Google Shopping UK Update 2013

As we highlighted last year, Google is making moves by rolling out its anticipated Pay To Display In Google Shopping for the UK in the early part of this year.  Currently, UK ecommerce merchants display their products for free in Google but this will soon change with the introduction of Google’s Pay To Display Ads which will be based on a pay per click model.  More information on all of this can be found on our previous post on this subject – Pay To Display In Google in 2013.

As part of this roll-out and in an effort to improve data quality, Google have updated their Google Shopping International feed file specifications and information.

This page provides a summary of the required, recommended and not applicable Google Shopping attributes that merchants will require to include in their feed files depending on the country selected.  

Any required attributes that are currently not in your feed file should be added by March 2013.  We also recommend that merchants add the following attributes – Google Product Category and Google Product Type.  Google Product Category will soon be mandatory for everything (in our opinion) and  Google Product Type provides merchants the opportunity to add their own descriptors into the Google Taxonomy if it does not already exist.

The full Google Shopping product feed specification can be found here – Google Feed Attributes.

On the 13th February 2013, Google will move to the Product Listing Ad model which is basically Google AdWords for Google Shopping.  Google believe that this commercial model will lead to higher quality data and listings in Google Shopping together with providing a better shopping experience for customers resulting in improved customer experiences, high quality traffic and increased sales for merchants.  Whether this will actually happen, remains to be seen; paid search budgets are going to be stretched further by the introduction of this but hopefully these changes being implemented by Google will introduce a better shopping environment and improved ecommerce sales for all merchants that they are predicting.

In an effort to encourage merchants to get their Product Listings Ads up and running, Google are offering a £75.00 promotional credit to eligible merchants who create their campaigns before the 12th April 2013.  Additionally, eligible merchants with receive a monthly credit of 10% of their total Product Listing Ad Spend from the 15th February to 30th June 2013.  More information on this offer can be found here – https://services.google.com/fb/forms/shoppingcouponuk/ and information on how to set up Product Listing Ads can be found here – http://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2456103/?&

Pay To Display in Google shopping is here so we recommend that all ecommerce merchants on Google Shopping check that your feed files have the necessary attributes required and that you set up your Pay To Display Ads in time for go live and remember to check your eligibility for the the £75.00 credit and 10% offers.