Google Shopping is a google service that allows consumers to search for, compare, and shop for physical products across different retailers who have paid to advertise their products. Google Shopping results show up as thumbnail images that display each product’s retailer and price and can appear in the main search engine results page or under the shopping tab.
Note that to make use of Google Shopping, retailers will need to use two platforms:
- Google Merchant to manage your product feed
- Google Adwords to create and manage your shopping campaigns.
For more information about Google Shopping take a look at their Beginners Guide
How the abcommerce Google Shopping Integration works
The abcommerce Google Shopping Integration maps all of the products from the categories you select on abcommerce to their corresponding Google Category Code.
Products in these categories will appear in Google Shopping and their price and stock will automatically update every 4 hours.
Primary Category only used
When you map a website category (and it's sub-categories) to a Google category, we only look at products where the product's primary category is this category (or one of it's sub-categories). This means that we don't check secondary categories or dynamic categories.
Sub-categories inherit the parent category's google category code
Note that if you don't map a category to a Google category code, but one of it's parent categories has mapped to a Google category code, the category will inherit the Google category code from the parent category that it is nearest to that has the Google category code.
How to set up the Automatic Integration with Google Shopping
Use the Google Support article https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/6324436?visit_id=636909385153322954-1064827187&rd=1 to download the Google Category Codes (see example below)
You need to select the most appropriate Google category code for each of the relevant abcommerce categories.
In some categories, the best match may be at the primary category level - while certain sub-categories may have a more appropriate Google category code to map to.
Once you are ready to map the category codes, take the following steps:
- Log in as web admin.
- Click MARKETING - GOOGLE SHOPPING in the admin menu bar - and you will see all your categories (including any inactive categories).
- To map a category to a Google Category code, just click ADD beside the category and a pop-up will appear allowing you enter the Google Category code for that category.
- You will see that any sub-categories that don't already have a Google Category code also inherit that category code. You can override the code for a sub-category by clicking ADD beside the sub-category.
- You can remove a Google Category code by clicking DELETE beside the category.
How to exclude specific products
If you would like to exclude specific products from the integration, take the following steps:
- In the screen above, click VIEW EXCLUDED PRODUCTS.
- To add one or more products to exclude, click ADD PRODUCTS TO EXCLUDE and enter the product code(s) to exclude. If there is more than 1 product to exclude, separate the product codes with commas.
- Note that you can exclude a product from all integrations (e.g. also from the Instagram integration which works in a similar way) by checking the "Exclude from all Product Exports" checkbox.
Only sending Sale Items
If you would like to only export items that are on sale or on promotion (e.g. if your industry is too competitive for Google Shopping ads), email the help desk and they will configure this for you.
What to do after the Google Category mappings are completed
Once this is done, the Help Desk will provide you with a URL to use in the Google Feed
Using this url, follow the steps in this article, https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/1219255?hl=en to set up the products in Google Merchant Center. You will need the following information
- Your connection type will be a 'Scheduled Fetch'
- Set the Target Country to IRELAND
- Set the currency to EURO
- Set your File Name to products.txt
- Set the feed Fetch Frequency to Daily
Complete the connection and select 'Fetch Now' to bring over the products
The same url will be used to maintain the feed, this feed includes the following fields
- Id
- availability
- price
- sale price
- sale price effective date
- title
- description
- link
- image link
- additional image link
- brand
- google product code
- shipping
- iterm_group_id
Versions & The item_group_id Field
You will see a field in the feed called item_group_id. This is for versions and tells Google that all the products with the same item_group_id can be grouped into one product - e.g. if they are all different sizes or colours. If a product has no versions, this field is left blank.
Make sure that your versions use at least one of the version attributes: color, pattern, material, age_group, gender, and size (see list of optional fields below). If a version does not have a value for any of these fields, the item_group_id field is left blank for that version.
Use the same variant attributes for all products with the same item_group_id. For example, if you submit a dress in 2 colors and 2 sizes, each product you submit must provide a value for the color attribute and the size attribute. Don't just provide the color or size for one dress, but not the others.
If you would like to remove this field from the feed, just contact the Help Desk.
Optional Additional Fields
The following fields are also included in the feed. Some are auto-populated (product_type and in some cases, size and colour), while the rest are blank by default but you can populate them too if you want to enhance the quality of your product data.
You can manually populate them one product at a time under the Catalogue - Products admin screens, or you can populate them in bulk using the Catalogue - Bulk Imports - Update Existing Products admin screen.
Click here for more information on how to do bulk imports
Google Field | Description | How to set it |
gtin |
Your product’s Global Trade Item Number (GTIN) Example Syntax Supported values
Rules for populating this field:
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product_type |
Product category that you define for your product Example
Rules for populating this field:
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material |
Your product’s fabric or material Example Syntax
Rules for populating this field:
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pattern |
Your product’s pattern or graphic print Example Syntax |
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color |
Example Syntax
Rules for populating this field:
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size |
Your product’s size Example Syntax
Rules for populating this field:
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gender |
The gender for which your product is intended
Supported values
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age_group |
Example Supported values
Rules for populating this field:
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