Google announced a pair of data feed enhancements for Google Merchant Center in an effort to help merchants better update their ads. One of them is geared toward large retailers while the other is for small ones.
For large retailers, Google has added a new feed type called Online product inventory feeds, which let you quickly update price, availability, and sale price on key products. The reason why it’s geared toward big retailers is that they’re more likely to have to change such attributes more frequently.
The feed allows you to submit new info throughout the day to update the attributes and/or submit updates for just a small subset of products. Google notes that if there’s an error in processing your feed, it won’t affect the full product feed. It allows allows fresher info to appear to consumers on Google Shopping.
The other thing is a Google Sheets add-on, which lets you connect spreadsheets to Merchant Center for quicker uploads. This is geared toward small retailers because it makes it easier to get up and running with shopping ads.
“Whether you use Google Sheets or text file formats to upload your products, these new data feed enhancements make it faster and easier to upload your most up-to-date product information to Google Shopping and find more customers online,” says Sven Herschel, Product Manager for Google Merchant Center.
You can validate and/or upload products directly from Sheets. There sidebar in the add-on lets you validate individual rows ore the entire sheet so you can see potential errors and warnings before you upload the data feed. Also from the side-bar, you can upload your whole sheet into Merchant Center without leaving Sheets.
If you have any trouble, you can take a look at this help article.
Image via Google