Thursday, November 06, 2008 at 12:57 PM
The year-end holidays are the biggest shopping season, and we know that many of you have been busy with your site preparations for months. To help, here are some tips on how to get the most out of your Google Product Search feeds this holiday. They can help you improve the quality of your data feeds, prioritize the types of data to send us, and help more shoppers find your products.Submit tax and shipping data for your items: We'll soon be displaying tax and shipping information on Google Product Search to provide buyers with more accurate price information. Buyers use tax and shipping estimates to help them determine what to buy and which merchant to buy it from, so we strongly encourage all merchants to submit this data. Here's more information on how to do so.
Include unique product identifiers: In addition to using our five required attributes, be sure to include the recommended attributes relevant to your products, such as product identifiers like MPN, UPC, or ISBN. By including these, you're giving us more information to help us include your products on Google Product Search product pages (our merchant comparison pages) when multiple merchants are selling the same product.
Use effective titles: There's nothing like an accurate title to tell shoppers at a glance exactly what you're selling, so be sure to use detailed and descriptive titles for your products. Do keep in mind that Product Search truncates titles to under 70 characters, so avoid exceedingly lengthy titles.
Write accurate descriptions: Descriptions offer an overview of the product you're selling, so make sure that your descriptions are accurate and more than a few words in length. But if your descriptions are over 150 characters, you may want to shorten them to only include the most crucial information, as Product Search truncates longer descriptions.
Submit your feeds frequently: Lastly, remember to submit your data feeds regularly -- up to once a day -- to ensure that your product information is current for shoppers.
We hope that these tips will help you make the most of the holiday shopping season. For more holiday tips relating to other Google products that online retailers use (such as Google AdWords), please visit this page.
