Programs -> ShopFactory V11 -> Marketeer -> select Marketeer 

2. The Marketeer wizard will appear. Click Next. 

3. Select a shop to open (choose your existing shop where your products have been added). If the shop is not listed, click the "Open Other" button and locate the shop-folder. 

4. Click Next. 

5. At the "Select the products you want to export into the right window" box, scroll down and click "List all products".

 

6. All the products will be displayed below the "Select the products you want to export into the right window" box. Click "Move All" button. 

7. All the products will be displayed on the right column. 

8. Click Next. 

9. At the "Fields Available" box, you can see the fields that can be exported into Google. Select the fields and move it to "Fields Selected" column. You can choose "Move All" option to move all the fields to the "Fields Selected" column.

10. In the Export Format, select Google Base export (*.xml).

11. Click the "Export" button and then type a filename for your file. Take note of the directory where you save the file. 

Please note that only these fields are exported to the XML file: department/page, department id/page id, description, discounted price, product id, product Image URL, product item number, product manufacturer code, product price, product thumbnail image, product title, product URL. 

12. Click Save and then Finish.

You can now submit the XML file generated to the Google Merchant Center.

Upload your Product file to Google Shopping


 Once you have exported a Google XML file, go to http://www.google.com/merchants/

 1. Login using your Google Account

 2. Click Settings -> Tax and Shipping

 3. Define or setup your shipping and Tax details

 4. Submit your Google XML file. For more information on how to do this, please go to this link:

http://support.google.com/merchants/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=188494#other

That's all there is it. Good luck with your product listings on Google.

But a note of caution: Don't neglect your normal search engine optimization.

Being listed in the normal search results will give you a better chance of buying, as Google Shopping is an extremely competitive environment. There products are mainly sold via the lowest price.

That's always a difficult business model to maintain in the long term.

To survive as a business you must establish your own store and get customers to buy directly from your store rather than via Google Shopping.

Good luck.

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