Google Base/Merchant Center Walkthrough

Last Updated: 11/17/2010

Step #1 Creating a Google Account.
(If you already have a Google account, you can skip this step.)
To create a Google account, you will need to visit this link
(https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount)
and register for an account.

Step #2 Verifying your site with Google Webmaster Tools.
Now that you have a Google account, you will want to visit this link
(http://www.google.com/webmasters/)
and sign into Webmaster Tools.

Once you have signed into Webmaster Tools, you will want to locate the Add a site button and click it. This will prompt you to “Enter the URL of a site you’d like to manage”. Enter the URL in the suggested format (Example: www.google.com) and click continue.

Upon hitting continue you will be directed to a section where you will be required to verify the ownership of your website. There are four methods you can choose from to verify your website. You will want to select the method that you are most comfortable with and proceed with the instructions that are present to you upon clicking the radio button.

A quick guide for verifying a Yahoo Store.

If you are a Yahoo! Store, you will want to select the “Upload an HTML file to your server” method. Upon selecting this method you will be presented with a file name:

(example: googled935042f3a81eef6.html)

You will want to copy this file name. With the file name copied, you will want to log in to your Yahoo! store control panel. Once you are logged into the store control panel look to the lower left section of the screen where you will see some links with a header titled “Promote”. Locate the “Search Engines” link under the Promote section and click it. Once in the Search Engines section, locate the header titled “Google Sitemaps”. In this section you will see a text input box where you will need to paste the copied file name from Google. After pasting the file name in this box, scroll to the bottom of the page and click done.

Note: There is no need to publish the site after clicking done. The file is created immediately. Just return to Webmaster Tools and click verify.

For non-Yahoo stores, you will want to identify which method will work the best for you. Being that time is of the essence, DO NOT HESITATE to contact your platforms support staff. They should be able to guide you through this with ease.

Step #3 Setting up your Google Merchant Center account.
Once you have verified your site with Google Webmaster Tools visit this link and log in to Google Merchant Center.
(http://www.google.com/merchants)

You will need to agree to the Terms of Service upon logging into the account for the first time. Once you have read and accepted the Terms of Service you will be directed to a screen to configure your account. Here you will enter important information about your website. Fill out all of the field with the appropriate information.

Once you have saved all of the general settings, you will be directed to the Dashboard. On this dashboard you should see a warning in a yellow box saying “Warning Please verify and claim your website’s URL in the General Settings page, until you do so you cannot upload any product listings. Learn more”. Click on the Settings link on the left hand side of the screen and then click “General”. Locate the Website URL header and under the text input box you should see a link to “Claim this URL”. After you click this you will see a message saying that the URL is verified and claimed. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click Save Changes.

Step #4 Setting up your Tax and Shipping rules (Optional but Recommended)
Click the Settings link again and this time click on the “Tax and shipping” link. Once you click this link you will be directed to the “Tax and shipping summary” page. Click on the links in each section to launch the wizard for entering your tax and shipping rules. This section is pretty self explanatory so I won’t go into much detail here.

Step #5 Creating a Data Feed or Deciding how to submit your products to Google.
This section is going to detail how you actually get your products to your Google Merchant Center account. There are many ways to submit your product data to your Google Merchant Center account. The most common method is by submitting a product data feed to an FTP location you create within the account.

Google details the required product information that should be contained with your data feed here:
(http://www.google.com/support/merchants/bin/answer.py?answer=188478)

For a full list of support product data attributes you can visit this link:
(http://www.google.com/support/merchants/bin/answer.py?answer=188494)

So, how can you get this product data so you can create a Google Merchant Center data feed?

Well most website platforms offer you a product export of some type and some of them even offer a direct data feed submit to Google Merchant Center. You will want to contact your platforms support staff or consult its help section to figure out your options.

If your platform offers a product export but doesn’t offer a direct submit to Google Merchant Center, you can use this product export to create the data feed to send to Google Merchant Center. It’s as easy as creating a CSV file with the column headers that Google supports and then copying the data from your product export into the appropriate columns.

*If you are having trouble creating this CSV file, there are a lot of companies out there who offer data feed submission tools which will take the data from your product export and format it into a Google Merchant Center data feed.

For example, since Yahoo Stores do not offer a very good product export file, many of the Yahoo! store clients which we manage use the program FeedPerfect (www.feedperfect.com). This is a very good tool for submitting data feeds to various comparison shopping engines. The program also integrates seamlessly with the Yahoo store platform. They have pricing of all levels of usage including a “Starter” package for merchants who only want to submit to one engine i.e. Google.

*FeedPerfect is currently offering a 14 day free trial. For more information, please visit their website:
www.feedperfect.com.

Once you have the data feed created and ready to send, proceed to the next step.

Step #6 Uploading your product data feed to your Google Merchant Center account

Now that you have your data feed created it is time to send it to your Google Merchant Center account! To do this you first must tell Google to expect the file to that will be submitted.

Registering your data feed
To do this, go into your Google Merchant Center account and click on the “Data feeds” link on the left. This will take you to the Data feeds section. Locate the New Data Feed button and click it. Look for the text input box titled “Data feed filename” and enter the file name of your data feed. (Example: data_feed.txt). Click the Save changes button after you enter the file name.

Once you have registered your product data feed, you must to decide how you will submit the file to the account.

You can chose one of the following methods to upload your data feed:

Option #1: Upload the file via an FTP location created within the Google Merchant Center account.
This is the method common used if you are using a third party feed submission tool.
To create an FTP location to which you will send your product data feed, in your Google merchant center account, click on the Settings button on the left and then click on the “FTP” link. Upon clicking this link, you will be directed to a page where you will need to specify a user name and a password for your FTP location.

*Once you have entered these credentials, write them down or creating a file with them so you do not lose them and have to reset the password later.

Option #2: Manually upload the file within the Google Merchant Center account.
To manually upload your data feed to the Google merchant center, click on the Data feeds link within the account. Once you are on the Data feeds page, you should see your registered data feed. Locate the “Manual upload” link and click it. Locate the “Browse…” button and select your data feed.

Fianlly, click on the “upload and process this file” button.

Option #3: Store the file in a visible location and schedule Google to pick it up.
To manually schedule Google Merchant Center to pick it up, click on the Data feeds link within the account. Once you are on the Data feeds page, you should see your registered data feed. Locate the “Create” link under the Upload schedule header and click it. Toggle the drop down menus to set the frequency of the pick up. Now enter the URL of the file on you website.
(eg. http://www.example.com/upload.txt)

Finally, click the “Schedule” button to finalize the scheduling.

Once you have uploaded your data feed you will want to give Google some time to process the file. I recommend checking back frequently as in my experience, I have seen the processing time range anywhere from five minutes to hours.

Step #7 My feed has been processed, now what?
Once you feed has been processed, you can check the data feeds section of the Merchant center account to see if there are any problems. Underneath the Last upload data header there will be a time stamp showing you the last time your feed was processed. Underneath the Status header, you will see how many of your products were accepted. You will notice that the number XX of XX is a link that you can click for a processing report. This report will tell you what, if any, problems there are with the feed. You should use this report to correct any errors that are present to try to make sure that all of your products are making it in to the engine.

Barring any major problems with your data, that should be that. After the first successful processing your products will begin to show up on Google Product Search within 24 hours! Make sure you frequently check your live listings (www.google.com/products) for display errors.

I will try to keep this walk through up to date when Google makes changes to any of the processes included within.

CSE.Manager@gmail.com