Google Shopping app

To connect ShopWired to your Google Merchant Center account, select the sign in with Google option, log in to your Google account associated with the Google Merchant Center account you'd like to connect to, and authorise ShopWired.

Once you've successfully connected, you'll be returned to your ShopWired account and a success message will be displayed.

You can view the ID of the Google Merchant Center account you've connected ShopWired to in the Google Merchant Center Account section under the setting Google Merchant Center Account ID. This setting cannot be edited; to connect to a different account, you'll need to select the disconnect option and start again.

To send products from ShopWired to Google Merchant Center:

1. Ensure that each product meets the Google Shopping requirements
2. If using the app for the first time, ensure that you have configured the settings in the App settings section beforehand
3. Select an option for the setting Which products do you want to send to Google
   • Select selected products only to manually choose which products to send to Google Merchant Center (you can select these in the products section of the app)
   • Select all published products to send all eligible active products to Google Merchant Center (inactive products will not be sent)
4. Select send now to start the process

The app will start sending products to Google Merchant Center immediately. The time taken to process and successfully send each product can vary, but on average each product takes approximately 5 seconds to successfully send for the first time (and therefore to send 1,000 products will take over an hour).

Google Merchant Center automatically expires product listings 30 days after their last update. Product updates include changes in details like product name, description, or stock status. By selecting the Relist expiring products automatically setting, the app will automatically request Google to relist the product, preventing expiration. ShopWired recommends enabling this setting.

Activate this setting if you want the app to automatically send newly created products to Google Shopping. Once enabled, even if you've chosen to send Selected products only, new products will still be automatically submitted to Google Merchant Center.

Enable the Send products that are changed from inactive to active to Google Shopping automatically setting if you want the app to automatically send products to Google Shopping when they are made active after being inactive.

Enable this setting to include shipping cost information with the product listing. Note that if this is enabled, any existing shipping rates configured in your Google Merchant Center account will be overwritten. Read detailed information about this setting.

Google requires an identifier for each product. You can use either product SKU codes or product IDs as the identifier by configuring this setting. Read detailed information about this setting.

If your products have different variations, Google Merchant Center allows listing each variation as a separate product. By selecting List variations as separate items, each variation combination will be listed individually in Google Shopping.

When sending variation combinations to Google Shopping as separate products, you can use SKU codes as identifiers if they are assigned to your variations. Ensure all SKU codes are unique before enabling the Use SKU codes instead of option value names in variation listings setting.

If this option is not enabled, the app will automatically generate an identifier using a combination of the product ID and variation values (e.g. 1000001SmallBlue).

The product and variation prices sent to Google Merchant Center should match those on your website. Use the Include VAT in the product prices exported to Google setting to ensure prices include VAT when sent to Google:

• This setting should reflect how prices are displayed on your website. If prices are shown both with and without VAT, select the option that corresponds to the more prominent price.
• If your website displays prices based on the visitor type, choose the VAT setting that matches the prices shown to visitors who are not logged into a customer account.

Where set, the app can send the title tag instead of the product title to Google. This can be useful for optimising titles for Google Shopping search results. To use the SEO meta title, enable the use SEO meta title setting in the Google Shopping app.

Select this setting if you use the gross profit report app and have entered cost prices for your products or variations, and want to send the cost prices to Google using the cost_of_goods_sold property. For more information, read Google's guidance.

Google Shopping's checkout link template attribute, checkout_link_template, allows you to include a checkout URL in your product listings, giving online shoppers the option to go directly to your website's checkout for the product straight from Google Shopping search results. Read more about the checkout link template.

To send the checkout link template for products, select yes for the Include the checkout link template attribute setting in the Checkout link template section of the app.

If you have selected to manually send products to Google Merchant Center, you can use the products section to select the products to send:

1. Navigate to the Products section of the app
2. Use the tick box in the Export column to select the products you'd like to send
   • You can select products that appear on different pages of the table
3. Select the send now option shown in the table or in the App settings section
   • Either send now options can be used

Use the search at the top of the section to search for products by product name, SKU, GTIN or MPN.

Products ineligible to be sent to Google Merchant Center are displayed with a red warning icon. Select the icon to discover what information about the product is missing, and therefore making it ineligible to be sent. You can add the missing information to the product and return to the app to send it. Read more information about Google Merchant Center requirements.

When a product has been exported to Google Merchant Center from ShopWired, to remove the product from Google Shopping search results and your Merchant Center account, you must use the delete option available within the ShopWired Google Shopping app.

If you do not use the delete option, and instead delete the product directly from within your Google account, the app is not notified and you will be unable to relist the product again from the app.

To delete a product from Google Merchant Center:

1. Navigate to the Products section
2. Use the tickbox in the Delete column to select the products you want to delete
   • You can select multiple products for deletion at the same time
   • You can select up to 50 products at a time for deletion
3. Select the delete option

If you delete a product from Google Merchant Center using the app, you can relist it again at any time manually.

When you make a product inactive within your ShopWired account and that product has been sent to Google Merchant Center, making the product inactive on ShopWired will cause the product to be removed from Google Merchant Center.

When a product cannot be exported to Google Merchant Center successfully, an entry for the product will appear in the Product export errors section of the app providing details about the export error:

• The date/time that the error occurred
• The details of the error

Inspect the reasons for the error, apply any necessary changes or additions to the product information and select the retry export option to try again.

The process may take a while to complete, so check back in a few hours. If the product fails to export again, it will remain in the Export errors section with updated reasons. If export was successful, it will appear in the Product section with a status of exported.

Export errors are generated within the Google Shopping app when:

• A product without an image is sent to Google Merchant Center
• An inactive product is sent to Google Merchant Center
• A request made to the ShopWired API (to fetch product or shipping information) fails for some reason
• A request made to the Google API fails for some reason
• There was an internal error with the app

The Product status section of the app provides a report on products that have been successfully exported to Google Merchant Center:

• Products approved by Google will be displayed in the Product status section and display their status with a green tick icon
• Select the green tick icon to view more information
• The information displayed for exported products is limited to the destination on which they are approved:
• Where the destination shows as Shopping, this means the product is approved for inclusion in Google Shopping search results
• Where the destination shows as SurfacesAcrossGoogle, this means the product is approved for inclusion in results for Google Search, Google Images, and Google Lens and, where applicable, Google Maps

Where a product is approved, it may only be approved for specific countries. Any countries where the product is not approved will be displayed in the Disapproved countries section.

Products not approved by Google Merchant Center will be displayed in the Product status section and display their status with a red warning icon. Select the icon to view more information:

• Each disapproval reason will be listed separately and segmented into issues of two types:
• Item Level Issues includes reasons why the product data is invalid in some way
• Destination Status includes reasons why the product is not available on a Google destination (either Shopping or SurfacesAcrossGoogle)

Where a product has not been approved by Google Merchant Center, you should refer to the problems displayed either within your Google Merchant Center account or in the Product status section of the Google Shopping app and fix any issues with the product data or your delivery rates/settings. The product's new data will be automatically resubmitted to Google once you have added it to your ShopWired account.

When a product is updated on your ShopWired account, the updated information is sent to Google Merchant Center automatically:

• When editing a product through your ShopWired account
• When editing a product through ShopWired's product import system
• When editing a product through ShopWired's API (both the products and variations endpoint)
• When editing the stock quantity through your ShopWired account
• When editing the stock quantity through ShopWired's stock import system
• When editing the stock quantity through ShopWired's API (the stock endpoint)

Updates to product information are not immediate, and the time taken to export updates to Google Shopping is dependent on a number of factors. On average, updates take approximately 30 minutes to sync.

The Google Shopping app sends product information to Google Shopping via API calls. Each time an API call is made (either when creating a new product or updating an existing product), it is recorded by the app and can be viewed by selecting the view option in the API call column in the Products section of the app.

You can select to view the API call to see exactly what information has been sent about a product.

Google Merchant Center offers a feature called Found by Google. The feature automatically crawls your website for new products (not sent by the Google Shopping app) and adds them to your Google Merchant Center account. Read more information about automatically added products on Google's website.

ShopWired recommends turning off this feature and choosing the products to submit to Google Merchant Center using ShopWired's Google Shopping app.

Read Google's guidance on how to disable Found by Google.