Google Shopping Has New Changes To Their Shopping Feed Specifications
Google recently announced changes to their shopping feed specifications that will have a direct impact on merchants. While some specs might not affect you, it’s important to stay atop all changes, since not only may these changes affect how you work within Google Shopping, but they also may inspire you to make changes that benefit your overall experience.
Here are some of the changes that Google has announced to their Google Shopping Feed Specifications.
Hi-Res Images:
One of the most important changes being made is with high-res images. As more and more shoppers are using high-res displays, Google’s making changes to accommodate these displays. As such, they recommend (not require) merchants to use product images with at least 800×800 pixels. Again this isn’t a requirement, but with this new feature rolling out, it’s to your benefit to take advantage. More resolution will show your products in a better light and allow shoppers to really zoom in (a feature they love to do).
Energy Efficiency Labels:
Do you do business overseas? If so, then you’ll want to know that Google Shopping now offers support for energy efficiency labels and unit pricing to help any merchant that targets the European Union and Switzerland.
Family Safe vs Non-Family Safe:
Another change that might make your life easier is targeted toward merchants that sell a mix of non-family safe items on a family-safe site. If you fit that mold, then you can now tag those non-family safe items individually.
Product Identifiers:
Another change is that any merchant that is currently exempt from using unique product identifiers (this includes custom goods, vintage items, and collectibles), are no longer exempt. Come July 15, these merchants will have to use an identifier exists attribute.
This is an extremely important change for merchants that are affected, because if you don’t provide the required attribute, it could prevent that item from showing up in Google Shopping results.
Additional Changes:
Below are some of the other changes that will take place by July 15, 2013:
- Updated description and color attributes
- Improvements to merchant-defined multipack, affecting products that are sold in custom multipacks
The new Google Shopping Feed Specifications can be found here.
Even if these changes don’t directly impact you, these updates serve as a reminder that it’s important to revisit your products. In what ways can you enhance their presence (higher-res images is always a good start)? If you need help figuring out how these changes impact you, or how you can improve your Google Shopping presence, we’d love to show you what we could do for you. Call us at 1-888-277-5429 or fill out our contact form for more information.
