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.
Contents
- Step 1: Create a new connection
- Step 2: Create the API
- Step 3: Create your product listings
- Step 4: Send your products to Google Merchant Center
- Step 5: Check your product listings for errors
Preparation
- Failed API message: 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.
- Merchant Center account: You need a Google Merchant Center account to make use of our Google Shopping API. You can take a look at this Google Support article and create an account on sign up on merchants.google.com.
Step 1: Create a new connection
- Go to [Your company name] > Connections and click +Add a new connection.
- Select Google Shopping.
- At Label, add a name for the connection.
- Click 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.
Step 2: Create the API
- Navigate to Channels and click +Create channel.
- Select Google Shopping. In the pop up, select the option Feed.
- Select the Google Shopping connection you created.
- Add a Name for your 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).
- Click Continue to create the new Google Shopping API.
Step 3: Create your product listings
Follow these steps to set up your channel:
1. Categorize your products
To set up your product data, assign categories to your products.
- Smart Categorization: Automatically assigns product categories through our algorithm.
- Manual Categorization: Manually assign product categories with custom rules. You can create detailed filters to map each product to the correct category.
- Uncategorized Items: Products that still need to be reviewed and categorized
2. Set up rules
Rules help you quickly optimize your product data for the marketplace you want to sell on.
- Rule templates: Commonly used rules you can adjust for your use case.
- Rules setup: Set up rules to refine your product data. This can include filtering, modifying, or enhancing data fields to meet marketplace requirements.
3. Build your listings
The Build step is where you configure your product listings to match marketplace requirements. It’s an essential step for getting your products live and avoiding errors.
Mandatory and optional fields:
- Mandatory fields : Required to list your products on this marketplace
- Recommended : Recommended to avoid errors
- Optional : Not required to list
Shared attributes
Shared attributes are the common fields that apply across your products, such as EAN, prices, and titles. This step ensures uniformity in basic product information across your listings.
-
Use static or dynamic Values:
- Static values: Fixed values that don’t change (e.g. brand name, manufacturer)
- Dynamic values: Fields that automatically change based on the linked data (e.g. stock, prices)
Category-specific attributes
Category-specific attributes fields that specifically apply to the category for your products .This step helps in fine-tune your listings to meet category requirements for your marketplace.
Fill in attributes that are specific to the selected category (e.g. such size for clothing or dimensions for furniture.)
Learn more about the Build step for marketplaces
4. Check the quality of your set up
The Quality step provides feedback on your channel before you activate it. It highlights mandatory and optional errors to ensure your product data meets requirements to list on the marketplace.
- Solve errors, prioritizing mandatory errors first.
Actions
- View items: See products with specific issues.
- View in build: Redirects to the Build step to map missing information.
- Set categories: Directs to the Categories step to categorize items.
- Show source: Available for ID fields. Directs to the Settings step.
5. Preview before activating
The Preview step displays the attributes you mapped in the Build step, helping you check if everything is configured correctly by providing an overview of your products and potential errors.
Filtering:
- Filter by error: Click the All dropdown and select if you would like to filter to display only products with errors, or products with a specific error.
- Filter by category: Click the All categories dropdown and select the category you want to filter by.
Before you continue:
- Review Shared attributes: Ensure all mandatory shared attributes are filled.
- Review Category-specific attributes: Ensure all mandatory category-specific attributes are filled.
- Check for errors: Correct any red-marked fields.
Additional information for the Google Shopping API
Attributes are not available for Google Shopping, you can skip that step.
-
Out-of-stock products
Do not exclude products that are out of stock as Google works with theavailabilitystatus of the products. So make sure you set up the availability based on your stock value in the rules instead. -
EAN codes
Sending an EAN code for your products is not mandatory, you can also use a rule to empty invalid EAN codes. Excluding the products with an invalid EAN is unnecessary as this is not mandatory, but you should not send invalid EAN codes to Google.
Step 4: Send your products to Google 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 your project yet, go to Settings > Project settings and click Activate project.
- Go back to APIs > [Your Google Shopping API] > Settings and click Activate API.
- Click Run now to send your product listings to Google Shopping.
Step 5: Check your product listings for errors
After you have sent your ads to Google Shopping, go to the Preview tab. Go to the Errors tab to view 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.