Google Shopping: New Feed Updates Online Product Inventories

As the festive season approaches, Google continues to offer new ways to help merchants best prepare their Google Shopping feeds.

Having previously looked at the features which Google Shopping brought out in September, we are now going to look at Google Product Inventory Update, recently added to the platform.

Google Shopping Product Inventory Update Feed

If you currently list your products on Google Shopping and you regularly need to update the price, availability or information relating to the sale pricing of your products, this new feed is made for you! With the introduction of the Google Product Iventory Update feed, you can now quickly update all of your data, to ensure your clients see all the latest offers on Google Shopping.

For this, you need to add the following attributes to the feed:

• ID
• Price
• Availability
• Sale Price
• Sale Price Effective Date

The only attribute which must be added to the inventory feed is the ID, which has to correspond to the Product ID, which you will have already added to your product feed, as this is the principle link between your product catalogue and the platform. The other four attributes are purely facultative, which means you only need to add the fields which need to be updated.

The Google product Inventory Update Feed Does Not Replace the Comprehensive Product Feed

The aim of this new inventory feed is to give you the ability to send the values linked to variable elements of your inventory (price, availability…) more frequently than to the rest of your Google Products’ feed, the latter being updated a maximum of once a day. This is why Google advises all online sellers to use the new feed alongside the existing Google Products feed. The product feed allows you to effectuate updates if new products come out or old ones dissapear from your catalogue, or if the descriptions of certain products change. The new inventory feed will allow you to update the most changeable product characteristics: price, availability or sale price for example.

Therefore, this new feed will not replace the comprehensive product feed, which is why Google still requires you to submit a comprehensive product feed and to use the inventory feed only to update certain elements which are already detailed in the main feed.

NB: This new feed doesn’t change the fact that you need to update your principal product feed at least once a month. Each new product feed imported will replace the Product Inventory Update feed.

What are the Benefits?

The inventory feed is treated more quickly than the comprehensive product feed, because it can be sent throughout the day. Thanks to this your products will always be up-to-date on Google Shopping. The new feed also gives you a certain flexibility to update the attributes, which allows you to be reactive regarding the offers which you present to your clients on this platform. Furthermore, if you have large product catalogue, the inventory feed allows you to lighten the uploading of your data on Google Shopping by uniquely sending the details that you wish to update. Finally, if there are any errors in the treatment of the inventory feed, there will be no repercussions in you principal feed.

Setting up the Feed Via Lengow

You can now set up this inventory feed via Lengow by creating a Google Product Inventory Update feed. To set it up, take into account that this feed is set up in the same way as the Google Products’ feed.

NB: Supplementary feed billed by Lengow.

If you are already a client with Lengow and list your products on Google Shopping, don’t hesitate to contact our Help Centre to learn more about setting up the Google Shopping’s Google Product Inventory Update.

If you are not already a client and you would like to start list your products on Google Shopping, contact us on +44 2033 182631 or ask for a free demo!

Source: Google Support