VERY IMPORTANT: Google Feed doesn't work becaus of missing info

The Google feed doesn’t send the categories for the products, so Google doesn’t display any of the items.  Here are the results of my “successful” upload, which no products are actually being displayed on Google.  What is the point in sending or creating the feed if it isn’t going to be shown to Google Searchers?

This means no category was provided.  And NO products will be dsplayed in Google.

Missing Product Type Values  100%  508


How can we add the other idenifiers and crete a complete Google XML feed to send them?

The information below is incomplete even though I have complete information in nopCommerce.  There is other data that helps your Google listings be seen by searchers and help your listing to be ranked hgh, without these the listngs are not seen in Google.

This is all the info sent to Google, missing Category, Color, Size...just to name a few.

<item>
<link></link>
<title></description>
<g:brand></g:brand>
<g:condition></g:condition>
<g:expiration_date></g:expiration_date>
<g:id></g:id>
<g:image_link></g:image_link>
<g:price></g:price>
</item>

These are other errors which should be coded to avoid them...

Error type  Percentage  Count
Missing or invalid identifiers for Electronics, Books and Media  100%  2
Missing Product Type Values  100%  508
Capitalized titles  3%  15
Long Titles  38%  191

The Google XML feed doesn't send all the necessary information for Gogle to list the products.  On my example, the missing category node causes my products to not be listed even though nopCommerce system generates an sends the feeds without errors.  As shown 100% of my items are missing the category, which means Google will not display the listings in their Product search results.  

So what is the point of sending it if it doesn't meet their requirements?

Secondly, I noticed that it sends all of the products in my store even if 0 are available for purchase.  This should only send available products because the User experience will be negative if they continue to click and find OUT of Stock messages.  This give the impression of a crappy site, and bad reputation of your site to Google searchers.

I opened a thread about this a while ago and it was added as a feature request but received little support from the forum members regardless of its importance. Not sure why that was?

Google feeds no longer supports products and Merchant centre is for this. As you rightly say the current feed is not merchant centre friendly.

What I do is dump my products out to excel or xml and add the missing attributes myself and submit the feed manually. Not ideal but does the job. Once you get started not too difficult, just cut and paste as you need.

https://www.nopcommerce.com/boards/t/7306/google-shopping-google-merchant-centre.aspx

I read your post, thanks.

This is not feasible, as I have dozens of categories and over a 1,000 products.  The inventory changes fequently so I need this to be updated daily.  

I have started to build an SSIS package to handle this but anyone without a dedicated server and MS SQL will not benefit.

There's a related post:

https://www.nopcommerce.com/boards/t/7306/google-shopping-google-merchant-centre.aspx


you can look at including the necessary info

\PromotionProviders\Nop.Froogle\FroogleService.cs

haydie wrote:

I am not sure this would help.

If I understand correctly the so called "froogle" service no longer submits products to the engine for genereric searches. Merchant centre was created specificly for products search last quarter of 2010 I believe. Even a corrected feed will still not make it into the product listings as it is submitted to the wrong place so currently whatever method you use you still have to send the feed manually.

I speak from personal experience. We are missing a trick here. What I sell is a competitive product in terms of search words however when I submitted the feed manually my listings dominated the first three pages of google products. This implies to me that other carts have not been updated to reflect the changes either.

As I stated in my previous post. Merchant centre does not care for keywords and other traditional SEO strategies. It works on attributes and states this clearly in the google documentation.

This should be a priority enhancement to nopcommerce in my opinion rather than a "nice to have"

I have few questions:

1) If Froogle has been replaced with Google Merchant Center, now if i generate froogle feed from the administration area, will it work with Google Merchant ?

2) Is this the right place to upload the feed: Google Merchant Center ?

3) I don't understand what exactly is wrong with generated feed, I can see the links then what's the issue, do I need to make any modifications or upload the generated feed as it is ?

4) Is Google Merchant Center free for any store owner to submit products feed ?

5) What goes here: ?

Hostname:       
File name:   
Username:   
Password:

super wrote:

Hi

You can find all your answers in great detail by reading the documentation on google when logged into you account but to answer your questions briefly.

1. last time I looked Google were saying that they would migrate feeds submitted into froogle within 7 days into merchant centre. In my experience this doesnt help much with ranking because
a. The old feed doesnt work the same as merchant centre
b. You need a merchant centre account in addition

2. Not looked at this one, I used to submit manually via google merchant centre account every 30 days or so

3. The problem is how merchant centre ranks. For example if you are selling a "red football" and submit it as it is (with or without metadata) it will rank somewhere but not highly. If on the other hand you submit the same football with a category attribute of say "sports equipment" and a colour attribute of "red" it will rank more highly as the keywords carry lesser weight. It works very similary to ebay. The more detailed your attributes the more likely to get listed on specific customer searches. Bottom line, without attributes you dont even get a foot in the door.

4. Yes it is free

5. same as my answer to two.


I should point out I havent used merchant centre for two months while I build my store so if anyone knows any different please speak out.

jmorris wrote:

I went down the path of trying to create an excel transform as all the data required with the exception of google categories can be included in the product export to csv.

Unfortunately, I simply did not have the skillset or mindset to complete this task and ended up shelving it as my brain started to hurt. Any volunteers? :-)

[email protected] wrote:

can you plz tell how you used to do this ? plz explain the procedure if possible.