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Setting up a Google Shopping API

This is a Help Center article of Channable, the tool for product feed management and PPC automation. If you don't have an account yet, create a free trial account now or learn how Channable can help you integrate your webshop with the Google Merchant Center.
Do you want to learn interactively all basics related to the creation of an API export, or how to make an advanced setup for an API in Channable? Learn how to create a Channacademy account in the Channable app through this Help Center article and start with the Basic APIs or Expert APIs course.
Important I: Your Shopping Ads connection might expire after using it for a while. This will result in a 'failed API' with an error message. To refresh your connection, follow the steps in this article.
Important II: You need a Google Merchant Center account in order to make use of our Google Shopping API. You can have a look at this Google Support article and create an account or sign up on merchants.google.com. 

There are two ways with which you can create Google Shopping Ads in Google Merchant Center: you can either export a feed or send your products via an API. This article covers the Google Shopping API.

Step 1: Create a new Google Shopping connection in Channable

First, go to "[your company name in the top right corner] > Connections" and click on "+ Add a new connection > Google Shopping".

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You can now fill in a name for the connection under "Label" and "Connect with Google Shopping". You will be redirected to Google Merchant Center, which means the connection is made. Return to Channable to continue to set up your API.

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Step 2: Create a new Google Shopping API

To create a new API, go to your project and "APIs > + Add new API" and select the Google Shopping connection you have previously created. 

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You will be redirected to the API settings, where you can name the API and select the unique ID per item. Add your Google Merchant ID, the country you target as well as the language. You can also make use of master rule group(s). Then, click on "Continue" to create the new Google Shopping API.

Step 3: Create your product listings in Channable

Follow the four steps below to create your product listings for Google Shopping.

  1. Categories
    Set up Google Categories for your products by using the generate categories feature, create new categories from scratch or by using the Smart Categorization. You need to categorize 100% of the products you wish to push in Google Shopping.

  2. Rules
    Create different rules to optimize your product data. For examples, take a look at our common rules support article. You can filter out products that have a price equal or lower than 0 ; that have no image and that are disabled or inactive on your webshop backend. You can also use a rule to empty invalid EAN codes. It is not necessary to exclude the products with an invalid EAN as this is not mandatory but you should not send invalid EAN codes to Google. 
    Important: Do not exclude products that are out of stock as Google works with the availability status of the products. 
  3. Build
    In the Build step you can find our preset template for the product listings. All you have to do is to fill it out by clicking on the field itself and selecting the corresponding value. For instance, the field 'Title' should display the 'Title' of your product and so on. In the build step, there are a number of tabs where you can enter the product information. For example, to add the images you go to the images tab, and to enter shipping costs you go to shipping.
    Tip! Hover over the question marks next to the fields to see a description of the field and suggestions for possible values.
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    Important: There is no field to send the shipping country information, but you can still send it. What you need to do is set up a regional shipping price rule, that contains the shipping country with the option "All regions" selected. Once this is done and you send a shipping price, we will automatically send that country as the shipping country for your Google Shopping API products. This is mandatory since September 2021. 
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  4. Attributes
    Attributes are not available for Google Shopping, you can skip this step.

Step 4: Send your products to Merchant Center

Once you have finished setting up your product listings, you can send them to your Google Merchant Center. If you have not activated the project yet, navigate to "Settings > Project settings> Activate project". Then, go back to "APIs > Your Google Shopping API > Settings > Activate API". When you click on "Run now", your product listings will be sent to Google Shopping.

Step 5: Solve errors in the API 

After you have sent your ads to Google Shopping, go to the "Preview" tab. By clicking on "Errors" you can see which product listings have errors and will not be set live by Google. Click on an error to see what the error message is and which products have that error.