If you run an eCommerce business, Google Product Search can be one of your biggest customers referral sources by sending your products feed to Google. On July 11, Google announced on changes to the submitted feed specifications that will be enforced from September 22 and a week ago they put up a reminder with better clarification of the new requirements.

Here are some of the new feed requirements:

In Stock/Out Of Stock- Google like to distinguish between products in stock or out of stock. The “availability” attribute will be required in the US, UK, Germany and France.

Categories- For better sorting, products from the following categories are required to specify the “Google product category” attribute in the US, UK, Germany, France or Japan:

1.  Apparel & Accessories > Clothing
2.  Apparel & Accessories > Shoes
3.  Apparel & Accessories
4.  Media > Books
5.  Media > DVDs & Movies
6.  Media > Music
7.  Software > Video Game Software

Images- It is required to add the “image link” attribute. It is recommended to add more images using the “additional image link” attribute but it isn’t mandatory.

Apparel & Accessories Category- Products from this category required to add attributes like “size”, “color”, “gender” and “age group”.

Enforcing The New Feed Specification

Mayuresh Saoji, senior manager of Google Product Search, has elaborated to Search Engine Watch how the new specification will be enforced if not complying in the following order:

– 7 days warning period.
– 7 days account suspension.
– 28 days account suspension.

One Last Thought…

The new feed specifications may be annoying to some and may take some time, but remember that Google Product Search can be a huge revenue booster, so invest the time to create the best optimized feed!