Several StoreSecured merchants have brought to our attention and asked questions about a recent email from Google regarding coming changes to the feed for the Google Product Search. The email is included below for reference.
Regarding the May 3rd changes…StoreSecured already supports sending both the brand and MPN for all feeds. Please ensure that this information is entered in for each of your items to remain compliant.
Regarding the June 6th change…Shipping and tax information should be entered directly into your Google account for all items and all merchants using the Google Base feed should do so before the June 6th deadline. StoreSecured will not be including the shipping and tax information into the feed.
Please refer to the links in the email below from Google for more information from Google about how to update these fields, what information they should contain etc.
Content of Google email below:
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Hello,
Thank you for participating in Google Product Search. We are reaching out to you to inform you about important changes we’re making to our Product Search attribute requirements for unique identifiers and tax and shipping information.
Starting May 3rd, 2011, we’ll require your product listings to include at least two of the three unique identifiers (Brand, MPN, GTIN). In order to provide as much information as possible to our users, we need your help in matching your products to our “product pages”, where users are able to view useful data such as product specifications or reviews. While these attributes will not be required for your data feed to process correctly, they may prevent your items from appearing in Product Search results if not included. For more details, including what specific identifiers you should include for each category of item, please see our Help Center at http://www.google.com/support/merchants/bin/answer.py?answer=160161
Starting June 6th, 2011, we’ll also require your product listings to include tax and shipping information to provide buyers with important price information. This information will be required at either the account or item level (in the “tax” or “shipping” attribute) in order for your items to process and appear in Google Product Search results. For instructions on how to include tax and shipping information, please visit http://www.google.com/support/merchants/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=160162
Please update your account settings or data feeds as soon as possible to ensure that you are complying with these new requirements by the dates specified above. For more information about these changes, please visit our Google Merchant blog at http://googlemerchantblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/changes-for-google-product-search.html
Sincerely,
The Google Product Search Team