If you have an online business, chances are you are using, or have considered using Google Merchant Center, as another sales channel. It integrates with popular platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce, and GoDaddy to give your existing product listings even more visibility to potential buyers.
While the potential for profit typically outweigh the cons, Google Merchant Center can be a bit finicky when it comes to their rules and regulations (try adding 'free shipping' to product titles and you'll see what we mean). Disapproved product can be frustrating, and may eventually put your account at risk of suspension.
Before you go manually renaming hundreds of product titles, or attempting any other time consuming modification, we're here to introduce you to Merchant Center's built in logic. It will help your products abide by Google's standards without modifying the original product listings on whatever e-commerce platform you are using. The only downside is it is a little tricky to figure out, but we're here to help you resolve some common scenarios!
One common error we've seen is [Extraneous text]. In our aforementioned example, 'free shipping' rendered the product disapproved by Merchant Center. Any promotional or irrelevant text can raise a red flag for the platform. But maybe that added phrase has been a key to converting on Shopify! Here's how to resolve it without changing the listing itself.
1. Navigate to the product feed and select 'Feed rules'
2. Click the '+' to add an additional feed rule, and select 'title', since that is the attribute we will be modifying
3. In the bottom left corner, select the link 'Add modification'. A whole new menu will appear giving you the options to Prepend, Append, Find & Replace, or Advanced Operators.
4. For this instance, we'll be using Find & Replace. The rest is pretty self explanatory- we are finding the term 'FREE Shipping' (capitalization is irrelevant since we left 'case sensitive' unchecked) and leaving the replace field black. Whole words only is selected so we don't eliminate any similar but not exact text.
Other Modification Operations
Other common modification operators are Prepend, Append, and Clear. Prepend allows you to add words or phrases to the beginning of an attribute (ex. add a color to the front of a title). Append will do the exact opposite (ex. add a color or size to the end of a title). Clear is useful when removing the value of an attribute entirely- perhaps an attribute has "No value" written unnecessarily and you'd like it removed.
Familiarizing yourself with Google Merchant Center feed rules and logic will help you avoid unnecessary account issues without altering your product listings on other platforms. We'd love to hear what tips and tricks have helped you maximize profit and minimize headaches!
