We are expanding into the US, and our original domain is .com. The problem is, when our website was created (in Canada), we used .com, but now with the US business expansion, we need two separate stores and I need to change our original domain to .ca.
Here is where we need help; What steps should I take in our Google Merchant Account? I changed our domain to .ca and then all of our products were pushed to in-active due to mis-matched links.
Should we delete the original content api product feed and then upload a new one? Any advice would be much appreciated, especially if there are more problems we should be considering.
Having 1 website targeting multiple countries is much easier to get approved than having multiple different TLDs. Just an FYI.
I recommend using 1 domain targeting all countries, you have the option to have different markets. And this will give you much higher ranking.
However, if you absolutely don’t want to do this. Then first convert your account to be an advanced account: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtOwKWyuRWY
Then update all your settings in Google Merchant Center for the first sub account, meaning Canada, and update your website URL here: Promote Your Business with Merchant Center - Google for Retail
Once done and all is approved, setup a second sub account in Google merchant center, and connect your second store (US).
Thank you. Unfortunately, we cannot use 1 domain for both countries. Each domain will have separate inventory from separate warehouses, which is why we need two domains to display two different inventories.
We made a mistake and changed our domain without managing any of our google merchant center settings. Now all of our products now have mis-matched links. In efforts to correct this mistake, we reverted our store back to its original domain and now we are having many issues with our google merchant center content api feed.
I think at this point we are better off re-submitting an entire new product feed using content api and deleting our original one? Will this cause issues? How long do you think it will take to display our products?
Any suggestions?
You can have separate inventory info per market in Shopify, just an FYI. So you can do everything from 1 store if needed.
Of course, your method can work as well.
Yes, delete the primary feed in GMC, so you can re-submit it.
Then when you try again, make sure you first delete the feed. Update your GMC settings, then submit the new feed (with the new URLs)
You can control 2 warehouse inventories for 2 markets from one store? We would still run into the problem of website design. We will have very limited inventory to sell to US customers, therefore we cannot have the same offerings on the US site as we would our CAD site.
Also, what should I expect when I delete and re-upload a content api feed? Will it be weeks before products start to populate? Will it take time for google ads to re-learn my products and customer’s shopping habits?
I recommend having a look into markets, as it seems you might have not looked at all it’s functionalities. For example if you have 10 products in Canada, you can enable just lets say 3 for the US.
If you delete the feed, and you re install the google and youtube app, it will be within a day.
As to re-learning, the following assumption is considered. If the product ids where the same, then there should be no re-learning.