Google has released their 2018 update of specifications for the Google Shopping feed. For the most part, these changes should be entirely painless for advertisers. Rather than adding new requirements or getting stricter, Google is actually relaxing some of their existing policies. They’re also adding a very cool new attribute for better ROI tracking.

Cost of Goods Sold (NEW)

Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) will help calculate the gross profit per item. COGS itself refers to the actual cost it took to create the good and make the sale. You may know this measurement as Cost of Sale or Cost of Revenue.

ROI = Revenue – COGS

By introducing the attribute, Google will help advertisers maximize their profitability with better planning, bidding, and optimizing. Especially for advertisers who need to show and drive ROI, this will help make it crystal clear how products are performing in the real world.

This attribute may not be required, but it’s definitely recommended wherever possible.

Relaxations

• Conditions attribute: Now, this is only required for used or refurbished items. If no conditions attribute is submitted, Google will assume the product is new. However, should a product be labelled as New and the related landing page says otherwise, the offer may be disapproved.
• Titles attribute: Titles will now be automatically truncated if they’re too long rather than leading to disapprovals.
• Descriptions attribute: As above, copy in this field will now be automatically truncated if it’s too long rather than leading to disapprovals.

Plus, if over-long text causes truncations to occur in your titles or descriptions, Google will flag this in your account.

Adwords_redirect

From 1 February, 2019 onward, redirect links for AdWords tracking will need to refer to the same domain that has been provided as the URL for “link” and “mobile_link” attributes.

This comes as part of Google’s push to make mobile experiences more streamlined and enjoyable for users. It also follows up on the announcement that, from October 30, 2018, parallel tracking will be mandatory. The goal is to send the user directly to your website—rather than diverting first to the tracking URL—and help your landing page load quicker. It may seem like a small change, but this should reduce the number of users who click through an ad only to exit before the page loads.

Of course, the Adwords_redirect attribute is optional, so this only affects advertisers who are using it.

Attribute tips

Google has also made—not a change—but, rather, a request to users. It seems many advertisers have been making the same mistake when it comes to their color, size, and link attributes, sending separated iterations of the same attribute with different information.

For example, submitting [size: 35], [size: 36], [size: 37], and so on, as separate pieces of information.

Google explains, advertisers in this scenario should still submit only one of each attribute. One color attribute. One size. One link.

If you’re listing a single product that has multiple colors, simply list these colors as one attribute, separated by slashes and hyphens (not commas!).

[Color: Red/Green/Black] NOT [color: Red] [Color: Green ] [Color: Black]

Products with multiple sizes should be listed as a complete range rather than one attribute for each size option. Again, no commas. Use a slash.

[Size: small/medium/large] NOT [Size: small] [Size: medium] [Size: Large]

Lastly, only one link should ever be submitted for this attribute, so pick your most important URL and remove the rest.

Read the complete post from Google over here.

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