A guide on setting up a Google Shopping feed

This guide explains each step of the process of creating a Google Shopping feed in Channable. Follow these steps and all linked articles to create your feed, categorize and optimize your product data, and finally activate your feed.

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Before you start

You'll need

• A project to add your Google Shopping feed to

• Product data imported into Channable

1

Create a new Google Shopping Feed

1. Navigate to Channels and click + Create channel.

2. Select "Google Shopping". In the pop up, select the option Feed.

3. Fill in your Feed name.

4. Select your Target country from the dropdown.

Note: The country you select is fixed. To sell in another country, create a new feed and select that country there.

1. Select the Type of market (the specific category/sector of the retail market for your products).

Market types

Market	Description	Use case example
Standard (recommended)	For the majority of goods sold online that don’t fall into specialized categories.	Electronics, home goods, sporting equipment, toys, health & beauty products.
Fashion	For clothes, shoes, accessories and other fashion-related items. Requires specific attributes (e.g. color, size, gender, age_group)	Listing clothes, shoes, accessories, jewellery, watches.
Books	For both physical and digital books. Requires book-specific attributes (e.g. ISBN, publisher and publication date)	Listing printed novels, magazines, audiobooks, ebooks, digital textbooks.
Merchant promotions (advanced)	For creating and managing promotion feeds separate from main product feeds.	Manage special offers, promo codes, discounts, free shipping or gifts to shopping ads.
Inventory update (advanced)	For updating inventory-related changes (e.g. stock levels and pricing)	Ensure product information remains current without resubmitting full product details.
Local product inventory (advanced)	For showcasing products available in nearby physical stores. Requires local inventory attributes (e.g. store_code, quantity, price)	Display product availability in nearby stores.

Note: You can change the market type later in the feed settings if you selected the wrong one.

1. Click Advanced settings to edit settings such as 'Master rule'.

2. Once your feed settings are complete, click Continue.

2

Categorize your products

Once you have created a Google Shopping Feed, you need to categorize your items so that they match the categories used by Google Shopping.

First, set the category field for your project and then use AI product categorization, Channable’s powerful algorithm, to help you categorize your products.

Tip: Make sure your product categories accurately reflect the items that you are selling. Incorrect categorization can lead to poor performance on Google Shopping.

Once the AI product categorization process is complete, there is a percentage shown in [Your Google Shopping Feed] > Categories that indicates how well your products have been categorized.

AI product categorization does not always categorize all of your products and then you need to manually categorize these uncategorized products.

3

Map the necessary attributes

To list products on Google Shopping successfully, ensure your product data includes all mandatory attributes.

Create and map new data fields

Check the field mapping of your product data in Setup > Import > [Added import] > Edit mapping. If you have errors here, you need to create the new fields. This will help you to connect your product data fields to the Google Shopping fields.

If you create new fields, the newly created fields must be connected with the corresponding Google field:

1. Go to Feeds > [Your Google Shopping feed].

2. Go to the Mapping step.

3. Look for the 'Channel field name' you want to match (e.g. g:color) and click on the dropdown field in the 'Internal field' column

4. Find the field you just created inside Project fields and select it.

Map your data fields with Google Shopping’s attributes

If your import fields are already aligned with Google's expected format, you need to map the internal fields to Google's fields by following these steps:

1. Go to the [Your Google Shopping feed] and click on the Mapping tab.

2. Match each Google Shopping field ('Channel field name') with the corresponding field from your data ('Internal field').

Note: Ensure the values/format in your internal fields match Google's requirements (e.g., for availability use in_stock, out_of_stock, preorder, or backorder). Check the Description column for format suggestions.

Note: Attributes marked ‘Mandatory’ must be mapped to an internal field; otherwise your products may be rejected or not displayed on Google Shopping.

4

Step 4: Create rules to enrich, filter, and refine your product data

When your product data is incomplete or it does not match the format that Google requires, you need to use rules in Channable to make improvements. Create rules to optimize your products and meet Google Shopping's listing requirements.

Tip: We’ve put together a list of rules for Google Shopping to help you improve the quality of your feed.

5

Check your feed quality

The Quality step gives you an overview of the issues in your feed, such as missing required fields or improper formatting.

To view these issues, follow these steps:

1. Go to [Your Google Shopping feed]

2. Click on the Quality tab.

How to improve feed quality

In the Quality step, there are recommendations on how to improve your feed. The list of quality checks starts with mandatory issues, which have the highest priority. Not solving these issues may result in your feed being rejected or not showing up in Google Shopping.

For each issue, Channable gives you a suggestion for a solution. To view these suggestions, do the following:

1. Click on the issue to expand it and view the solution.

2. Follow the solution and click on the links to view the items with the issue and the link to find out more about how to solve the issue.

Note: Improve your feed quality by solving quality check issues with a focus on Google Shopping requirements.

6

Preview and activate your Google Shopping feed

Now that your feed is ready, you can preview it and then activate it.

If you're still on a Channable trial account, you need to change your account to a live account and activate your project in order to activate your Google Shopping feed.

Follow these steps to activate your feed:

1. Go to [Your Google Shopping feed] > Preview.

2. Click Activate feed.

3. After the activated feed has run, you can preview your feed and access the feed URL. Here you can preview how your products will appear in the feed and copy the feed URL.

Caution: Before you can use the feed URL for your Google Shopping ads, you need to activate your Google Shopping feed in Channable.

7

Upload your feed in Google Merchant Center

Once you have activated your feed, the next step is to connect it with Google Merchant Center.

Tip: Once your feed is active on Google Merchant Center, monitor its performance and make adjustments in Channable based on the feedback and analytics that you receive.

Google Merchant Center supports automatic item updates for the price and availability from your website rather than the feed (or API). This feature is active by default but can be deactivated at any time. However, if you update the price multiple times a day, Google cannot guarantee that the automatic updates will work.