What is happening?
Items that don’t include Tax and Shipping information or contain incorrect Google Product Category attribute values may soon fail to process for inclusion in Google Product Search. Please click on X of X items inserted under the Data feeds tab to see whether your products are affected. This requirement does not affect the visibility of your Product Ads.
Important: Tax information is only required for items submitted to Target Country US. For all other Target Countries, please make sure that both your item price and shipping price are VAT inclusive.
What should I do if I am affected?
To avoid disruption to traffic on Product Search, please begin submitting tax and shipping for all affected items and/or update your Google Product Category attribute values to match the exact values in our Google Taxonomy as soon as possible if you haven’t done so already.
How can I check that I am submitting the right values now?
Once you’ve updated your items, we recommend creating a New Test Data Feed prior to submitting your actual feed. This not only allows you to check for errors without actually affecting live items in Google Product search results, but gives you the option to download a full error report of all affected items. Once your test feed processes correctly, you can submit your actual feed as you normally would.
Please view our help resources below for additional information:
Categorizing your items
Feed Specification
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Do I need to provide Google product category for all my items?
No. The google product category attribute is only required for products that fall into the following seven categories and only if the feed targets the US, UK, Germany, Japan and/or France:
Apparel & Accessories > Clothing
Apparel & Accessories > Shoes
Apparel & Accessories (Note that submitting this value for clothing and shoes is not acceptable)
Media > Books
Media > DVDs & Videos
Media > Music
Software > Video Game Software
2. Do I have to provide the most granular category for my item?
No. While you have to include the exact category value provided in the taxonomy, the first two levels suffice. We do recommend to provide the most granular level of categorization, which will help improve your data quality and in turn ensures that offers are presented in the right category. Depending on your file type, you would select between the .txt or .xml values we provide.
For example, for running shoes, you have to provide the first two levels:
“Apparel & Accessories > Shoes”
If you wish, you can be more precise and provide more granular values:
“Apparel & Accessories > Shoes > Athletic Shoes > Running Shoes”
3. I am already submitting Google Product Category values. Why are they not accepted?
The google product category attribute is different from the product type attribute. While you can provide your own values in the product type attribute, you need to use Google’s predefined values for the google product category attribute using our taxonomy.
4. Do I have to submit Tax and Shipping in the account settings as well as in my feed?
No. You can choose either of the options. We do recommend using both settings: create a default shipping method at the account level and add the item-level shipping attribute for products with more detailed information.
5. I don’t charge Tax, does this requirement still apply to me?
Yes. You can opt to not charge tax in the account level settings or include a value of 0.00 in the tax attribute. Note: If you are submitting to a target country other than US, please include VAT in your item price instead.
6. What should I do if I am unable to provide accurate Tax and Shipping information?
We accept estimated values. For example, you can provide tax as well as shipping cost for each product and region/zipcode individually by using the tax and shipping attributes. Please estimate tax and shipping costs such that the total cost in Product Search results is either correct or overestimated for the majority of users.
7. How much time do I have to update my items?
We have already begun surfacing new item warnings and errors for items missing Tax and Shipping information and/or incorrect Google Product Category attribute values under the Data Feeds tab. Soon, items that don’t include Tax and Shipping information or contain incorrect google product category attribute values may start failing to process. We strongly recommend that you update your items as soon as possible.
The post Items may soon fail to process due to missing Tax and Shipping or invalid Google Product Category values. View warnings under ‘x of x items inserted’ appeared first on Shopping Cart software | ezOSCNews| eCommerce Software.
