Now is the time to test your Google submission
If you sell electronics or clothing are strongly recommended you test your feed now to find out what you need to avoid problems later this month
Why?
From August 2015 we have seen Google issuing warnings in UK Merchant Centres for the impending changes to products with “designated brands” lacking GTIN information. This means that they lack EAN (barcodes) for most product types in Europe or UPC in North America.
From September 15 2015, any such products will be disapproved and will not be available for Google Shopping/Adwords. These will fall into the same bracket as products in published media (ie DVDs) and software categories where GTIN is already a required mandatory value. Google’s list of designated brands is here.
All merchants selling branded electronics and some major fashion brands will be affected by this.
From August 2015 we saw warnings for lack of or inappropriate colours for clothing & accessory products. Again these are just warnings in the UK at this stage. However during August we saw USA accounts getting product disapprovals for lack of colour values and we expect that to be reinforced from September 15.
Even More Test My Feed Error Diagnostics Now Available
We identify in our error reports not only products which fail for missing key data, but also for the following extra compliance checks:
- Invalid EAN or UPC values including duplicated numbers applied to two or more products
- Products which require EAN codes because they are in categories that require this value (Media/Software)
- Products which require EAN codes because they are now a designated brand
- Products in Apparel or Clothing categories which require values for colour, size, age group and gender.
Plus even more detailed error diagnostics on non-compliant URLs for products and image.
So, test your Shopping feed now and if you need our help, contact us