Google Base Product Feed Requirements

May 22nd, 2007

Google released new feed requirements in early February 2007 for listing products onto “Froogle”, or now “Google Base.”

Most of the attributes that Google wants merchants to have in their product listings are things that you should already be using in your file feed as a best practice. There were a couple of fields that I did not have in my feed (because they were pretty obvious to my customers/product set and not really necessary), but it only took me 5 minutes to update my template.

So, what should you put in each of these required fields?

brand - Brand name or manufacturer of the item. (Sony, Apple, Prada, etc.)

condition - new, used, refurbished

description - Use good sales copy here to describe your item in a keyword rich way.

expiration_date - expiration date for the item. Max live time of 31 days. Ex: 2007-02-03

id - Unique internal ID code. Can not change once a product is created. (I use my internal SKU for this.)

image_link - Link to the product image. Google suggests linking to a 400×400 image, though you can use smaller.

link - Link to the product page. If your shopping cart supports it, include a tracking code so you can see which orders come from Google Base vs other areas.

price - product price

product_type - There are a LOT of product types. If you sell mainly in one category, just choose the best one. Otherwise go through and pick the best product_type for each item. You can view a full list of Google’s Product Types.

title - Name or title of product. Max 80 characters. This is your product headline. Think of it like you would the title tag on your product page.

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