I’ve been tracking and band-aid fixing some Google issues for months now. I have registered with Google Search Console and Google Merchant Center. My products do show up there but I have the issues noted below.
Google Merchant Center:
Every few days or about once a week, my shipping policies get reset and three policies show up, based on weight I think. We offer free shipping on all products and so I have to create a new free shipping policy and delete the three policies that have shown up. I assume this is some API ping to Shopify that is overriding my manual changing of the shipping policies but I have yet to figure out where/how to prevent this from happening - I imagine I need to do something on the Shopify side. I have been checking it daily and adjusting it when it resets and deletes my free shipping policy and puts these three weight based policies back in there. Any idea on what’s going on and how to fix?
Google Search Console:
My issue with this is that my product snippets drop off/disappear after 15 days. I have to “inspect” the url and submit the url for indexing again. Then they show back up again within a day or two. Every day I go to Overview > Product Snippets > View data about valid items, export those items, compare them against what should be listed and submit the missing ones for reindexing. I think the Merchant Listing totals/items are also being affected BUT only in the Search Console. If I look in Google Merchant Center, all products and variants appear to all be there.
Many thanks for any tips on these and other good practice suggestions. We’re still ramping up and any good links to strategy and things to check in general for increased exposure would be appreciated. And we’re not into Google Ads yet but want to be sure that if we do spend money there, that we get it right first time, so any good tutorials you recommend as we consider that would also be much appreciated. Thank you.
Hello Goober, thank you for your question, I am your Shopify AMA host Emmanuel from FeedArmy.
Regarding your shipping issues, that is most likely because you are using the Google and Youtube app that automatically submits the shipping rates, which overwrites any manual shipping rates in Google Merchant Center. To fix this go to the Google and Youtube app settings, and set the shipping rates to be manual. Now in Google Merchant Center apply your shipping rates you want, and they will no longer be overwritten. Unless some other app is doing this, but usually it is just the Google and Youtube app.
Regarding Google Search Console, that is a difficult one for me to answer. And I don’t think I can guide you correctly on this, I recommend you ask for guidance on the Google Search Console community here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/community?hl=en
I could indeed list good practices, I have over 350+ articles and 180+ videos all sharing tips. If you have some time, have a look at what I have written in my articles, or mentioned in the videos.
I appreciate the suggestion for the shipping fix. I have done this in the Google App in Shopify and I’ll wait for a few days and see if it happens again. Is there something I should have done on the Shopify side to fix this? I’ve not delved deeply into the shipping options in Shopify but I figure if these 3 weight based policies are being pulled/pushed in GMC then changing those in Shopify to be the free shipping I want would allow for automatic updates to GMC to work as expected?
The only option you needed to change was the shipping from automatic to manual.
However, you can not have automatic shipping, and manual at the same time. So you will need to choose one or the other.
If you want your manual rates in Google Merchant Center to not be removed, set the shipping settings in the Google and youtube app to manual.
If you want your shipping rates to be automatically updated in Google Merchant Center, set the shipping settings in the Google and youtube app to automatic. But then all your manual rates in Google Merchant Center will disappear.
I didn’t explain it properly. On automatic shipping, GMC must be pulling shipping policies from Shopify, right? And when it’s auto pulling the shipping policies it must be finding them in the Shopify store it is linked to. If they did not exist in Shopify (i.e. I deleted them) then it could not auto pull them into GMC? If I only had one shipping policy/profile in Shopify that was free shipping, then the automatic GMC setting should perform as expected? Maybe I just need to find time to dig around in Shopify shipping…
That is correct. But old shipping rates may linger in the GMC account, so double check that they are removed.
Yes I recommend checking yoru Shopify shipping rates to ensure you don’t have rates listed that are no longer valid.
1 Like