Today Google announced updates to Google Shopping Feed attributes. Google touts these updates as improvements developed from data provided to them by merchants over the past year.
The 5 updates that Google specifies include:
- A strong recommendation that mobile users are served a landing page that is optimized for their mobile experience. Google enables the merchant to provide a mobile-specific landing page via the ‘mobile link’ attribute;
- Custom product bundles, as defined by the merchant, such as an air mattress and the additional air pump, must be identified so that the bundle may be displayed appropriately. Now these bundles can be specified by the merchant with the ‘is bundle’ attribute;
- The introduction of “apparel attributes”, which will allow more advanced descriptions of apparel products, such as age groups and size;
- The item availability function has been simplified to make it more obvious to a user whether an item is available or not. The “available for order” status is no longer available, and all available products will be listed as “in stock”. Merchants now also have an ‘availability date’ attribute at their disposal, which informs shoppers when pre-ordered products will be available for delivery; and
- Character limits are now in place for each attribute, which will ensure that the product information is always properly displayed. Attribute submissions that breach the character limits have the potential to be disapproved.
Google also alluded to new recommendations regarding landing pages and image quality, specifically mentioning that images taken on white, gray, or other light-hued backgrounds will draw the user’s attention to the image due to the visibility of the product on all devices.
Though advertisers can begin taking advantage of these updates immediately, Google won’t enforce them on a global level until September 30, at which point any bit of data that is incorrectly formatted will result in that item being rejected during feed processing.
So get ready, merchants and advertisers! September is coming!
(Featured image by David Blackwell/Flickr)
