Google Merchant Centre Feed
Starting in Sep. 2015, Google Shopping required GTIN (EAN/UPC) in the feed specification for this list of brands. Beginning May 16, 2016 Google will require that all products have a GTIN (EAN / UPC) in your data feeds to Google Merchant Centre for all brands that have assigned GTIN’s by the manufacturer in the following countries: Australia, Brazil, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, the UK, or the US.
Getting the GTIN is often a matter of getting the barcode details from the product itself. If your products are stored in a 3rd Party Warehouse and you don't have immediate access to the details, you can utilise the UPCitemDB to locate your product data.
In most cases, Magento customers use GoMage Feed Pro or Amasty Product Feed, we will need to create the following scenario:
- Create a unique product Attribute called either GTIN / UPC / EAN if we don’t already have one for your store
- Create a Custom Field (Amasty) or Dynamic Attribute (GoMage) in your feed extension so that if the GTIN number exists, we pull it into the feed and if it doesn’t, we insert the word “FALSE” as per the specification here
- Add the new custom field / attribute into your data feed.
- Test the feed in Google Merchant Centre
Ebay Product Identifiers
Back in June 29th 2015, Ebay began enforcing product identifiers also on specific categories. Ebay claims that by using GTIN’s in your product listings, you will be eligible for:
- High Search Visibility both on Ebay and Outside Search Engines
- Special Price Alerts when your listings are below the trending price
- Inclusions in more deals and promotions
This video covers the very basics in a non-Magento perspective:
In M2EPro, the setting for Product Identifiers is a little bit hard to locate: It’s under Listings -> Edit Settings -> Selling(tab) -> Description but as per the Google requirements, this information must first be setup and available from the products themselves.
