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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.

To create Shopping ads for Google in your Google Merchant Center you can either export a feed or send your products via an API. This article covers sending ads to the Merchant Center using our Google Shopping API.

Important: 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.

1. Create a Google Merchant Center account

The first step is to create an account for the Google Merchant Center on https://merchants.google.com. 

2. Create a new API in Channable

To create an API for Shopping Ads, you need a direct connection between your Channable and Merchant Center accounts. You will first need to create a new connection in Channable. To do this go to [your name] (in the top right corner) > Connections > Add connection. Click on "+ Add a new connection", select Google Shopping and then click 'Create'. 

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Fill in a name for the connection under "Label" and select "Connect with Google Shopping":

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After this, you will be redirected to the Merchant Center, which means the connection is made. Return to Channable to continue to set up your API.

Next, go to the APIs tab in the left menu in your Channable project and click 'Add new API':

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Select Google Shopping and choose the new connection you created where it states "Connect with:"

3. Create your product listings 

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

1. Categories

Set up Google categories for your products by using the generate categories feature or create new categories from scratch.

2. Rules

Create different rules to optimize your product data. For examples, take a look at our common rules support article.

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. Starting September 15, this is mandatory for your Google Shopping listings. Read more about this change here.

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4. Attributes

Attributes are not available for Google Shopping, you can skip this step.

4. Activate the Google Shopping API

Once you have finished configuring your product listings, you can start sending your listings to your Google Merchant Center. If you have not activated the project yet, navigate to ‘Setup > Project settings’ and activate the project. Then, go back to APIs and go to the Settings of your Google Shopping API and activate the API there. When you click on 'Run now', your products will be sent to Google Shopping!

5. Preview

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.