As presumed Google Shopping has included new requirements for product identifiers.
We had already announced that the GTIN or barcode was going to become very important in Google Shopping and the new features we bring you today confirm our predictions. The GTIN code in ecommerce is becoming vitally important, in a large Market Place like Amazon a GTIN code is required to sell as it is the way to uniquely identify a commercial item.
What's new?
The new feature refers to the requirements that the unique identifiers of the products that we upload to Merchant Center must meet in order for them to be published in Google Shopping. The new feature, which is detailed below, is only affects certain brands of products that Google refers to as 'designated marks’.
As you know, unique product identifiers are collected with a combination of the following attributes: 'brand' [brand], 'gtin' [gtin] and 'mpn' [mpn].. Until now it was a condition to upload to Merchant Center two of the above identifiers for each of the products.
From now on, and in the following countries (Australia, Brazil, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States and United States) it is mandatory to send the attributes 'brand' [brand] and 'gtin' [gtin] for all products. whose status is 'new' and whose brand name is included in a list that Google has called Designated Brandsand which, from what we are told, will be expanded over time.
At Geotelecom We strongly recommend to all our customers to include the GTIN attribute in the feed so that when it affects our brands, these items will not be rejected in the feed, as all those products that do not comply with the above rule will be rejected in Merchant Center.
For now the brands affected are the well-known brands Apple, Calvin Klein, Canon, HP, Levis, Motorola, Nike, Samsung and so on up to more than 50.
With these changes in the product identifiers, Google tries to make it easier for users to find the product they are looking for, always at the end of the Google search engine! And the big advantage for the advertiser is that their products will be correctly classified and comparedby taking advantage of the full potential of Google Shopping.
It will become effective on next September 15. The requirements for those products whose trademarks are not on the list of designated trademarks will remain the same.
More product identifiers?
As we have told you, at the moment there are only 50 designated brands for which it has been made mandatory to include the GTIN in their data feed. But the number is expected to grow over time, so one question remains: will Google let you know when and which brands will be added to the list next? Maybe the new changes will be a surprise for all account managers?