Common Mistakes On Product Listing Ads

Common Data Feed Errors

Author Profile | Mary

Forgetting to Verify Your Site URL

Including Restricted Products

Missing a Google Shopping Column

As the primary form of communication between your store and the Google Shopping program, your product feed needs to be perfect.  Unfortunately, there is a lot of mixed advice floating around on how you should manage your feed.  In our experience managing PLA campaigns, we found these to be the most overlooked miscues:

Forgetting to Verify Your Site URL

Don’t do this. You can’t run a Google Shopping campaign without first having Google verify your site.  It’s their way of checking to see that you’re a legitimate retailer.  For instructions on how to verify your site, learn straight from the source. If you successfully claimed and verified your site URL, your settings should look something like this (the URL has been blocked out).

Including Restricted Products

Including restricted products in your Google Shopping feed is asking for trouble.  In all likelihood, Google will remove those products from your feed or worse yet, stall your entire product feed.  To avoid this, familiarize yourself with Google’s restricted item list and be sure to exclude product titles or descriptions that may even remotely allude to restricted items.  

Missing a Google Shopping Column

The first rule to sending a product feed to a CSE is to adhere to that CSE’s unique feed specifications.  Step 1: Familiarize yourself with all of these Google resources:

• Google Shopping Data Feed Requirements
• Google Shopping Product Feed Example
• Google Shopping Data Feed File Format
• Google Shopping Attribute Requirements

After you’ve made all of the appropriate adherences to your product feed, upload it into the Google Merchant Center.  Under the “Data feeds” tab, you can check for any errors that may have come up.  It is absolutely CRUCIAL that you make your product feed exactly how Google wants it by including all the columns and formatting that they specify.

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