I create my own products, do I need to create an MPN for these?

OliviaMichaelCo · ‎12-21-2021

Hello all, I've been researching all morning but this is really tripping me up.

I create my own candles, I have my own company and own brand. I have these on a life Shopify store. I have many candles for sale that I create myself.

When linking to Google, it's asking me for an MPN, a GTIN and a Brand. However, I cannot for the life of me see where I can create these, and all help here seems to point to "unless you're the manufacture, you cannot create them", but since I do make these myself and they are specific to me and my business I guess I can go ahead and create these?

It's really confusing me and the Google help documents may as well be in French.

Does anyone have a simple guide or explanation for what I need to do next? My products are approved but have warnings and I would really like to have all of this sorted out for the new year.

Many thanks to anyone who can help me.

Rosalind.

OliviaMichaelCo · ‎02-24-2022

Hello @SarahWhigham

Yes, I managed to get this working in the end. It was a HUGE undertaking (to arrive at a solution), so I will post below what I did and hopefully this works for you too. Please do let me know.

Step 1 - Set up the product data in Shopify.

Select the Google tab under Sales channels and you'll see your products that are approved. Select Manage availability.

Make sure Available to Google is checked. Under Custom product, type False and set your Google product category. Mine is "Home & Garden > Decor > Candles & Home Fragrances > Candles", for example. Edit any other info that you want to send to Google and save for each of your products.

I'm assuming that since this doesn't work for you, then Barcode and MPN will be blank, but check anyway or this won't work. If they're not showing you can add them by selecting Add fields and then picking them.

Step 2 - Add feed rules to Google Merchant Centre

This is the difficult part that took me forever to get right after much changing and testing, but you should be able to copy this exactly to get it to work.

In Google Merchant Centre (I'm assuming you have an account here) select Products > Feeds > Content API > Feed rules. This is where the fun and games start.

You're going to need to add the following feed rules.

(The middle one for 'identifier exists' has two other conditions for GTIN and identifier exists both 'has no value' using an 'OR' operator.

What this does is:

Brand - Clear the Brand attribute (because if there's a Brand it looks for the GTIN value). You have to have a Brand in Shopify so you cannot remove it there. I do it with a feed rule.

Identifier exists - Set the identifier exists to no (Shopify leaves this blank for some reason) if the identifier exists, MPN OR GTIN is blank.

Title - This is optional, but since we're removing the Brand it'll remove it from your product in shopping. So I add it on again here using the API content. You can mess about with this how you see fit, but for me, it shows up like this.

I've actually just noticed my brand is showing again in blue, so will probably remove that last one now. You can use this to add anything else to the title though, depending on how you market your products.

So that's it. I did all these steps and then all my products got that magic Active status!

This is quite tricky, so reach out if you get stuck. These pretty much got approved quickly after doing this final step, but you'll have to push your products to google again for the feed rules to kick in. I usually do this by changing the inventory or making a small change.

Good luck.

View solution in original post

OliviaMichaelCo · ‎12-21-2021

Further reading leads me to believe I shouldn't be using an MPN for candles, and rather a GTIN as they're specific products and not parts.

The search for clarity continues...

Rosalind.

SarahWhigham · ‎02-23-2022

Hi Rosalind,

I am having this same issue and just came across your post. Did you find the solution? would you care to share?

Thanks so much

Sarah

OliviaMichaelCo · ‎02-24-2022

Hello @SarahWhigham

Yes, I managed to get this working in the end. It was a HUGE undertaking (to arrive at a solution), so I will post below what I did and hopefully this works for you too. Please do let me know.

Step 1 - Set up the product data in Shopify.

Select the Google tab under Sales channels and you'll see your products that are approved. Select Manage availability.

Make sure Available to Google is checked. Under Custom product, type False and set your Google product category. Mine is "Home & Garden > Decor > Candles & Home Fragrances > Candles", for example. Edit any other info that you want to send to Google and save for each of your products.

I'm assuming that since this doesn't work for you, then Barcode and MPN will be blank, but check anyway or this won't work. If they're not showing you can add them by selecting Add fields and then picking them.

Step 2 - Add feed rules to Google Merchant Centre

This is the difficult part that took me forever to get right after much changing and testing, but you should be able to copy this exactly to get it to work.

In Google Merchant Centre (I'm assuming you have an account here) select Products > Feeds > Content API > Feed rules. This is where the fun and games start.

You're going to need to add the following feed rules.

(The middle one for 'identifier exists' has two other conditions for GTIN and identifier exists both 'has no value' using an 'OR' operator.

What this does is:

Brand - Clear the Brand attribute (because if there's a Brand it looks for the GTIN value). You have to have a Brand in Shopify so you cannot remove it there. I do it with a feed rule.

Identifier exists - Set the identifier exists to no (Shopify leaves this blank for some reason) if the identifier exists, MPN OR GTIN is blank.

Title - This is optional, but since we're removing the Brand it'll remove it from your product in shopping. So I add it on again here using the API content. You can mess about with this how you see fit, but for me, it shows up like this.

I've actually just noticed my brand is showing again in blue, so will probably remove that last one now. You can use this to add anything else to the title though, depending on how you market your products.

So that's it. I did all these steps and then all my products got that magic Active status!

This is quite tricky, so reach out if you get stuck. These pretty much got approved quickly after doing this final step, but you'll have to push your products to google again for the feed rules to kick in. I usually do this by changing the inventory or making a small change.

Good luck.

JHP_photo · ‎05-19-2022

Hi @OliviaMichaelCo ,

That's some valuable information you wrote up here. I went head first into the world of Google Merchant to connect Shopify to Google Shopping.

I sell photo prints that have no GTIN not MPN. So in Google MC I created a new 'rule' to prevent the GTIN/MPN issue in Shopify. Did I do this right? Please check below:

Google Merchant Center says 'all good to go'

Shopify Google app says 'gtin or mpn' is still missing

Would love your feedback on this as nothing is visible yet in Google Shopping.

Thanks!

OliviaMichaelCo · ‎05-19-2022

I'm glad someone appreciated it. The person I typed it out for didn't even respond.

You need to remove the brand as well or this won't work. You need to do exactly as I've done really. That combination was the only way I managed to get my results to show on google shopping.

JHP_photo · ‎05-19-2022

I know...it's a pitty your information wasn't appreciated. Well, I do 😅
Been on it for a while now, with some helpful youtube vids, but still missing out on something.

Does the 'identifier exists' look good to you?

OliviaMichaelCo · ‎05-19-2022

Not 100% mine is like this if I expand it. Do bear in mind I have no idea if this is the correct way to do it, I just know this is the way it works for me.

JHP_photo · ‎05-19-2022

Did it, now let's wait and see.

Oh, and it has not even been 48 hours since I connected Shopify with Google. I might have been a little impatient as they say it might take 3-5 days to review the store...

florapothecarie · ‎08-18-2023

I just want to thank you SO MUCH for this detailed fix! This has been driving me crazy and even though I'm fairly tech-savvy, I also felt like the Google help articles were in another language. So, in case no one has said "thank you!!" to you lately, there you have it.

Sincerely,

Sami, natural skincare maker @ florapothecarie.com

OliviaMichaelCo · ‎08-19-2023

You're welcome. Happy to help. It was so frustrating that I didn't want anyone else to have to go through that.

hellomellow · ‎11-29-2023

Amazingly helpful information. I've been trying to deal with this for 6 months. Sadly, your post didn't come up for me until today. Make a youtube video and retire on the advertising revenue. 🤣

OliviaMichaelCo · ‎12-09-2023

I'm happy this helped you 🙂

I create my own products, do I need to create an MPN for these?