2015 Google Shopping Feed Specification & Google Taxonomy

Thanks for those! I will definitely be checking them out. In the past, I was always including my own product_category attribute for my eCrater listings since their global categories only go two deep. It's been a long while, so I'm sure many are outdated and may have something to do with their lack of views.

While I realize that adding my own product_category will require more work in the future as Google makes its incessant changes, it's certainly better than relying on eCrater's limited category structure. I wish we had the option of just adding the additional subcategories they leave out to the attributes page since the global categories don't change much. That way, when I need to edit them again (God forbid), I'd only have the subcategories to worry about.

Nicole,
If I'm reading your posting correctly, I think we're talking about 2 different things here.

It sounds like you are referring to eCrater's categories, but Sharon is talking about Google's taxonomy codes. Those two have nothing to do with each other. Google requires the taxonomy to be placed on every item if you want the item to be seen in google shopping. And it has to be exactly letter for letter how they state it in their taxonomy listing.

You mentioned 'lack of views'. If you're not using googles taxonomy then that's why.

Sorry if I'm not reading your statement correctly.

keno

eCrater Gets Higher Google Search Placement than eBay [eCommerceBytes discussion]:

www.ecommercebytes.com/C/letters/blog.pl?/pl/2015/7/1435780182.html

In regards to the article about eCrater, I sure wish I could see the results of that. I just logged in to my eCrater shop and checked the Google Status and it says that all of my 277 listings were processed successfully. So, I finally fixed the 8 or so listings that were disapproved and the few books/movies that were listed with attribute problems for a long time.

The ones that were disapproved had "other" or "unknown" for the brand and it took a couple of cycles for them to be re-approved. The others didn't have the ISBN-13 (only the ISBN-10). I haven't fixed the product_category attributes, but they've obviously been approved because there isn't anything listed on the Google Status page as an example of a listing with an attribute problem and all active listings have been successfully processed.

After checking that, I went to Google some listings and can't seem to get anything to come up for eCrater unless I type the listing title exactly as it is on the listing. My Etsy listings are showing, though -- even the new listings, which are only a couple/few days older than the eCrater listings. Oh, and I am seeing a lot of eBay and Etsy results and hardly any eCrater ones -- mine or anyone else's.

During my search, I came across something odd, which I think it's been brought up before, but I can't remember the cause of it. My Etsy listing is just above the eCrater listing in search results and, while it shows my shop's name and the description for the product I searched for, it has some other site's URL:



I believe this type of problem was discussed on Etsy's forums, which I'm about to go search for. Does anybody remember what the deal is with that?

ETA: Just found info about the problem on Etsy's forums and will post about it in another thread.