Obtaining your Google feed
To obtain your Google feed you will first need to install the Google feed app.
To install the app select from the menu. Find and select the 'Google Feed' app and select INSTALL THIS APP.
Then there are two ways to send your product data to Google:
- Manually upload a file containing your product data or
- Provide the URL of the feed which contains your product data and updates automatically
If you choose to manually upload a file, you will need to regularly login to your account to upload a new file as Google sets the products to automatically expire every 30 days. If, instead, you use the URL of the feed, you won’t need to worry about doing this.
• Configuring the feed
• Downloading the feed file
• Obtaining the URL for the feed
Configuring the feed
Once you have installed the app you can configure your feed by selecting from the menu.
Follow these instructions to configure the feed with the information you would like it to contain:
Which products do you want to include in your feed?
Use the selection boxes under ‘Which products do you want to include in your feed?’ to determine which of your products should be included in the feed.
Selected products only - choose this option if you want to manually select which of your products should be included in the feed
If you choose ‘Selected products only’, you can choose which products to include in the ‘Choose the products to include in the feed’ section:
Place a tick in the ‘Include in the feed?’ tick box beside all of the products you want to include in the feed. Your selections will automatically be saved. If you have more than 50 products, your products will be organised into pages which you can switch between.
Only published products - choose this option if you want only your active products included in the feed
All products - choose this option if you want all of your products to be included in the feed
Other settings
Should we include the g:shipping attribute in the feed?
If you would like the shipping attribute to be included in your Google feed, select 'Yes' here.
If this setting is enabled, the feed will include a delivery rate for the base location of the account (e.g. for an account based in the UK a delivery rate for UK shipping will be shown).
The best available rate, meaning the cheapest rate that is applicable to the product, will be included.
If you enable this setting, another setting will appear for you to configure:
Should we include a shipping rate for all shipping zones configured?
If you would like to include in the feed a shipping rate for every shipping zone you have configured in your account, then select 'Yes' here.
Some delivery zones won’t be included in the feed even if you have configured rates for them. Those zones are:
Rest of the World Northern Ireland Scottish Highlands Scottish Islands Channel Islands Isle of Wight Mallorca Ibiza EU VAT ZONE European Countries Canary Islands BFPO
These zones will be ignored by the feed. If you need delivery rates to show for a specific country that was covered by one of these zones, you will need to configure new rates in a zone for that country that is included in the feed.
Please note!
Google's best practice tips recommend that you configure your delivery settings within the Merchant Centre to create delivery rates. They recommend that the g:shipping attribute only be included in the feed as a last resort. To follow this best practice tip you would need to choose 'No' for both of the above mentioned settings. Click here to read more about this from Google.
List variations as separate items
If you want each variation of your products to be included in the feed as a separate item, then select 'Yes' here.
Use variation SKU codes instead of IDs in variation listings
Select 'Yes' here if you would like the feed to include the SKU codes for variations instead of their IDs.
Downloading the feed file
To download a file of your feed ensure you have configured all of your products and settings the way you would like them to be included in the feed. Then select prepare your feed:
If you have a lot of products (i.e. over 500), it could take the system a few minutes to prepare the file.
Allow the system time to prepare the file and then select download your feed. The file will then be downloaded to your computer’s hard drive.
Obtaining the URL for the feed
Once you have selected which of your product types you would like included in the feed copy the URL under ‘Your Feed URL'.
This URL changes depending on which product type you selected under ‘Which products do you want to include in your feed?’. Make sure you have selected the correct product type before copying the URL. If at any point you want to change which product type is included in the feed, you will need to return to this page and copy the correct URL and resubmit that URL to Google.
This does not affect products automatically being added or updated by the feed as long as they are of the correct type. For example, if you choose 'Selected products only' then if you returned to this page and selected more products to be included in the feed you wouldn’t need to resubmit the URL.
Click here to learn how to submit your feed to Google.
Please note!
If you have chosen to submit your feed to Google through the URL option, the feed will be updated once every 24 hours. This means if you alter your settings or select new products to be included in the feed the changes will not display in the feed until the next day. If you want to check the changes made to your feed, then download a file of the feed which immediately displays any changes made to the settings or product selections.