Entering Google Custom Product and Google Shopping Product Category

Shopify Discussion
1

I am having a terrible time entering Google Custom Product and Google Shopping Product Category on my products. It used to be that I could enter this information directly from the Product page as I was creating a new product (by selecting Google Fields from the More Actions drop down menu). Now I understand that I have to do this by clicking Manage Products in the Google & You Tube Sales Channel.

However, the screen that comes up when I do this does not have a search or filter function. The products are shown in pages of 50 products. Except I have thousands of products in my shop, and scrolling through to find the prod is taking so long that it’s effectively impossible.

Has anyone else experienced this and if so, how did you get around it?

2

An alternative and maybe easier method is to go to Google Merchant Center and use feed rules based on the product type value to create the categories.
It is also most likely unnecessary to add categories as they will be added automatically. Unless they are wrong, then you do need to correct the issues.

As for product identifiers, you can follow the following video.

3

Thank you for this!

Regarding the categories, we use Product Type in Shopify for broader grouping of products and our pick list app groups items based on this field, so unfortunately we do not use very detailed categories in this field and that must be why Google is sometimes miscategorizing our products. We were under the impression that Product Type was largely for our personal use and that Product Category was where we should enter a specific taxonomy. Thank you for the clarification. I’ll keep an eye on the categories Google is assigning for our products.

As for the Product Identifiers - that tutorial is great! I’m going to try creating those Feed Rules tomorrow. Out of curiosity, I understand that if a product doesn’t have a GTIN that we should not submit anything in the barcode field (or else set a feed rule to clear that field), however why does Google require that these products also have no Brand or MPN? Wouldn’t having Brand and MPN for a product with no GTIN help Google identify what it is?

4

You can submit brand + mpn, but you will notice limited performance warning.

By removing brand and mpn, you will most likely not get a limited performance warning.

If in doubt, experiment.

5

Got it. Thanks again!

I’m working on those feed rules and I have a follow up question. We have some products in Merchant Center which have a GTIN but have Identifier Exists set to false. If I wanted to create an additional feed rule that would switch them to true, what would that look like?

6

click on the video to go to Youtube, the regular expression is in the description.

7

Thank you - yes! I posted that question and then realized I already had the expression. However, how do I modify the “Identifier Exists” feed rule so that anything without a 12-14 GTIN is set to “no” and anything with a 12-14 GTIN is set to “yes”? I can’t seem to find out how to add two conditions to a feed rule.

8

Hi @RLBGS

Instead of adding the Google product category and custom product data using the Google channel app, you can add the data manually in the products category section in Shopify. You can also add the Google product category to the products in the Merchant Center manually.

In the case of custom products, you have to remove the Band. MPN and GTIN for a product to make Google understand that these are custom products.

You can use our app, Nabu for Google Shopping to simplify your task. This will help you add the Google product category to your products in bulk and send them to your feed. We also send the identifier value as ‘false’ in case of custom products to minimise the warnings and errors in the merchant center.

9

Everything should default to yes, hence why in my video there is only a no rule needed.

If you are saying that all your products are set to no, then you need to reverse the rule. Meaning add another rule that says if it matches, then set to yes.

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10

You may try any integration that offers customized features to map attributes, check this app:

https://apps.shopify.com/google-express-integration

There is a dedicated team for customer success team and support that can help you with all the concerns you have regarding Google shopping and gmc account.

You may create different profiles for Google based on values like collections, price, etc, and upload each profile separately with categories and other attributes

Thanks

11

You can now use Shopify Flow for many such tasks-it seems to be the one place outside of GraphQL where it is available (since it is built upon GraphQL). I would attach my Flow export, but this form does not tolerate this. Note that this approach is likely a quite advanced step - I’m using my 40+ years experience to knock this out today.

However, the simplest structure is one trigger and one action:

Trigger: Product_Status_Updated

Action: Update Product Metafield

{

namespace: google

key: google_product_category

value: {{product.productCategory.productTaxonomyNode.fullName}}

type: Single Line Text

}

Every time a product status is changed (between Active, Draft, Archive) this flow will run. The only useful product triggers I found were Status Update and Added To Shop.

Similar things can be done to the products variants to set variant metafields as well. You will likely have to add Metafield Definitions in Settings:Custom Data

Tracy Hall

12

In the latest iteration of the Google & Yahoo manager, the namespace is “mm-google-shopping”

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13

Appreciate the video! :clap:

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