New Feed Requirements for Google Base

1 02 2007

Google has just released new requirements for submitting feeds to Froogle (Google Base.) If you don’t have your file fixed by the end of February 2007, then your product listings will be dropped.

Most of the attributes that Google wants merchants to have in their product listings are things that you should already be using in your file feed as a best practice. There were a couple of fields that I did not have in my feed (because they were pretty obvious to my customers/product set and not really necessary), but it only took me 5 minutes to update my template.

Here are the new required fields:

brand
condition
description
expiration_date
id
image_link
link
price
product_type
title

Now, you should have already been using all of those except maybe product_type and condition. (I didn’t use either since I’m in a small niche and I made the assumption people would figure out my products were new.)

So, what should you put in each of these required fields?

brand - Brand name or manufacturer of the item. (Sony, Apple, Prada, etc.)

condition - new, used, refurbished

description - Use good sales copy here to describe your item in a keyword rich way.

expiration_date - expiration date for the item. Max live time of 31 days. Ex: 2007-02-03

id - Unique internal ID code. Can not change once a product is created. (I use my internal SKU for this.)

image_link - Link to the product image. Google suggests linking to a 400×400 image, though you can use smaller.

link - Link to the product page. If your shopping cart supports it, include a tracking code so you can see which orders come from Google Base vs other areas.

price - product price

product_type - There are a LOT of product types. If you sell mainly in one category, just choose the best one. Otherwise go through and pick the best product_type for each item. You can view a full list of Google’s Product Types.

title - Name or title of product. Max 80 characters. This is your product headline. Think of it like you would the title tag on your product page.

Google also has a list of other pre-defined product attributes, but you can always create your own.

Have you found a new attribute to use? Are you using an existing product attribute in a new or interesting way? If so, leave a comment and let me know.

- Craig

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Date : 1 February 2007
Categories : Base

One response to “New Feed Requirements for Google Base”

6 02 2007: Pranav Chavda (09:39:11) :

Thanks for expanding on that. I was just working on re-formatting my froogle-feed and found their email about the new requirements rather confusing.

Using Google Base