Google Shopping has made some major changes that go into effect on September 22nd.

Most of Google's new requirements can be handled with some extra data, logic, or in some cases, no changes at all.   We have a writeup about Google Products Requirement Changes on our feed wizards dashboard at http://dashboard.feedwizards.com/news/google/productsearchfeedchanges0922.

APPAREL ITEMS
If you have Apparel items, then Google's requirements become a lot more daunting.  That is where our Google Shopping Variant Setup Service comes into play.

The Google Shopping Variant Service is for those with apparel items needing to list variants (items with options that vary by size or color).  It is also for stores that have non-apparel items and simply want to list variants.   It's not required for non-apparel items, but can bring extra traffic and may someday be required.

You can see our writeup about Google Shopping Variants at http://dashboard.feedwizards.com/news/google/googleproductvariants

Keys to successfully navigating Google's changes:

• Populating all the required fields.
• Populating all the data required for the product variants (size/color options).
• Adjusting key data based on the variant info (name, price, sku, etc).
• Provide URLS for each variant.
• The idea of the variant URL is that when a user clicks through, they are taken to a page where all the options are auto-selected.

We can make all this happen through our Feed Wizards data feed service and the Google Shopping Variant Setup service.  We also include canonical tags to help avoid duplicate content issues.

The Feed Wizards Auto Selected Options Add-on works with two different changes.  When a user clicks through on an item link that is a product variant, it will automatically change the options on the page to reflect what they clicked through.  This is what Google recommends for variants.

Our system is flagged to create landing page urls for your products that include parameters on them.  Those parameters interact with code we install in your store so the selected product options will match those the user clicked on your Google Product Search links.

We do recommend if you use this add-on that you also have canonical tags installed in your store.  This helps prevent Google from interpreting the different links as being duplicate content. (duplicate content is very bad for Google ranking).   You can use our canonical install or any other method for adding canonical tags.

What does our canonical tags install do and why do you need it?   If you use the auto selected options, we highly recommend installing canonical tags in your site.  If we already installed canonical tags for you or if you had canonical tags installed by another firm, you don't need it again.

Here is why you should have canonical tags: Canonical tags prevent Google and other sites, from considering variant urls as duplicate content.

If users link to the various options with parameters on the urls, Google sees them as duplicate content.  Canonical Tags tell Google and others that there is only one page from all the variant URLS, not many.

If you have Apparel products, we highly recommend our product variants service as well as adding "auto selected options" and "canonical tags".   It's the most thorough and complete method of making sure your products are 100% compliant with Google's new requirements.

If you don't have apparel products, then we recommend this setup only if you want to expand your offerings in Google Products and you have items that vary in color/size/material/pattern AND you have distinct manufacturer part number or upc information for each variation.

If you don't have any of this information, we recommend holding-off on doing variants.