Gmail Sponsored Promotions Ads

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For anyone unfamiliar with GSPs, anyone with a Gmail account may have noticed new ads appearing at the top and right hand side of your inbox in the past year or so. Examples are highlighted in the screenshot below.

In addition to the standard display targeting features, GSPs allow users to classify and reach their audiences based on email address, email subject line, job title, domain, and product category. You can upload and target mailing lists or exclude specific keywords. These features and advanced time and criteria reporting make this campaign type an attractive funnel to promote business to select Gmail users.
Ok, you’ve liked what you’ve heard so far. Hooked yet? Ready to get started? See below for a step by step guide to GSP implementation and best practices. Use these expert tips to get the most out of your campaigns and expand your targeting today!

1.     Before you get started
Invoicing is required in order to run Gmail Sponsored Promotions. Reach out to your Google rep or to 1-866-2GOOGLE to get set-up.

2.     Determine Test Dates
You’ll need to determine how long you’d like to run your initial test and when. Similarly to the Google Display Network, promotions and incentives perform best for GSPs. Revisit your goals and ask yourself, are we testing this to get a lift in sales for the month? Is our main focus customer acquisition? Are we promoting a contest or sweepstakes? It might be worth having a promotion code or some kind of discount offer to attain these goals. Remember, the reach on this campaign type is extensive, but volume and advertising “noise” is as well. Figure out what will attract your ideal customer most, and feature that in your ad.
Since the volume is so large, and you’ll want to give yourself adequate time to evaluate and analyze initial performance, I’d recommend a test duration of no longer than 2 weeks. If your campaigns are performing well, you can always let them run longer, but you’ll want to let them run long enough to get meaningful data to optimize.

3.     Define Your Test Budget
Let’s remember that even though Google broadcasts GSP’s have cost per clicks around $0.09, that a cost per click in GSP is not the same as a cost per click on search or display. When running a Gmail Sponsored Promotion, advertisers are charged when a user opens the ad, not when they click to the website. Though cost per clicks (or opens) can be extremely low, we’ve seen cost per click to website be as high as $54. Keep in mind that’s a very rare case in which targeting features weren’t layered as extensively as they should have been, but realize that this won’t be your most cost-effective channel. Make sure you budget for it!
Think back to your goals of this campaign type and why you’re testing in the first place. Most likely it’s due to the extensive targeting features, so decide your key takeaways: I want to find out which domain targeting is most effective, I want to target a specific email list, I want to find out what location, gender, or age bracket has the most affinity with my ads. Once you’ve answered some of these questions, you can determine how much money to allocate to specific campaigns that are targeting these demographics.

4.     Outline Targeting Criteria
Again, who exactly do we want to reach?
Take this example –
A new shoe company recently entered the market. They believe that their style of sneakers would appeal to people who buy Jordans, but since the price points are lower, they’d possibly reach a younger demographic than the Jordan market. This is a brand new company – they really aren’t sure of what location or gender their brand will have the most affinity with. Their targeting, therefore, was outlined as the following:
-        Location: who do we want to reach, and where are they? Are we targeting the US only? Do we want to reach people in Canada as well? We’re based in NY, is that where our customers are too?
-        Gender: this will need to be segmented by campaign. You can only target one gender at a time, but it’s smart to find out which performs best.
-        Age: Layer this in with gender and location to get a more holistic idea of who your audience is. If you already know this information, make sure to include it in your targeting layers
-        Domain: I know that www.airjordan.com is where our customers shop now. We want to show them that we have the same products for a better price. Target any and all domains and layer them in with demographic targets to get the most cost effective campaign possible
-        Interests: Not only do I know that my customers wear Jordans, but I also know they love basketball. I want to include interest targeting so I can serve them a basketball shoe-specific ad when they see an impression

BEST PRACTICE: Break down targeting in every way possible to avoid paying high CPCs. Unlike the traditional search CPC, GSP CPCs are actually “cost per open.” You may see CPCs as low as $0.09, but CPC to websites is the more valuable metric, and can be extremely expensive. If you’re targeting every age, select each one instead of “All.” If you want to target everyone in the USA, select all 50 states individually. This will allow you to evaluate the performance of each group in the evaluation stage and exclude the more expensive demographics. Keep in mind that you can return an account-wide CPC to website of $20 simply because Arizona returns a CPC to website of $500. If you’re targeting all of the US, you’ll never be able to see that data and adjust accordingly.
Pro Tip: Don’t include negative keywords, even if it’s your own brand keywords. The user interface is still new and applying negative keywords may too strictly limit your targeting criteria and you won’t get nearly the volume you had anticipated.

5.     Upload/ Create Ads
As noted at the beginning of this article, you’ll need HTML creative in order to run GSPs. Have your developer follow this guide and template to get started:

Now that you have your creative folder, you’re ready to get started!
Step 1: Visit the Gmail Sponsored Promotion interface: www.google.com/ads/gsp/ and select your account by typing it into the pop up window. This should take you directly to your account

Step 2: Select the Ads tab from the menu on the left hand side:

Step 3: Click “AD” to create a new ad

Step 4: Name your ad, click “Upload A Zip File”, and upload your HTML folder. Click upload.

Step 5: After you click the upload button, you’ll be taken to the next screen where your ad HTML code will be listed. Here, you can make any changes to the destination URL or add custom UTM parameters (optional).

Best Practice: If you make any changes to the html code and/or URL during this step, make sure you click ”Update” then “Validate HTML” before proceeding to the next screen! This is to prevent any creative errors that may cause your ad from passing through the approval process

Once validated, click next to proceed to the next screen.
Step 6: Edit any ad teaser sections that didn’t import correctly from your HTML creative.
Upload your teaser image and preview your ad.
Click NEXT to proceed to the final step.

Step 7: Save & Finish
Click Save
Once saved, click “Request Approval” and save again.

Pro Tip: Allow up to 48 hours for your creative to run through the approval process
1.     Create Your Budgets
Once you’re IO has been approved, you’ll be able to visit the budgets tab on the left hand side.
Step 1: Click  “Budget” to create a new budget.
Step 2: Name it and select the amount. Be sure to select the Order radio button (this selects your IO account number)

Step 3: Save.

1.     Create campaigns

Basics

Step 1: Click the campaigns tab on the left hand side and click “Campaign” to create a new campaign
Step 2: Name your campaign, select your start and end dates.
Reminder: The GSP interface runs on Pacific Standard time. If you aren’t on the West Coast, adjust accordingly!
Step 3:Select your budget, daily spend target (daily budget) and max CPC.

Pro Tip: Remember, max CPC is cost per open, not cost per click to website. Keep this bid low!

Optimization

Note: If using conversion cost optimization, you’ll have to select which conversion type (from AdWords) you’ll want to associate optimization with.
Do this by selecting from the screen as depicted below. Make sure you specify your target conversion cost before moving on to the next step.

If rotating more than one ad at a time, you can select the ad rotation in the Advanced section:

Targeting

Select age, gender, languages, clients, and locations.
Best Practice:
-        Age – if targeting all age groups, select all age groups. This will allow you to see how each age bracket performed during the evaluation and optimization period.
-        Gender – You can only see one gender’s performance at a time. If you aren’t interested to see how each group performed, you can target All. If not, you’ll have to create a new campaign and specifically target Males in Campaign A and Females in Campaign B.
-        Clients – Don’t target everywhere. Similar to age, select each option so you can see individual targeting performance during the optimization stage.
-        Locations – only target top locations. CPCs in certain areas can be as high at $57! You’ll want to have the ability to identify these expensive markets and exclude them, if necessary, through optimization practices. If interested to see how every location performs in the US, you can segment by state. It’s a labor-intensive practice at first, but once done, you can copy and paste the locations to any other campaign you’d like. It’s worth it!

User Attributes

Select Interests, Keywords, Domains, Purchases, Mailing Lists and/or Jobs you want to target in addition to your demographics

Pro Tip: Do not negate any attributes yet. As of 3/26/14, the interface hasn’t advanced to the point where they are able to effectively and efficiently negate specific attributes from the targeting profiles.

Last Step!

Click Refresh audience estimate to generate the audience size.

If happy with the list size, click save.

1.     Optimize

You’re ads have been approved and your campaign has been running for a couple days, or long enough to collect some meaningful data.
Next step is optimization. You’ll want to visit the Reports tab on the left hand side of the GSP UI. From there, select Criteria reporting to take a closer look at how each target has performed to date.

Even though the cost per click is only reporting at $0.06 for people between the ages of 18 and 24, the cost per external click is $13.50! When looking into ways to improve efficiency, you may want to consider excluding this age bracket or moving it into a separate campaign.
Evaluate every one of your targets and user attributes to see if there are tweaks that could help improve performance. Make adjustments, re-launch, and evaluate again.

Source :

by Shannon Greene

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Bounce Rate - Some Facts

Bounce Rate is generally defined as single page visits. These are the visits that leave the site without going any further than the landing page.  A very common approach to landing page analysis is to start with Bounce Rate and see if it is a problem before diving deeper into the page/site. However, the number that your tool is providing you might be wrong. Relying blindly on the number provide by your Web Analytics tool might lead you into the wrong direction. Below are 4 reasons why your Bounce Rate might be wrong

1. In Page Actions – If you have certain actions, such as video plays or windows that popup with JavaScript then the chances are that you are not tracking them as valid site interactions. In this case, even though the visitors will take one of the desired actions i.e. watch the video or click on a link to launch the popup window to fill a form etc., your Web Analytics tool will count these visits as single page visit, thus inflating your Bounce Rate.
2. External Links – If you have a lot of external links on you landing page e.g. “Like Us On Facebook”, “Buy this book on Amazon” etc. then you are purposely taking visitors out of your landing page but you might not be counting these clicks as valid site interactions thus inflating your Bounce Rate, as explained above.
3. Profile Configuration:  If you build a tracking profile of only select few pages on your site then any views of pages outside those select few are counted as “external links” (see above). For example, if you have 3 pages on your site, home.html, products.html, services.html but your profile only tracks home.html and products.html, then a click to services.html from any of these pages will be counted as an external link and hence counted as bounce if those were the only two page views that happened in the visit.
4. Spiders and Bots – For a long time Spiders and Bots were not a big issue for JavaScript based Web Analytics solutions, as very few spiders/bots executed JavaScript tags but now more and more of spiders/bots execute JavaScript thus inflating your visits counts. Many of these spiders only execute one page on the site, thus inflating your Bounce Rate as well.  Spiders and Bot seems to be an even bigger problem when major source of your traffic is Banner Advertising (Display Advertising) or Paid Search Ads.  See below for an example of a bot that might be messing up your Bounce Rate.

Now that you know that your Bounce Rate might be wrong, do your own calculations and come up with the right number before you start redesigning your Landing Page.  Recently, I came across a situation where all of the above applied. The Web Analytics tool reported that the landing page had over 90% bounce rate, after adjusting for above factors, we ended up in 50%+ range, which is still a little higher than industry average but not as bad as it initially looked (see average bounce rate).  A Bounce Rate of 50% calls for different analysis and actions than a Bounce Rate of 90%.

Post Wriiten: by Anil Batra

Note : I have just shared it , this article is not written by me. I kept this valuable content for future reference.

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Step-By-Step Flowchart to Troubleshoot Google Authorship Issues

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Best Marketing Tools to Spy on Your Competitors

There are dozens of marketing tools that you’re probably already using to monitor your own performance. These can be used to get competitive intelligence. Let’s assume you already know who the competition is. All you have to do is monitor these different areas.

Ad Monitoring Tools

Do you want to know where your competitors are advertising so you can do the same? Would you like to know which keywords they are targeting? If you want to troubleshoot your PPC and display ads, this set of tools will help you:
1. Adbeat is an enterprise tool that lets you see all of the ads that particular advertisers are using, split test their ad copy to help you with strategy, and find competitors you didn’t even know about. The introductory package starts at $99 per month, though that monitors only Google ads. There’s a 30-day free trial.
2. AdGooroo is a multifunctional tool that includes a Display Insight feature. The basic service lets you monitor ads for up to ten competitors, ranked by page views. Its Industry Insight allows you to figure out ad placements, too. Pricing is not stated.
3. AdGooroo also has an SEM Insight tool that incorporates keyword research, competitive intelligence, PPC and SEO tools, and traffic data. Pricing is not stated.
4. MixRank allows you to see the mix of ads that companies are using. You can see a snapshot of this data (without registering) that covers display ads, text ads, advertisers, and demographics, though you will have to create an account for the full report.
5. Moat provides a free ad search tool that allows you to key in your competitors’ brand names and see what ads they have shown recently. You can see the size and some of the places the ads have been seen recently, giving you a good guide for where to place your own advertising.
6. SocialAdNinja has a database of 400,000 social PPC ads. It’s a great tool for monitoring global Facebook advertising. It includes fine-grained search features so you can identify ads targeting your key demographic and find out which links they point to. There’s a single membership level at $147 per month.
7. WhatRunsWhere helps you monitor competitors to figure out their advertising strategy and where they are placing ads. As a bonus, it can help with advertising research and split testing, finding new sources of traffic, and ad buying.

Keyword Monitoring Tools

Related to ad monitoring tools are those that help you check out the keywords your competitors are targeting in their search marketing campaigns. Do this, and you can improve your own ROI by figuring out what’s working for them. Here’s a selection:
8. iSpionage looks at how your competitors are advertising with Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo search marketing tools. You can view ads and track spending. It also includes SEO competitive research and a social monitoring tool for Twitter and Facebook.
9. KeywordSpy helps with competitive keyword discovery. You can find out how much your competitors are spending on AdWords and discover which combinations of keywords and advertising copy are working for them.
10. KeywordCompetitor helps you spy on organic and paid keywords, ads, and landing pages for your competitors, with daily updates in rankings. The site also has tools for monitoring competitors and working with affiliate marketing.
11. SEMrush lets you monitor competitors’ organic keyword positions, find relevant long tail keywords, see your competitors’ PPC ads, and more. It also includes SEO tools. There’s a wealth of data available from the free search bar on the homepage, though you will have to upgrade ($69.95 per month) for more queries and results.
12. SpyFu lets you see up to six years of data on your competitors’ keywords, ranking, and ads helping you with SEO and PPC advertising. There’s a limited free tool, though you have to subscribe for access to advanced competitive intelligence.
13. The Search Monitor looks at paid and organic search and even how you look against your competition in comparison-shopping engines. This multifunctional tool also monitors affiliates and trademarks as well as who’s discussing your brand. It starts at $299 per month.

Link Popularity and Backlink Tools

All of the tools you use to check who’s linking to your site can be used to research your competitors’ backlinks. All you have to do is plug in their URL. There are dozens of backlink checkers out there, but here are three excellent ones:
14. Ahrefs provides a wealth of information on external links, referring domains and IPs, top pages, main anchor text, linked domains, and more. There’s a limited free account covering 3 reports and 10 results, but for fuller data you’ll need to upgrade to the $79 per month package.
15. Majestic Site Explorer provides a detailed link profile for any site. In addition to working with current data, you also can check its historical index to see results over time. There is a limited free version.
16. Open Site Explorer describes itself as a search engine for links. It provides information on page and domain authority, linking domains, anchor text used, and more; you also can compare link profiles for up to five sites. It is free, though signing up for Moz Analytics gives you access to (much) more data.

Web Ranking Tools

How are people interacting with your competitors’ sites? The next set of tools provides website competitive analysis on consumer data to help companies improve their targeting in different segments.
A free search gets you data on unique visitors, rank, and competitive rank, but you’ll need to sign up for more in-depth tools.
17. Alexa has been tracking global web traffic for a couple of decades and using it to provide website ranking on a global and country basis. The traffic sources and other data can help with benchmarking your site against your competitors.
18. Compete describes itself as a “digital intelligence” tool which uses online consumer behavior.
19. SimilarWeb is a competitive analytics-monitoring tool that provides data on traffic sources, top content, social mentions, and more. There’s a lot of data available for free, including referral sites, search traffic, key topics and more. Pro packages start at $99 per month.

Monitoring and Mentions

Often recommended for monitoring mentions of your own brand, social media monitoring tools work equally well for seeing what people are saying about your competitors.
20. Google Alerts saves you the trouble of visiting the site to repeatedly perform the same search. Set up an alert and have the latest news about your competitors delivered to your inbox. It monitors news, blogs, video, discussions, and books, and it is free.
21. Mention combines media and social monitoring. It tracks content published on web pages, news sites, blogs, and forums in 42 languages. It provides real time social alerts and has an excellent mobile app. There’s a free plan, with the upgrade starting at $6.99 per month.
22. Social Mention provides real time search of brand mentions on blogs, microblogs, images, videos, questions, and bookmarking sites. This free web search tool also provides a broad brush sentiment analysis.
23. Talkwalker offers a service similar to Google Alerts, giving you the choice of monitoring news, blogs, discussions, or everything. You also can monitor content in different languages. It is free.
24. Topsy allows you to search tweets from 2006 forward, looking at links, photos, videos, influencers, and more. The free online search can provide a snapshot of a competitor’s Twitter presence, but you will need the pro version for real time results and alerts, reports, and identification of key influencers.
25. You also can use Twitter’s own search tool and save your searches, though the basic search doesn’t provide the depth that Topsy has.

Social Engagement and Social Sentiment Tools

This next batch of tools will help you to see how your competitors are building engagement and how their key audiences feel about them.
26. Commun.it is best known as a free tool for building engagement on your own Twitter account. Why not plug in the URL of your top competitor to see how that company is performing online?
27. Fanpage Karma allows you to input the URL of any Facebook fan page and assess the number of fans, growth, and a range of other performance metrics. There’s a 14-day free trial of additional features, and the premium package includes Twitter monitoring, too.
28. Login with your Twitter account and you can analyze any profile’s followers for free with Followerwonk. There’s a wealth of detail available on the authority of followers, recent tweets, bios and locations, enabling you to build a comprehensive picture of your competitor’s Twitter presence.
29. Open Social Buzz provides real time search of Twitter, Google+, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Plug in your competitor’s name and see how much social prominence they have.

A Mixed Bag

There are a few tools that don’t fit in any of the categories above, which can provide additional insight into what your competitors are doing.
30. BuiltWith investigates the technology behind your competitors’ sites, covering servers, content management, underlying technology, analytics, advertising, and much more.
31. Marketing Grader is a free HubSpot tool that assesses websites in terms of blogging, social media, SEO, lead generation, and mobile, giving an overall score. It’s a good way to see what your competitors are getting right, and wrong
32. Simply Measured rolls many of the tools on our list into one, including analysis of influencers, brands, trends, traffic, conversions, competitors, and more. It covers all the main social media channels with 35 different reports. The basic plans start at $500 per month, though there are free reports available for your own accounts.
33. The Wayback Machine from the Internet Archive lets you see how your competitors’ pages looked in the past. You never know, you might learn something about how website changes improved conversions.
34. Check out your competitors’ direct mail, email, and social campaigns with Who’s Mailing What. It’s a good way to keep track of trends, get ideas, and see what the competition is up to. This tool costs $747 per year.

Final Thoughts: Other Ways to Spy on the Competition

Don’t forget that there are three more ways you can find out what your competitors are doing, and they are all free.
35. Follow them on social media, add them to a list or interest group, and track what they are talking about.
36. Subscribe to their blogs so you can see what kind of content they are covering and check out announcements of forthcoming launches.
37. Sign up for their newsletter, which is hands-down the best way to see how they are targeting your ideal customers.

What other great tools have you discovered for tracking the competition?

About the Author: Chris is the CEO of TOFU Marketing, an internet marketing agency that helps startup companies hack their growth. You can request a free consultation with him here.

****Note : I am just sharing this Great Post published by Chris The visitor of this blog can directly view the original post by clicking on the source link given Below***** 

Source :



http://blog.kissmetrics.com/

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How to Prepare for Product Ads - Best Ways to be Followed

Hot tips to help you make a success of this exciting new search marketing product

As a member of the Retail Account Management team here at Yahoo, I couldn’t be more excited to share our newest ad format within the search results page: Product Ads. Product Ads help retailers easily promote their products and offers in an eye-catching way within the search results page to complement traditional text ads. As they say, a picture speaks a thousand words.
Currently, we’re working with a select group of retailers to help them set up and manage their Product Ads campaigns ahead of the general release of Product Ads. (Please contact your account manager for further details and updates.)

To help you prepare to opt in to Product Ads, I’d like share some advice in the style of a famous late-night talk show host’s “Top 10 List.” OK, ours is a “Top 12 List,” so we’ve topped Letterman by two. (And, coincidentally my name is also Dave, so there.) Without further ado, here is…

Dave’s top 12 things you need to know about Product Ads:

12. Mind the gap: Product Ads help bridge the gap between shoppers’ searches and their purchases by offering a richer search ad experience that integrates product images into the ad. This will make your offering stand out on the results page, and ultimately help achieve a lift in performance.

11. Have it both ways: Product Ads are able to display along with text ads, meaning that you can potentially have both your text ads and Product Ads display at the same time for a search query, potentially pushing aside your competition.
10. Must-haves, part I: In order to use Product Ads, you’ll need the following:

• A Bing Merchant Center Account (Log in to your Bing Ads account > Tools > Bing Merchant Center)
• A product feed (see #9 for what this should include)
• A new Product Ads campaign created within Bing Ads

9. Must-haves, part II: Your product feed must have the following:

• Merchant Product ID (MPID)
• Title
• Brand
• Product URL
• Price
• Description
• Image URL

Other fields are optional. And yes, you can use a Product Listing Ad-formatted feed.

8. Name that store: The store name you create in the Bing Merchant Center displays with your Product Ads, so make sure to use a name that you want to display in the ad results.
7. Don’t try this at home: Do not add Product Ads to an existing text ad campaign. They just don’t play well together. You need to set up a new Product Ads campaign within your Bing Ads account. These campaigns will include Product Extension (only one may be created per campaign). This designates that the campaign is for Product Ads, which include 45-character promotional text and 10,000 Product Targets per ad group. Product Targets are your way of determining what type of queries result in specific products or categories of products contained within your feed. For example, if you are a department store and you have a women’s clothing department and a men’s clothing department, you wouldn’t necessarily want to use the same keywords for both men’s and women’s clothes (e.g., “blouse”). To ensure that you’re driving the right search queries to the right products, you can label products within your feed as either “men’s” or “women’s” and then use the Product Targets to target traffic specifically for those categories.
6. Get into the Import business: If you’re currently running a Product Listing Ad campaign on Google, you can easily import these campaigns to set up your product campaigns and targets in bulk.
5. Track that ad: Need to track Product Ads? Use the Bing Ads Redirect URL field when you set up your feed. This will override the Product URL field in the feed you provide when your Product Ads display. If you’re using a Google feed, it’s synonymous with the AdWords redirect field. This will allow you to effectively track your Product Ads campaign performance.
4. There are limits: Each account may have up to two million keywords, but although Product Targets are not keywords, they still count against this account limit. Consider creating a sub-account just for your campaigns/Product Targets.
3. Cover your bases: For your first Product Extension, I suggest selecting the All Products option. This will ensure that you have a campaign covering all your products included within your feed. Then create Product Extensions that are more targeted to your top product categories (see #7 for an example).
2. Budget and bid accordingly: Make sure you understand Bidding and Budget accordingly. For bidding, there are two options, an ad group bid and a custom bid. If you have a Product Target that’s targeting “All Products,” you are casting a wide search query net, and so, you’ll want to place a lower bid on that target. However, if you’re targeting “TVs > Flat Screen > Plasma > 42 Inch > 1080i,” you’re looking for very specific search queries, which means you’ll want to bid higher on this target using the custom bid option, because the consumer is further down in the buying cycle. Be sure to allocate additional budget to your Product Ads campaigns as you would be any new search campaign.
And a drum roll please…

1. Get more: Check out our recent Webinar “Get the Most Out of Product Ads,” in which our Product Ads experts share how to set up a Product Ads campaign and answer questions.

-- Dave Carter

Source : Yahoo! Advertising Solutions - Yahoo

****Note : I am just sharing this Great Post published by Yahoo Advertising Blogs The visitor of this blog can directly view the original post by clicking on the source link given Below***** 

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Technical SEO - The Required Skills for 2013 and 2014

By Michael Martinez

We don’t agree on what “Technical Search Engine Optimization” is supposed to be so we won’t agree on what comprises “Technical SEO Skills”. Here are my definitions and why I think these skills are important.

Technical Search Engine Optimzation

These skills break down into four areas:

1. HTML coding and analysis
2. Server operating system administration and analysis
3. Website architecture design and analysis
4. PHP, Javascript, Perl, and similar language coding knowledge

There is a difference between “having some coding knowledge” and being someone who writes software for a living. I’m not sure if a “coder” is supposed to be different from a “software engineer” but I get the impression that anyone who bills him/herself as a “coder” builds Websites, plugins, themes, and stuff like that. My apologies to any coders who actually develop full-blown software applications. In my day, when we walked uphill through the snow both ways (barefoot), we called ourselves “(computer) programmers” and the guys who taught us how to develop software were “programmer analysts” and “systems analysts” (who often called the “programmer analysts”wannabees — but I digress).
Technical search engine optimization delves into code and operating systems. It’s got nothing to do with keyword research and link placement. Here is why you need these four skills.
HTML coding and analysis are important to any search engine optimization specialist who is asked to assess the design of a Website’s documents. For example, if you think that links embedded in Javascript are a problem for crawlers you need to learn more about crawlers (which falls into the area of “theoretical knowledge for SEO”). If you think that using 10 different formats for internal relative URLs is a bad idea for SEO, you’re on the right path.
If you are still arguing “tables versus CSS” you never graduated from SEO 101. If, however, you notice that CSS is being used to hide text on a site that has received a penalty, you may be on to something.
If you use “View Source” and see nothing wrong with a page that has a lot of white space in the code, you’re probably not ready to handle your own SEO accounts. If, however, you just look at the rendered page and hit PAGE DOWN five times before you get to the obviously keyword-stuffed, link-bloated footer that is “hidden” below the fold by 100 blank lines that most users will never scroll past — you’re well-versed in simple Web spam techniques and won’t be easily fooled by naive clients who are running around with spam shotguns blowing their own feet off every five seconds.
If you think in terms of “PageRank Hoarding”, “Sculpting PageRank”, and Siloing you will probably find lots of opportunities to speak at conferences but most likely you hand off the real technical SEO to someone who doesn’t fall for buzzword philosophy.
Server operating system administration and analysis is vital to technical SEO because this is where a lot of technical SEO mistakes happen. People write HTACCESS files with thousands of lines of code and ask why their Websites take so long to render. They drop 10,000 files into a folder/directory on their server and complain that it takes the server a long time to do anything.
If you can read a raw server log you’re ten miles ahead of the guy who trusts whatever Google Analytics shows him. And you probably know enough to filter your own IP address out of any analytics report after having to skip past it so many times in the raw server data. That Google Analytics guru is lucky if he doesn’t crap in his pants when he clicks on the ADMIN link.
There are two schools of thought when it comes to Web server operating systems: Microsoft and Apache. In reality there are MORE than these two environments but they are the big dogs who slug it out the most. Unhappily I’m not the best Microsoft IIS search engine optimization expert I know but I am at home on an Apache server.
If you spit and say, “Webmin! Fah! Plex! Ick!” because you’re a command line jockey, you need to take a time out. And if you seriously believe that UNIX-style pattern matching is actually a powerful tool — you’re just a Preschooler playing with the big boys. Regular expressions are an analyst’s nightmare for two reasons: they MISS a lot of stuff and they INCLUDE a lot of crap. “Why, hell, any EGREP guru can get around that,” you say confidently.
In 30+ years of working on UNIX systems, I never met or heard of such a person. Your mileage may vary but I’ll trust my judgment more than yours in these matters any day. Regular expressions are hard for most people to use because they are STUPID.
Real programmers don’t use regular expressions. ‘Nuff said.
You need to understand where the Web server software is installed and configured, how its configured, and how it differs from the operating system software. You need to understand how to manage operating system accounts, permissions, tools, and reporting functions. If someone says, “My Website keeps getting hacked” you need to know where the backdoors are so that you can look at what the hacker is probably seeing. Maybe it’s all coming in through the login screen, maybe not.
Knowing which operating system a Website (component) runs on tells you a lot about what kind of server-side optimization, presentation, and organization the Website can use. Waiting for the O/S guru to call in on Skype means you shouldn’t be doing this job.
Website architecture design and analysis is where a lot of people break into real technical SEO. It’s the easiest and yet the most complex of the four basic skill areas. It’s the easiest because you basically just start out by clicking on the pages of a site. You test the usability, findability, indexability, informability of a Website by trying to use it. Somewhere along the way you start to look under the hood to see if all the code is written in the same style or if it’s a hodgepodge of coding philosophies and scripts.
You really have to understand WHAT THE NAVIGATION IS DOING and HOW THE NAVIGATION IS IMPLEMENTED.
You have to be able to explain HOW THE PAGE LAYOUT WORKS and HOW THE PAGE PRESENTATION INTERACTS WITH BACKGROUND FUNCTIONS.

Are there widgets on a page? Are they internal or external widgets (same site or remote site)? Are they Javascript, Perl, PHP, or maybe some esoteric blend of things only a dark worshipper of Clark Ashton Smith would recognize?
Does the user have to battle his way through popups, automatically-loading videos and audio files, advertising boxes, and signup forms before getting to the boilerplate stub content that says, “No results found for [INJECTED KEYWORD]“?
If you look at a Web page and think it looks okay you’re not ready for technical SEO. There is *always*something wrong, somewhere on a page. It may not need fixing but it’s broken, out-of-place, and just plain technically wrong. You’re supposed to know that (and also to know when it needs to be fixed and when it can be tolerated).
If you’re thinking, “Well, the page titles and meta tags are unique” you seriously need to stop reading SEO comic books. It’s not about uniqueness. It’s about what things are doing. “Why is this here?” should be the most common question you ask. “What is this trying to do?” should be the next most common question you ask.
It doesn’t matter if you’re looking under the hood or at the rendered page. If you’re not questioning everything you see, you’re not being technical enough.
The conversation with the client or vice president may have to be dumbed down to “Here’s your problem right here, Herb. You’ve got a loose — BZZZZT!” But you still have to be able to explain to someone like me (or you) why that is Herb’s problem. Otherwise you’re just guessing.
PHP, Javascript, Perl, and similar language coding knowledge is important to technical SEO because you need to have a feel for how much time it takes a typical Web browser (or search engine spider) to assemble the content for a page and then render it. You don’t have to know how many microseconds each fetch requires — but if you look at a PHP script with 14 function calls in it and you don’t think in terms of “here are 14 function calls”, you’re sucking wind as soon as you look under the hood.
It’s not about how many scripts a Web page invokes — it’s about how many things (function calls and other codey stuff) a Web page is trying to do. In today’s bloated CMS environment a typical Web page may execute 100-200 functions just to assemble itself and render in a browser. That’s before the lights start flashing, the bells whistle, the videos fire off, and the advertising shows up.
You need to be able to scan all this crap and figure out quickly if it might have an unforeseen impact on search engine performance. You need to have a keen radar for mistyped code, mistyped file references, mistyped links, etc. Programmers or coders or the dumb guy who pasted all this crap together from 15 different Websites may have no idea of why they need to do something so they do it in what they think is the most efficient way possible.
I once had to load and read between 6 and 10 PHP scripts just to get to a function call that loaded a file, all because I was analyzing a Website that had created multiple layers of code with a PLATFORM, a THEME, a PLUGIN, and a MOD. PHP is a hellish coding landscape that sacrifices sense and sensibility for momentary convenience. Back when you were lucky to get 16K of memory to work with on a mainframe, PHP would have been laughed out onto the street. That kind of coding efficiency would help the Web tremendously today, but those days are gone.
All the Real Programmers have gone to the Havens and Sailed Over Sea. Either that or they got old and retired.
You don’t have to write your own themes and plugins. You just need to be able to sort through the dozens, hundreds, thousands of PHP files that a typical Web forum or blog or ecommerce site uses to find THE ONE YOU NEED (for whatever your need may be). If you are lost in that forest of files you have no business claiming to be versed in technical SEO.

Technical Search Engine Optimization Is About…

Needles in haystacks. Remember that image.
The technical side of the job is not to supervise the creation of Web applications and software. There are coders (developers) who are much better at doing that than you or I will ever be. Once in a blue moon you get an SEO who can code or a coder who can do SEO. Most people fall into one category or another.
If the Web were written in Business Basic I would pwn you all. Instead it’s written in HTML and PHP and I have to “evaluate” platforms and plugins and themes along with most everyone else.
So technical SEO is not about creating the forests of files; it’s about finding the problem that is causing the whole kit and kaboodle to wheeze and clunk and steam in all the wrong places. Your responsibility as a technical SEO is to dig through all the moving parts and find the one that is broken, jammed up, discombobulated, or otherwise neck deep in twisted wires and burned out fuses.
There are no keywords in technical search engine optimization. There are those who can do it and those who wish they had never tried. It’s not that hard once you learn the basic skills but it’s a time-consuming process.
You know someone has done real technical SEO when they provide you with clear, explicit step-by-step instructions on where to find the problem and how to fix it.
I’ll leave you with examples of bullet points that people who wish they had never tried to do technical SEO include in their blog posts when they try to write about technical SEO.

• Think creatively
• Figure out what keywords you want to use
• Use Screaming Frog
• Read this blog post here
• Ask yourself, “Would Matt Cutts tell me to do this?”
• Check back for more information later
• Get your team together for some quality time
• Quality content
• Quality links
• Google Penguin
• A picture of (a cat, a snowball, the most interesting man in the world, etc.) with some words on it
• A screen capture from Google Analytics
• [Insert Danny Sullivan quote here]
• [Insert Matt Cutts video]
• Some complaint about how Google is evil and trying to screw everyone
• A warm reassuring sentence about how Google is your friend
• Some reference to weird food or drinks that only someone in Silicon Valley thinks is cute
• Some reference to bicycling, triathlons, workouts, or vacations that only Googlers can afford
• A self-congratulatory paragraph about their latest tool
• Something to do with Twitter
• Something to do with Facebook
• Something to do with Pinterest
• An aphorism about Social Media, Socia Media Marketing, or Mobile Search (what the HELL is freaking “mobile search” anyway?)
• Glowing adulation for the company founder
• A mild rebuke for someone who questioned a previous blog post
• Any list of vague, obscure nonsense that obviously says nothing specific about anything in particular

Source : http://www.seo-theory.com

****Note : I am just sharing this Great Post Written by Michael Martinez The visitor of this blog can directly view the original post by clicking on the source link given Below*****  

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Google Merchant Center Products Feed Specification

Source : Merchant Center

In order to prevent suspension of your feed please read the Google Shopping policies very carefully before creating a feed.

This page lists all the attributes you need to provide in order for your products to be listed in Google Shopping. Some attributes are required for all items, some are required for certain types of items (such as apparel), and others are recommended. Failure to provide a required attribute may prevent that particular item from showing up in Google Shopping results, whereas failure to provide recommended attributes may result in items showing up less frequently. Read through the entire document to make sure your products show up on Google Shopping. For a basic overview of feeds, see this article. Before creating your feed, choose the file format that is right for you.
We use the term item to describe a single product listing. If you are using Text or Tab delimited format, an item is equivalent to one line in your data feed. Items are similar to products, but we assume that products can occur in multiple variations. These variations - product variants - differ by color, material, pattern, or size. We use item to refer to a single variation of a product.
We also accept feeds formatted according to the Yandex specifications for data feeds targeting Russia.
Important Note:

• If you are using a delimited format, you can use the attribute names in either English or the language of your target country. Make sure that the attribute names (e.g., 'condition') and values (e.g., 'new') are always in the same language.
• If you are using XML or API, you must use English attribute names shown within the brackets.
• If you are using XML or API, you must use an underscore in place for a space within an attribute name (e.g., "image_link" instead of "image link".) A space within an attribute value is allowed (e.g., "in stock").

Basic Product Information

The following attributes contain basic information about your items.
id [id] - An identifier of the item

The identifier for each item has to be unique within your account, and cannot be re-used between feeds. If you have multiple feeds, ids of items within different feeds must still be unique. You can use any sequence of letters and digits for the item id.
When to include: Required for all items.

Type	Alphanumeric characters
Text/Tab delimited	tddy123uk
XML	<g:id>tddy123uk</g:id>

Important:

• Once an item is submitted, the id must not change when you update your data feed or be used for a different product at a later point in time.
• For Switzerland only: If your website is in multiple languages, submit one feed per language. You may re-use the same id for the same item in each version of the feed for each language.

title [title] - Title of the item

This is the name of your item which is required. We recommend you include characteristics such as color or brand in the title which differentiates the item from other products.
When to include: Required for all items.

Type	Text. Should not be longer than 70 characters
Text/Tab delimited	Mens Pique Polo Shirt
XML	<title>Mens Pique Polo Shirt</title>

Important:

• Follow our Editorial guidelines closely. For example, do not include any promotional text such as "Free shipping", and do not use BLOCK CAPITALS.
• For variant products, you are required to include the common title of the variant items. For example if “Mens Pique Polo Shirt” is available in red and blue colors, you can have one of the following titles:
  • Mens Pique Polo Shirt (Can be used for both variants)
  • Mens Pique Polo Shirt - Red (For the red shirt)
  • Mens Pique Polo Shirt - Blue (For the blue shirt)
• For mobile devices bundled with service contracts, you may include a price value of 0.00 USD for your items. The items must be submitted with the ‘google product taxonomy’ value of ‘Electronics > Communications > Telephony > Mobile Phones’ for phones or 'Electronics > Computers > Tablet Computers' for tablets and include the phrase “with contract” (or equivalent language) in the ‘title’.
• For mobile phones or tablets with payments plans in the US, submit the price of the downpayment as your ‘price’. The ‘title’ must include the phrase “with payment plan” (or equivalent language). For feeds targeting Brazil, please use the ‘installment’ attribute to submit mobile devices or tablets with payment plans. Phones or tablets with payment plans are not allowed in other target countries.

description [description] - Description of the item

Include only information relevant to the item. Describe its most relevant attributes, such as size, material, intended age range, special features, or other technical specs. Also include details about the item’s most visual attributes, such as shape, pattern, texture, and design, since we may use this text for finding your item.
We recommend that you submit around 500 to 1,000 characters, but you can submit up to 10,000 characters. Descriptions should follow standard grammar rules and end with a punctuation mark.
When to include: Required for all items.

Type	Text
Text/Tab delimited	Solid red, queen-sized bed sheets made from 100% woven polyester 300 thread count fabric. Set includes one fitted sheet, one flat sheet, and two standard pillowcases. Machine washable; extra deep fitted pockets.
XML	<description>Solid red, queen-sized bed sheets made from 100% woven polyester 300 thread count fabric. Set includes one fitted sheet, one flat sheet, and two standard pillowcases. Machine washable; extra deep fitted pockets.</description>

Important:

• Make sure to follow our Editorial guidelines closely. For example, do not include any promotional text such as "Free shipping", do not use BLOCK CAPITALS, and do not include a description of your brand or company.
• Additionally, the following information should not be included in descriptions:
  • Links to your store or other websites
  • Billing, payment, or sales information
  • References to internal categorization systems, e.g. "Toys & Games > Toys > Baby Dolls"
  • Comparisons to other products beyond the item you’re selling, e.g. “even better/faster/larger than X”
  • Details about other products, accessories, or similar items available

google product category [google_product_category] - Google's category of the item

The 'google product category' attribute indicates the category of the product being submitted, according to the Google product taxonomy. This attribute accepts only one value, taken from the product taxonomy tree. If your items fall into multiple categories, include only one category which is the most relevant.
Any category from Google’s product taxonomy must include the full path. For example, 'Apparel & Accessories > Clothing > Jeans' is an acceptable value, but 'Jeans' is not.
When to include: For all target countries except Canada, India, and Russia, ‘google product category’ is required for all items that fall within the 'Apparel & Accessories', 'Media', and 'Software' categories. If your products do not fall into one of those categories - or if your feed targets Canada, India, or Russia - this attribute is recommended but not required.

Type	Predefined values from Google's product taxonomy
Text/Tab delimited	Apparel & Accessories > Clothing > Dresses
XML	<g:google_product_category>Apparel &amp; Accessories &gt; Clothing &gt; Dresses</g:google_product_category>

Additional category requirements: For items that fall into the categories listed below, the value you submit for ‘google product category’ must use the categories as they appear below or the more specific categories provided in the full Google product taxonomy. It is not sufficient to provide the highest-level categories, such as 'Apparel & Accessories' or ‘Media’, for these items.

• 'Apparel & Accessories > Clothing'
• 'Apparel & Accessories > Shoes'
• 'Apparel & Accessories > Clothing Accessories > Sunglasses'
• 'Apparel & Accessories > Handbags, Wallets & Cases > Handbags'
• 'Apparel & Accessories > Jewelry > Watches'
• 'Media > Books'
• 'Media > DVDs & Movies'
• 'Media > Music'
• Software > Video Game Software' (Note: this category includes all computer games)

Category for bundles: Provide the most appropriate categorization for bundled products of differing product types. If the bundle contains a main product, the category of the main product is most appropriate. For example, if you are submitting a digital SLR camera bundled with a bag, ‘Cameras & Optics > Cameras > Digital Cameras’ is an appropriate category to submit for the bundled item.
Category for mobile devices or tables with a price of 0.00 USD: For mobile devices bundled with service contracts, you may include a price value of 0.00 USD for your items. The items must be submitted with the ‘google product taxonomy’ value of ‘Electronics > Communications > Telephony > Mobile Phones’ for phones or 'Electronics > Computers > Tablet Computers' for tablets and include the phrase “with contact” (or equivalent language) in the ‘title’.
Examples of ‘google product category’ submissions:
Leggings fall under the 'Apparel & Accessories > Clothing' category specified above. When submitting leggings:

• Acceptable categories:
  • 'Apparel & Accessories > Clothing'
  • 'Apparel & Accessories > Clothing' > Pants'
  • 'Apparel & Accessories > Clothing' > Pants > Leggings'
• Invalid categories
  • 'Apparel & Accessories'
  • Failing to provide any 'google product category'

Rings do not fall under the specific categories listed above. When submitting rings:

• Acceptable categories:
  • 'Apparel & Accessories'
  • 'Apparel & Accessories > Jewelry
  • 'Apparel & Accessories'> Jewelry > Rings'
• Invalid categories:
  • Failing to provide any 'google product category'

For all your items, conforming to the above guidelines is required. However, it is strongly recommended that you use the most specific applicable category for all your items from the full Google product taxonomy.

product type [product_type] - Your category of the item

This attribute also indicates the category of the product being submitted, but you can provide your own classification. Unlike the 'Google product category', you can include more than one 'product type' attribute value if products apply to more than one category. Please include the full category string. For example, if your products belong in Refrigerators list the full string: Home & Garden > Kitchen & Dining > Kitchen Appliances > Refrigerators. Any separator such as > or / may be used.
When to include: Strongly recommended for all items if you have a categorization for your items.

Type	Text. You may include multiple product types if it's appropriate for your item. Separate by a comma for tab-delimited; Include multiple <product_type> attributes for XML.
Text/Tab delimited	Home & Garden > Kitchen & Dining > Appliances > Refrigerators
XML	<g:product_type>Home &amp; Garden &gt; Kitchen &amp; Dining &gt; Appliances &gt; Refrigerators</g:product_type>

link [link] - URL directly linking to your item's page on your website

The user is sent to this URL when your item is clicked on Google Shopping. We also refer to this as the landing page. It must point to a page showing the exact item the user was looking at. You can use tracking URLs to distinguish users coming from Google Shopping.
The URL contained in this attribute is a direct link to your product page. In addition to the 'link' attribute, you may also specify an 'adwords redirect' attribute for tracking purposes. If you specify the 'adwords redirect' attribute, the user is sent to the URL specified in the 'adwords redirect' attribute. This URL must redirect to the same website as the one specified in the 'link' attribute. If you don’t specify the 'adwords redirect' attribute, the user is directly sent to the URL specified in the 'link' attribute
When to include: Required for all items.

Type	URL (this must include the http:// portion)
Text/Tab delimited	http://www.example.com/asp/sp.asp?cat=12&id=1030
XML	<link>http://www.example.com/asp/sp.asp?cat=12&amp;id=1030</link>

Important:

• Read our policies carefully. All your URLs must link directly to webpages about your products without pop ups. We don't allow landing pages requiring sign ups, passwords, or direct links to files/email addresses.
• If you're performing maintenance on your site that affects your landing pages, you're required to remove your items from Google Shopping during that time.
• If multiple products are on the same page, it has to be straightforward for the user to find the right product. We recommend only one product per page.
• For variations of the same product, we recommend you submit URLs that pre-select the variant which the user clicked on in Google Shopping.
• The URL must not redirect or forward to a location external to your site.
• The URL must start with 'http://' or 'https://' and use the domain name you verified in Google Webmaster Tools and in the Settings of your Merchant Center account.
• Any symbols used must be replaced by URL encoded entities (e.g. comma = %2C).

image link [image_link] - URL of an image of the item

This is the URL of an associated image for a product.
If you have multiple different images of the item, submit the main image using this attribute, and include all other images in the 'additional image link' attribute.
Image size:

• Submit the largest, full-size image you have for the product, up to 4MB file size.
• We recommend images at least 800 pixels in height and width.
• Do not scale up images or submit thumbnails.
• For apparel products we require images of at least 250 x 250 pixels.

When to include: Required for all items.

Type	URL. (Must start with 'http://' or 'https://'.)
Text/Tab delimited	http://www.example.com/image1.jpg
XML	<g:image_link>http://www.example.com/image1.jpg</g:image_link>

Important:

• If you have no image of the item, you cannot submit the item.
• For products that fall under “Apparel & Accessories” and all corresponding sub-categories in feeds targeting the US, UK, DE, FR, and JP: If you are submitting product variants that differ in ‘‘color’, or ‘pattern’, or ‘material’, we require you to submit specific images corresponding to each of these variants. If you do not have the correct image for the variation of the product, you may not submit that variant. We recommend specific images for ‘size’ variants too. However, if these are not available you may submit the same image URL for items that differ in ‘size’.
• For all other countries and categories: If you cannot provide the appropriate images to submit your items as variants, you may list your variant products as a single item with multiple values for the variant attributes and provide the available image.
• The image must display the product. Do not submit a placeholder such as "No image", logo of the brand or logo of your store.
• Images of products must not contain logos or other promotions within the image.
• The main image of a multipack must display a single unit of the product.

Formatting:

• The accepted image formats are non-animated GIF (.gif), JPEG (.jpg/.jpeg), PNG (.png), BMP (.bmp), and TIFF (.tif/.tiff) and the file extensions for these images should correspond to their format.
• The accepted URL protocols are ‘http’ and ‘https’. Any symbols used within the image URL must be replaced by URL encoded entities (e.g. comma = %2C).

additional image link [additional_image_link] - Additional URLs of images of the item

If you have additional images for this item, include them in this attribute. For example, if you have images that show the product from a different angle than the main image, or if you have images of the packaging or the product in various settings.
You can include up to 10 additional images per item by including the attribute multiple times. For tab-delimited, separate each URL by a comma. For XML, include each URL as a separate <additional_image_link> attribute.
When to include: For all items with multiple images.

Type	URL (Must include the http:// portion.)
Text/Tab delimited	http://www.example.com/image1.jpg
XML	<g:additional_image_link>http://www.example.com/image1.jpg</g:additional_image_link>

Important:

• The same rules as for image link apply.

condition [condition] - Condition or state of the item

There are only three accepted values:

• 'new': The product is brand-new and has never been used. It's in its original packaging which has not been opened.
• 'refurbished': The product has been restored to working order. This includes, for example, remanufactured printer cartridges.
• 'used': If the two previous values don't apply. For example, if the product has been used before or the original packaging has been opened or is missing.

When to include: Required for all items.

Type	Three predefined values accepted: 'new' 'used' 'refurbished'
Text/Tab delimited	used
XML	<g:condition>used</g:condition>

Important:

• If you are submitting the attribute names in English, you must provide the attribute values in English as well.

Availability & Price

The attributes in this section are required in order to specify the availability and prices of your items. The availability and prices of your items can change quite frequently, and you need to make sure Google is notified of these changes as they happen. You can find advice on providing the most up-to-date or fresh data here.
We regularly check these attributes, and if the values provided in these attributes are found to be different from the information presented on your website, we will remove all your items from Google Shopping. Please see our policies for more details.
availability [availability] - Availability status of the item

The availability attribute only has four accepted values:

• 'in stock': Include this value if you are certain that it will ship (or be in-transit to the customer) in 3 business days or less. For example, if you have the item available in your warehouse.
• 'available for order': Include this value if it will take 4 or more business days to ship it to the customer. For example, if you don’t have it in your warehouse at the moment, but are sure that it will arrive in the next few days. For unreleased products, use the value 'preorder'
• 'out of stock': You’re currently not accepting orders for this product. (Important tip: When your products are out of stock on your website, don't remove them from your data feed. Provide this value instead).
• 'preorder': You are taking orders for this product, but it’s not yet been released.

When to include: Required for all items.

Type	Four predefined values accepted: 'in stock' 'available for order' 'out of stock' 'preorder'
Text/Tab delimited	in stock
XML	<g:availability>in stock</g:availability>

Important:

• You need to clearly indicate the availability of an item on the item's landing page by either explicitly noting the status (such that it's clear which of the above values describe the availability of the item), or mention how many days it takes until the item ships.
• Items that are no longer sold have to be removed from the feed entirely.
• If you are submitting the attribute names in English, you must provide the attribute values in English as well.

price [price] - Price of the item

The price of the item has to be the most prominent price on the landing page. If multiple items are on the same page with multiple prices, it has to be straightforward for the user to find the correct item and corresponding price.
When to include: Required for all items.

Type	Number
Text/Tab delimited	15.00 USD
XML	<g:price>15.00 USD</g:price>

Important:

• For the US, don't include tax in the price. For all other countries except Canada and India, value added tax (VAT) has to be included in the price.
• The price must include a currency according to ISO 4217 Standard.
• Make sure to read our policies in detail. Only items with fixed prices are allowed in Google Shopping. Items with variable prices, such as auctions, and prices that require a membership in a club are not allowed.
• For items sold in bulk quantities, the price for the lowest purchasable number of items must be provided (not the per unit price) and the same price has to be straightforward to find on the landing page.
• For products on sale, we recommend including the 'sale price' attribute and submit the regular price (before sale) in the 'price' attribute. In this case, the sale price (instead of the regular price) must be straightforward to find on the page.
• You must not include a price value of 0.00 USD for your items. Items with zero prices may not appear in the search results (Note: The only exception is mobile devices bundled with service plans as detailed below).
• For mobile devices bundled with service contracts, you may include a price value of 0.00 USD for your items. The items must be submitted with the ‘google product taxonomy’ value of ‘Electronics > Communications > Telephony > Mobile Phones’ for phones and 'Electronics > Computers > Tablet Computers' for tablets and include the phrase “with contract” (or equivalent language) in the ‘title’.
• For mobile phones or tablets with payments plans in the US, submit the price of the downpayment as your ‘price’. The ‘title’ must include the phrase “with payment plan” (or equivalent language). For feeds targeting Brazil, please use the ‘installment’ attribute to submit mobile devices or tablets with payment plans. Phones or tablets with payment plans are not allowed in other target countries.

Please note that you can use unit pricing and 'installment' attributes to submit price-related information for applicable target countries.

sale price [sale_price] - Advertised sale price of the item

Use this attribute to submit the advertised sale price of the item. Learn more about submitting sale price information.
When to include: Recommended for items on sale. If your item is on sale and you don’t include this attribute, the sale price must be updated as the value in the 'price' attribute.

Format	Number
Text/Tab delimited	15.00 USD
XML	<g:sale_price>15.00 USD</g:sale_price>

Important:

• You must still include the 'price' attribute in your feed, which must reflect the non-sale price you have previously sold the item for.
• The price must include a currency.
• Submitted sale prices must exactly match the price displayed on your website. Both prices must be displayed on the landing page (the regular price and the sale price), but the sale price must be most prominent.
• You must not include a price value of 0.00 USD for your items. Items with zero prices may not appear in the search results.

sale price effective date [sale_price_effective_date] - Date range during which the item is on sale

Used in conjunction with sale price. This attribute indicates the date range during which the sale price applies. Learn more about submitting sale price information.
When to include: Recommended for items which use the 'sale price' attribute.

Format	Start and end dates separated by a forward slash (/). The start is specified by the format (YYYY-MM-DD), followed by the letter ‘T’, the time of the day when the sale starts, followed by an expression of the timezone for the sale. The end date should be in the same format.
Text/Tab delimited	2011-03-01T13:00-0800/2011-03-11T15:30-0800
XML	<g:sale_price_effective_date>2011-03-01T13:00-0800/2011-03-11T15:30-0800</g:sale_price_effective_date>

Unique Product Identifiers

Unique product identifiers are product codes or other identifying values associated with an individual product:

• Global Trade Item Numbers (GTINs) submitted through the ‘gtin’ attribute. GTINs include UPC, EAN (in Europe), JAN (in Japan), and ISBN;
• Manufacturer Part Number (MPN) submitted through the 'mpn' attribute; and
• The manufacturer's brand name in the 'brand' attribute.

Custom goods are one-of-a-kind items for which no unique product identifiers exist, like vintage goods, collectibles, art, perishables, books published before 1970, and other special items.
Learn more about unique product identifiers.

Unique Product Identifier Rules

• Apparel categories: 'brand' is required. Additionally, for the categories listed below, you must submit at least 1 out of 'gtin' or 'mpn’:
  • 'Apparel & Accessories > Shoes'
  • 'Apparel & Accessories > Clothing Accesories > Sunglasses'
  • 'Apparel & Accessories > Handbags, Wallets & Cases > Handbags'
  • 'Apparel & Accessories > Jewelry > Watches'
• Media and software categories: 'gtin' is required
• All other categories: at least 2 of the following 3 identifiers are required: ‘brand’, ‘gtin’, and ‘mpn’.
• Exception: in categories where unique product identifiers are required but no such identifier exists for an item (e.g. custom goods), submit 'identifier exists' with a value of FALSE.

If you don't provide the required unique product identifiers, your items may be removed from Google Shopping. For all of your items, we recommend submitting all three attributes (‘brand’, ‘mpn’, and ‘gtin’) where available.
brand [brand] - Brand of the item

When to include: Required according to the Unique Product Identifier Rules for all target countries except for Canada, India, and Russia. This attribute is recommended for Canada, India, and Russia.

Type	Text
Text/Tab delimited	Acme
XML	<g:brand>Acme</g:brand>

Important:

• You must not provide your store name as the brand unless you manufacture the product.

gtin [gtin] - Global Trade Item Number (GTIN) of the item

Use the 'gtin' attribute to submit Global Trade Item Numbers (GTINs) in one of the following formats:

• UPC (in North America): 12-digit number such as 3234567890126
• EAN (in Europe): 13-digit number such as 3001234567892
• JAN (in Japan): 8 or 13-digit number such as 49123456 or 4901234567894
• ISBN (for books): 10 or 13-digit number such as 0451524233. If you have both, only include 13-digit number.

When to include: Required according to the Unique Product Identifier Rules for all target countries except for Canada, India, and Russia. This attribute is recommended for Canada, India, Russia.

Type	8-, 12-, or 13-digit number (UPC, EAN, JAN, or ISBN)
Text/Tab delimited	3234567890126
XML	<g:gtin>3234567890126</g:gtin>

mpn [mpn] - Manufacturer Part Number (MPN) of the item

A Manufacturer Part Number is used to reference and identify a product using a manufacturer specific naming other than GTIN.
When to include: Required according to the Unique Product Identifier Rules for all target countries except for Canada, India, and Russia. This attribute is recommended for Canada, India, and Russia.

Type	Alphanumeric characters
Text/Tab delimited	GO12345OOGLE
XML	<g:mpn>GO1234568OOGLE</g:mpn>

Important:

• MPNs are assigned by a manufacturer. A merchant-assigned identifier is not an appropriate value for this attribute, except in cases where the seller is also the manufacturer of the item.
• MPNs should typically be specific to a single unique product. For example, different colors of a product should have different MPNs.

identifier exists [identifier_exists] - Submit custom goods

In categories where unique product identifiers are required, merchants must submit the ‘identifier exists’ attribute with a value of FALSE when the item does not have unique product identifiers appropriate to its category, such as GTIN, MPN, and brand.
When to include: Required according to the Unique Product Identifier Rules for all target countries except for Canada, India, and Russia. This attribute is recommended for Canada, India, and Russia.

Type	Boolean: TRUE or FALSE
Text/Tab delimited	FALSE
XML	<g:identifier_exists>FALSE</g:identifier_exists>

Important:

• When the attribute is not specified, the default value is TRUE.

Examples of unique product identifier submissions:

Books

• Rare old books: submit ‘identifier exists’ with a value of FALSE.
• New books (published after 1970): provide ISBN in the ‘gtin’ attribute.

Custom Goods

• Hand made goods: submit ‘identifier exists’ with a value of FALSE.
• Antique goods: submit ‘identifier exists’ with a value of FALSE.

Apparel

• Mass produced clothing: provide ‘brand’.
• Custom clothing: submit ‘identifier exists’ with a value of FALSE.

Multipacks

• Manufacturer-defined multipack: follow the Unique Product Identifier Rules as described above. This multipack should be treated as a single item.
• Merchant-defined multipack: follow the Unique Product Identifier Rules as described above for the individual base item in the multipack.

Product Bundles

• A manufacturer-defined bundle (e.g., a camera body with a lens): follow the Unique Product Identifier Rules as described above. This bundle should be treated as a single item.
• A merchant-defined bundle (e.g., a custom bundle of camera, lens, and case): submit ‘identifier exists’ with a value of FALSE for these items and do not provide unique product identifiers, even if the bundle contains some individual items that have unique product identifiers.

Apparel Products

Apparel includes all products that fall under 'Apparel & Accessories' (including all sub-categories) in Google’s product taxonomy.
For feeds targeting the US, UK, DE, FR, and JP:: The following attributes in this section are required across all products in the 'Apparel & Accessories' product category (including all subcategories):

• gender
• age group
• color

In addition, the ‘size’ attribute is only required for the apparel subcategories 'Apparel & Accessories > Clothing' and 'Apparel & Accessories > Shoes'. Recommended for other product categories (might become required in the future).
For all other countries: While the apparel attributes listed here are not currently required for countries outside the US, UK, DE, FR, and JP, they may become required in the future. Therefore, we strongly recommend that you include all the relevant attributes where possible.
gender [gender] - Gender of the item

Three predefined values accepted:

• Male
• Female
• Unisex

When to include: Required for all apparel items in feeds that target the US, UK, DE, FR, and JP. Recommended for other countries and product categories (might become required in the future).

Format	There are only three values accepted: Male Female Unisex
Text/Tab delimited	male
XML	<g:gender>male</g:gender>

Important

• If you are submitting the attribute names in English, you must provide the attribute values in English as well.
• This attribute is required for items in the ‘apparel and accessories’ category targeting the US, UK, DE, FR, and JP. However, this attribute is only recommended for ‘pinback buttons’, ‘tie clips’, ‘wristbands’, ‘shoe covers’, ‘shoe laces’, ‘spurs’, ‘watch bands’ within the ‘apparel and accessories’ category.

age group [age_group] - Target age group of the item

The only two accepted values of this attribute are:

• Adult
• Kids

When to include: Required for all apparel items in feeds that target the US, UK, DE, FR, and JP. Recommended for other countries and product categories (might become required in the future).

Format	There are only two values accepted: Adult Kids
Text/Tab delimited	adult
XML	<g:age_group>adult</g:age_group>

Important:

• If you are submitting the attribute names in English, you must provide the attribute values in English as well.
• This attribute is required for items in the ‘apparel and accessories’ category targeting the US, UK, DE, FR, and JP. However, this attribute is only recommended for ‘pinback buttons’, ‘tie clips’, ‘wristbands’, ‘shoe covers’, ‘shoe laces’, ‘spurs’, ‘watch bands’ within the ‘apparel and accessories’ category.
• If an item is not clearly just for ‘kids, it should be declared as ‘adult’, as only one value may be submitted per item.

color [color] - Color of the item

Note: This attribute is also described in the section on Variant Products. Please do not submit two versions of this attribute per item.
This defines the dominant color(s) for an item. When a single item has multiple colors, you can submit up to two additional values as accent colors:

• Combine the colors with ‘/’ in order of prominence (dominant color first, then at most two accent colors). For example, a black shoe with green accents should have a color value of 'Black / Green'. In the case of non-deformable goods in Apparel like jewelry or wooden accessories where finishes or materials are equivalent to color, the finish or material name can be submitted in the color attribute (e.g., 'Mahogany' vs. 'Stainless Steel' vs. 'Rose Gold').
• Limit the number of colors submitted to three values.
• If you're using XML, you must represent the '/' with &#47;

When to include: Required for all apparel items in feeds that target the US, UK, DE, FR, and JP. Recommended for other countries and product categories (might become required in the future).

Type	Text
Text/Tab delimited	Black
XML	<g:color>Black</g:color>

What not to include:

• Color values that contain numbers (e.g., '0 2 4 6 8')
• Color values that contain non-alphanumeric characters (e.g., '#fff000')
• Single letter color values (e.g., 'G') in Latin-based languages. Single letter color values in Chinese-Japanese-Korean languages (e.g., '红') are acceptable.
• Color values that reference the product or product image (e.g., 'see image')
• Descriptive values that are not actually valid color names (e.g. multicolor, various, variety, see image, N/A)
• Long color values exceeding 40 characters
• Long color values that are aggregates of several other colors (e.g., RedPinkBlue). Instead:
  • If you are trying to indicate multiple colors for a single item (not product variants), specify a primary color, optionally followed by at most two secondary colors, separated by a '/'. Here replace RedPinkBlue with Red/Pink/Blue
  • If you are trying to indicate multiple colors for multiple similar items (product variants), submit these as separate products each with the same item group ID and a different color value.

A note on invalid submissions:

• If you submit a color value that violates the syntactic rules above, we may reject the entire item at the time of feed submission.
• We regularly verify the correctness of the attributes you submit, including color. If the values provided are found to be incorrect, we may remove all of your items from Google Shopping.

Important:

• This attribute is required for all items in the ‘Apparel & Accessories’ category targeting the US, UK, DE, FR, and JP.
• For apparel variants submitted to the US, UK, DE, FR, and JP: Each different color or color combination must be submitted as its own item, in conjunction with the 'item group id'. Visit submitting apparel products for more details.
• Use consistent names of colors across variants of the same product, as well as across multiple products of the same category.
• The values you provide may be displayed to users, so provide values that they will be able to understand.

size [size] - Size of the item

Note: This attribute is also described in the section on Variant Products. Please do not include two versions of this attribute per item.
This indicates the size of a product. You may any provide values which are appropriate to your items. Examples for sizing values can be found in this article.
When to include: Required for all apparel items in the 'clothing' and 'shoes' product categories in feeds that target the US, UK, DE, FR, and JP. Recommended for other countries and product categories (might become required in the future).

Type	Text
Text/Tab delimited	XL
XML	<g:size>XL</g:size>

Important:

• This attribute is required for ‘clothing’ and ‘shoes’ sub-categories within the ‘apparel and accessories’ category targeting the US, UK, DE, FR, and JP.
• For apparel variants submitted to the US, UK, DE, FR, and JP: Each different size or size combination must be submitted as its own item, in conjunction with the 'item group id'. Visit submitting apparel products for more details.
• If sizes are complex, condense them into one value (e.g., “16/34 Tall” for neck size 16 inches, sleeve length 34 inches, and “Tall” fit).
• Use consistent size values across variants of the same product, as well as across multiple products of the same category. For example, within a group of t-shirts, use “S”, “M” , and “L” as sizes, not “S”, “Medium” , and “Lrg”.
• You may use the same ‘image’ URL value for size variants if specific images are not available but we recommend that the ‘link’ attribute leads to a page which specifies all the details about the variant item.
• The values you provide may be displayed to users, so provide values that they will be able to understand.

Submitting variant apparel products
If you have apparel products which vary by ‘size’, ‘color’, ‘pattern’, or ‘material’, you must include all the required attributes outlined in this section, and also follow the approach outlined below.

Product Variants

We define variants as a group of identical products that only differ by the attributes ‘color’, ‘material’, ‘pattern’, or ‘size’.
Variant-level information is required only for products in the “'Apparel & Accessories' category, and all related subcategories. Apparel variants are only required for feeds targeting the US, UK, DE, FR, and JP. For feeds targeting other countries, the attributes are recommended and may be required in the future.
If you don't include variant attributes in your feed, you shouldn't submit several variants of the same product as separate listings (ex: the same product in different colors, sizes). These items will be considered as duplicates which is against our Program Policies. You can find more details about submitting variant data below.
By submitting variant products, you will help shoppers find what they are looking for more easily by either enabling them to navigate between the different product variations on a details page or helping them discover additional colors, sizes, patterns etc. for a given product.
How to submit variant data

• Begin by submitting an item for each variant. For example, if you offer a t-shirt in 4 colors and 5 sizes, you need to submit 20 item variants.
• Include unique ‘id’ attribute values for each item variant, just like you would for all the other items in your feed.
• To identify these items as variants of one another, you are required to include the ‘item group id’ attribute (required for apparel items in the US, UK, DE, FR, and JP) and submit identical values of this attribute for each variant in a given group.
• Include variant attributes that indicate what makes each variant unique . You can use one or more of the following attributes: ‘color’, ‘material’, ‘pattern’, or ‘size’.
• You must only include single values for each of these variant attributes and the values of these attributes must be unique across all variants in the group. For example: If one item in a variant group includes the values “Blue” and “L” for the ‘color’ and ‘size’ attributes, all other items in the variant group must have values for ‘color’ and ‘size’, and each offer must have a different combination of values for those attributes.
• You only need to send us data for variant attributes if your product varies by that specific attribute. So, if your shirts are all made of cotton, there’s no need to send the “Material” attribute. However, if your shirts were available in three colors and three sizes, you would send us nine separate line items, varying by color and size.
• For apparel items, it is required that you provide a unique image of the specific variant if the item differs by ‘color’, ‘pattern’ or ‘material’. For variants that differ only by ‘size’, you may submit identical images. We recommend sending separate images for variant products in other categories as well. But at this time we will not enforce this as a requirement for any category other than Apparel & Accessories.
• We also recommend you submit URL links that pre-select the variant. For example, if a user selects the red dress in size 10, they should be taken to a landing page, where the “red” and “size 10” options are already selected. If this is not possible, you may include identical link attribute values for each of the variant items within a group.

For apparel variants in feeds targeting the US, UK, DE, FR, and JP:
For apparel products that vary by 'color', 'material', 'pattern', and/or 'size', it is required to include the ‘item group id’ for each variant, where each item has a unique combination of attribute values to describe each variant.
For all other countries and categories:
All variant attributes in this section are recommended for apparel- and non-apparel variants, but may become required in the future. However, If you choose to include ‘item group id’, it is required that you also include at least one of the following variant attributes: ‘color’, ‘size’, ‘pattern’, ‘material’ and following the corresponding variant guidelines.
Please see this article for more information on submitting variant apparel products.
Important: When naming your variant products, be sure to include the title common to all variant items. Visit the ‘title’ attribute for more details.
item group id [item_group_id] - Shared identifier for all variants of the same product

All items that are color/material/pattern/size variants of the same product must have the same item group id. If you have a “Parent SKU” that is shared by all variants of a product, you can provide that as the value for 'item group id'.
When to include:Required for variant apparel products in the US, UK, DE, FR, and JP. For other countries, if variant data is submitted with specific images then include the ‘item group ID’.

Type	Alphanumeric code
Text/Tab delimited	AB12345
XML	<g:item_group_id>AB12345</g:item_group_id>

Important:

• This attribute is required only for variant apparel products in the US, UK, DE, FR, and JP.
• The ‘Item group id’ attribute is different from the ‘ID’ attribute. An ‘Item group ID’ attribute will have common values for a group of variants whereas the ‘ID’ attribute should have unique values across a group of variants and for all other items, as well.
• The values provided for item group id must be unique between products, and only shared by items that are variants of the same product.
• If you send us an ‘item group id’ attribute, we will automatically look for variant attributes. Conversely, if you did send us ‘Item group id’, you should ensure you send us at least one variant attribute.

color [color] - Color of the item

Note: This attribute is also described in the section on Apparel Products. Please do not submit two versions of this attribute per item.
This defines the dominant color(s) for an item. When a single item has multiple colors, you can submit up to two additional values as accent colors:

• Combine the colors with ‘/’ in order of prominence (dominant color first, then at most two accent colors). For example, a black shoe with green accents should have a color value of 'Black / Green'. In the case of non-deformable goods in Apparel like jewelry or wooden accessories where finishes or materials are equivalent to color, the finish or material name can be submitted in the color attribute (e.g., 'Mahogany' vs. 'Stainless Steel' vs. 'Rose Gold').
• Limit the number of colors submitted to three values.
• If you're using XML, you must represent the '/' with &#47;

When to include: Required for all apparel items in feeds that target the US, UK, DE, FR, and JP. Recommended for other countries and product categories (might become required in the future).

Type	Text
Text/Tab delimited	Black
XML	<g:color>Black</g:color>

What not to include:

• Color values that contain numbers (e.g., '0 2 4 6 8')
• Color values that contain non-alphanumeric characters (e.g., '#fff000')
• Single letter color values (e.g., 'G') in Latin-based languages. Single letter color values in Chinese-Japanese-Korean languages (e.g., '红') are acceptable.
• Color values that reference the product or product image (e.g., 'see image')
• Descriptive values that are not actually valid color names (e.g. multicolor, various, variety, see image, N/A)
• Long color values exceeding 40 characters
• Long color values that are aggregates of several other colors (e.g., RedPinkBlue). Instead:
  • If you are trying to indicate multiple colors for a single item (not product variants), specify a primary color, optionally followed by at most two secondary colors, separated by a '/'. Here replace RedPinkBlue with Red/Pink/Blue
  • If you are trying to indicate multiple colors for multiple similar items (product variants), submit these as separate products each with the same item group ID and a different color value.

A note on invalid submissions:

• If you submit a color value that violates the syntactic rules above, we may reject the entire item at the time of feed submission.
• We regularly verify the correctness of the attributes you submit, including color. If the values provided are found to be incorrect, we may remove all of your items from Google Shopping.

Important:

• This attribute is required for all items in the ‘Apparel & Accessories’ category targeting the US, UK, DE, FR, and JP.
• For apparel variants submitted to the US, UK, DE, FR, and JP: Each different color or color combination must be submitted as its own item, in conjunction with the 'item group id'. Visit submitting apparel products for more details.
• Use consistent names of colors across variants of the same product, as well as across multiple products of the same category.
• The values you provide may be displayed to users, so provide values that they will be able to understand.

material [material] - Material of the item

The material or fabric that a product is made out of. For example, a high heel pump might have values of “Leather”, “Denim”, “Suede”, etc.
When to include: Required for all apparel variants that differ by material for feeds that target the US, UK, DE, FR, and JP. Recommended for other countries and product categories (might become required in the future).

Type	Text
Text/Tab delimited	Leather
XML	<g:material>Leather</g:material>

Important:

• For apparel variants submitted to the US, UK, DE, FR, and JP: Each item that differs in ‘material’ must be submitted as its own item, in conjunction with the 'item group id'.
• The values you provide may be displayed to users, so provide values that they will be able to understand.

pattern [pattern] - Pattern/Graphic of the item

The pattern or graphic print featured on a product. For example, a t-shirt might have a logo of a sports team and have pattern values of “Bears”, “Tigers”, etc. A dress might come in two prints, and have pattern values of “Polka Dot”, “Striped”, “Paisley”, etc.
As a rule of thumb, if a user can choose to select different patterns on the landing page of your product, include all variant items in the same item group. Otherwise, use separate item groups.
When to include: Required for all apparel variants that differ by pattern for feeds that target the US, UK, DE, FR, and JP. Recommended for other countries and product categories(might become required in the future).

Type	Text
Text/Tab delimited	Striped
XML	<g:pattern>Striped</g:pattern>

Important:

• For apparel variants submitted to the US, UK, DE, FR, and JP: Each item that differs in ‘pattern’ must be submitted as its own item, in conjunction with the 'item group id'.
• The values you provide may be displayed to users, so provide values that they will be able to understand.

size [size] - Size of the item

Note: This attribute is also described in the section on Variant Products. Please do not include two versions of this attribute per item.
This indicates the size of a product. You may any provide values which are appropriate to your items. Examples for sizing values can be found in this article.
When to include: Required for all apparel items in the 'clothing' and 'shoes' product categories in feeds that target the US, UK, DE, FR, and JP. Recommended for other countries and product categories.

Type	Text
Text/Tab delimited	XL
XML	<g:size>XL</g:size>

Important:

• The values you provide may be displayed to users, so provide values that they will be able to understand.
• For apparel variants submitted to the US, UK, DE, FR, and JP: Each different size or size combination must be submitted as its own item, in conjunction with the 'item group id'. Visit submitting apparel products for more details.
• If sizes are complex, condense them into one value (e.g., “16/34 Tall” for neck size 16 inches, sleeve length 34 inches, and “Tall” fit).
• Use consistent size values across variants of the same product, as well as across multiple products of the same category. For example, within a group of t-shirts, use “S”, “M” , and “L” as sizes, not “S”, “Medium” , and “Lrg”.
• You may use the same ‘image’ URL value for size variants if specific images are not available but we recommend that the ‘link’ attribute leads to a page which specifies all the details about the variant item.

Tax & Shipping

Taxes and shipping are an important part of the total cost of items. In fact, shipping cost is the most common reason for users abandoning their shopping choices. The 'tax' attribute is only applicable to feeds targeting the US - for all other countries except for Canada and India, value added tax (VAT) has to be included in the price. For Canada and India, it is required to submit prices that are exclusive of applicable taxes.
There are three ways to specify tax (US only) and shipping costs:

1. Settings in the Merchant Center: We offer various ways to specify tax and shipping costs if your pricing structure is relatively simple. For example, if you have one shipping price for all your items, or if you use a structure based on the weight of the packaged item (in that case, include the shipping weight attribute), our system can easily accommodate your tax and shipping information. Learn more.
2. Attributes in the feed: By using the tax and shipping attributes below, you can model more complex tax and shipping cost structures.
3. Combination of the two: You can specify default tax and shipping information in the Merchant Center, and then override those defaults for certain products by specifying the attributes below.

You are required to use one of the ways above to specify tax and shipping in the US, and only shipping information in the UK, Germany and France.
If you can’t provide accurate tax or shipping information, please provide estimates. For example, you can provide tax as well as shipping cost for each product and state individually by using the tax and shipping attributes. Please estimate tax and shipping costs such that the total cost in Google Shopping results is either correct or overestimated for the majority of users.
tax [tax]

This attribute is only available in the US. For feeds targeting Australia the price attribute should include GST.

This attribute is only available in the US. For feeds targeting France the price attribute should include VAT.

This attribute is only available in the US. For feeds targeting the United Kingdom the price attribute should include VAT.

This attribute is only available in the US. For feeds targeting Japan the price attribute should be tax inclusive.

This attribute is only available in the US. For feeds targeting the Netherlands the price attribute should be tax inclusive.

This attribute is only available in the US. For feeds targeting Italy the price attribute should include VAT.

This attribute is only available in the US. For feeds targeting Spain the price attribute should include VAT.

This attribute is only available in the US. For feeds targeting Brazil the price attribute should include VAT.

This attribute is only available in the US. For feeds targeting Germany the price attribute should include VAT.

This attribute is only available in the US. For feeds targeting Switzerland the price attribute should include VAT.

This attribute is only available in the US. For feeds targeting the Czech Republic the price attribute should include VAT.

This attribute is only available in the US. For feeds targeting Canada the price attribute should be exclusive of applicable taxes.

This attribute is only available in the US. For feeds targeting India the price attribute should be exclusive of applicable taxes.

This attribute is only available in the US. For feeds targeting Russia the price attribute should be tax inclusive.

This attribute is only available in the US.

The tax attribute is an item-level override for merchant-level tax settings as defined in your Google Merchant Center account. This attribute is only accepted in the US, if your feed targets a country outside of the US, please do not use this attribute.
This attribute has four parts:

• country (optional): The country an item is taxed in according to ISO 3166 standard (at the moment, it's always 'US')
• region (optional): The geographic region that a tax rate applies to. In the US, the two-letter state abbreviation, ZIP code, or ZIP code range using * wildcard.
• rate (required): The tax rate as a percent of the item price, i.e., a number as a percentage
• tax_ship (optional): Boolean value for whether you charge tax on shipping, y for yes or n for no - the default value is n

You can include this attribute up to 100 times to specify taxes for each state individually. If you decide to submit it explicitly for each state, make sure to cover every state (even the states where you do not charge tax). Note you can also specify that you charge no tax for a state.
When to include: For items in feeds which target the US, use this attribute if you want to specify taxes for a particular item, or you want to override the default tax costs specified in the Merchant Center settings. If you do not provide tax information using one of these methods for each item, your items won’t show up in Google Shopping results.Learn more.

Type	Each tax attribute group consists of four sub-attributes: Name Requirement Description Examples country required The country an item is taxed in (as an ISO 3166 country code) US region optional The geographic region that a tax rate applies to, e.g., in the US, the two-letter state abbreviation, ZIP code, or ZIP code range using * wildcard CA, 946* rate required The tax rate as a percent of the item price, i.e., number, as a percentage 5.00 tax_ship optional Boolean value for whether you charge tax on shipping, 'y' for yes or 'n' for no - the default value is 'n' y Note: You can submit multiple values for this attribute.
Text/Tab delimited	Separate each sub-attribute with a colon, and each tax attribute group with a comma. Do not enclose sub-attribute values within quotations. All colons, even for blank values, are required, i.e., three colons are required. ::0: US::0: US:CA:8.25:y,US:926*:8.75:y
XML	The four sub-attributes are country, region, rate, and tax ship. Include each tax attribute group as a separate attribute. <g:tax>    <g:country>US</g:country>    <g:region>MA</g:region>    <g:rate>5.00</g:rate>    <g:tax_ship>y</g:tax_ship> </g:tax>

shipping [shipping]

This attribute provides the specific shipping estimate for the product. Providing this attribute for an item overrides the global shipping settings you defined in your Google Merchant Center settings.
This attribute has four sub-attributes:

• country (required): The country to which an item will be delivered (as an ISO 3166 country code). The default value for this sub-attribute is your feed's target country.
• region (optional): The geographical region to which a delivery rate applies.
• service (optional): The name of the shipping method.
• price (required): Fixed delivery price.

You can include this attribute up to 100 times per item to specify shipping cost for individual regions. If you decide to submit it explicitly for each part of the country, make sure to cover each region or to specify if the item has free shipping.
Note: Please remember that you must only provide direct-to-consumer shipping rates, as per our Program Policies. Rates for other methods, like ship-to-store delivery, are not allowed.
When to include: If you want to specify shipping cost for this item, or you want to override the default shipping cost specified in the Merchant Center settings. Learn more.

Type	Each shipping attribute group consists of four sub-attributes: Name Requirement Description Examples country required The country an item will ship to (as an ISO 3166 country code). The default value for this attribute is your feed's target country AU region optional The geographic region that a shipping rate applies: in Australia, the three-letter state abbreviation NSW service optional The service class or delivery speed Ground price required Fixed shipping price (including VAT) 5.95 AUD Note: You can submit multiple values for this attribute.
Text/Tab delimited	Separate each sub-attribute with a colon, and each shipping attribute group with a comma. Do not enclose sub-attribute values within quotations. All colons, even for blank values, are required, i.e., three colons are required. AU:::5.95 AUD AU::Ground:5.95 AUD,AU:NSW:Express:7.95 AUD
XML	The four sub-attributes are country, region, service, and price. Include each shipping attribute group as a separate attribute. <g:shipping>    <g:country>AU</g:country>    <g:region>NSW</g:region>    <g:service>Ground</g:service>    <g:price>5.95 AUD</g:price> </g:shipping>

This attribute provides the specific shipping estimate for the product. Providing this attribute for an item overrides the global shipping settings you defined in your Google Merchant Center settings.
This attribute has four sub-attributes:

• country (required): The country to which an item will be delivered (as an ISO 3166 country code). The default value for this sub-attribute is your feed's target country.
• region (optional): The geographical region to which a delivery rate applies.
• service (optional): The name of the shipping method.
• price (required): Fixed delivery price.

You can include this attribute up to 100 times per item to specify shipping cost for individual regions. If you decide to submit it explicitly for each part of the country, make sure to cover each region or to specify if the item has free shipping.
Note: Please remember that you must only provide direct-to-consumer shipping rates, as per our Program Policies. Rates for other methods, like ship-to-store delivery, are not allowed.
When to include: If you want to specify shipping cost for this item, or you want to override the default shipping cost specified in the Merchant Center settings. Learn more.

Type	Each delivery attribute group consists of four sub-attributes: Name Requirement Description Examples country required The country to which an item will be delivered (as an ISO 3166 country code). The default value for this attribute is your feed's target country. JP region optional The geographical region to which a shipping rate applies. JIS X 0401 (the national local government code), defined in the county code. JP-23 service optional The service class or delivery speed Standard price required Fixed delivery price (including VAT) 1000 JPY Note: You can submit multiple values for this attribute.
Text/Tab-delimited	Separate each sub-attribute with a colon and each delivery attribute group with a comma. Do not enclose sub-attribute values within quotations. All colons, even for blank values, are required, i.e. three colons are required. JP:::1000 JPY JP:01::1000 JPY,JP:02::1200 JPY
XML	The three sub-attributes are country, service and price. Include each delivery attribute group as a separate attribute. <g:shipping>    <g:country>JP</g:country>    <g:region>JP-23</g:region>    <g:service>Standard</g:service>    <g:price>1000 JPY</g:price> </g:shipping>

This attribute provides the specific shipping estimate for the product. Providing this attribute for an item overrides the global shipping settings you defined in your Google Merchant Center settings.
This attribute has four sub-attributes:

• country (required): The country to which an item will be delivered (as an ISO 3166 country code). The default value for this sub-attribute is your feed's target country.
• region (optional): The geographical region to which a delivery rate applies.
• service (optional): The name of the shipping method.
• price (required): Fixed delivery price.

You can include this attribute up to 100 times per item to specify shipping cost for individual regions. If you decide to submit it explicitly for each part of the country, make sure to cover each region or to specify if the item has free shipping.
Note: Please remember that you must only provide direct-to-consumer shipping rates, as per our Program Policies. Rates for other methods, like ship-to-store delivery, are not allowed.
When to include: If you want to specify shipping cost for this item, or you want to override the default shipping cost specified in the Merchant Center settings. Learn more.

Type	Each delivery attribute group consists of three sub-attributes: Name Requirement Description Examples country required The country to which an item will be delivered (as an ISO 3166 country code). The default value for this attribute is your feed's target country. FR region Not used in the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Czech Republic, Brazil, Switzerland, Canada, India, Russia, or the Netherlands service optional The service class or delivery speed Standard price required Fixed delivery price (including VAT) 4.95 EUR Note: You can submit multiple values for this attribute.
Text/Tab-delimited	Separate each sub-attribute with a colon and each delivery attribute group with a comma. Do not enclose sub-attribute values within quotations. All colons, even for blank values, are required, i.e. three colons are required. FR:::4.95 EUR FR::Standard:4.95 EUR,FR::Express:10.00 EUR
XML	The three sub-attributes are country, service and price. Include each delivery attribute group as a separate attribute. <g:shipping>    <g:country>FR</g:country>    <g:service>Standard</g:service>    <g:price>4.95 EUR</g:price> </g:shipping>

Important:

• For feeds targeting the US, UK, Germany and France, it is required to provide shipping costs for every item, either by specifying the global default shipping costs in the Merchant Center settings, or by providing this attribute. If you do not provide shipping costs using one of these methods for each item, your items won’t show up in Google Shopping results.

This attribute provides the specific shipping estimate for the product. Providing this attribute for an item overrides the global shipping settings you defined in your Google Merchant Center settings.
This attribute has four sub-attributes:

• country (required): The country to which an item will be delivered (as an ISO 3166 country code). The default value for this sub-attribute is your feed's target country.
• region (optional): The geographical region to which a delivery rate applies.
• service (optional): The name of the shipping method.
• price (required): Fixed delivery price.

You can include this attribute up to 100 times per item to specify shipping cost for individual regions. If you decide to submit it explicitly for each part of the country, make sure to cover each region or to specify if the item has free shipping.
Note: Please remember that you must only provide direct-to-consumer shipping rates, as per our Program Policies. Rates for other methods, like ship-to-store delivery, are not allowed.
When to include: If you want to specify shipping cost for this item, or you want to override the default shipping cost specified in the Merchant Center settings. Learn more.

Type	Each delivery attribute group consists of three sub-attributes: Name Requirement Description Examples country required The country to which an item will be delivered (as an ISO 3166 country code). The default value for this attribute is your feed's target country. DE region Not used in the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Czech Republic, Brazil, Switzerland, Canada, India, Russia, or the Netherlands service optional The service class or delivery speed Standard price required Fixed delivery price (including VAT) 4.95 EUR Note: You can submit multiple values for this attribute.
Text/Tab-delimited	Separate each sub-attribute with a colon and each delivery attribute group with a comma. Do not enclose sub-attribute values within quotations. All colons, even for blank values, are required, i.e. three colons are required. DE:::4.95 EUR DE::Standard:4.95 EUR,DE::Express:10.00 EUR
XML	The three sub-attributes are country, service and price. Include each delivery attribute group as a separate attribute. <g:shipping>    <g:country>DE</g:country>    <g:service>Standard</g:service>    <g:price>4.95 EUR</g:price> </g:shipping>

Important:

• For feeds targeting the US, UK, Germany and France, it is required to provide shipping costs for every item, either by specifying the global default shipping costs in the Merchant Center settings, or by providing this attribute. If you do not provide shipping costs using one of these methods for each item, your items won’t show up in Google Shopping results.

This attribute provides the specific shipping estimate for the product. Providing this attribute for an item overrides the global shipping settings you defined in your Google Merchant Center settings.
This attribute has four sub-attributes:

• country (required): The country to which an item will be delivered (as an ISO 3166 country code). The default value for this sub-attribute is your feed's target country.
• region (optional): The geographical region to which a delivery rate applies.
• service (optional): The name of the shipping method.
• price (required): Fixed delivery price.

You can include this attribute up to 100 times per item to specify shipping cost for individual regions. If you decide to submit it explicitly for each part of the country, make sure to cover each region or to specify if the item has free shipping.
Note: Please remember that you must only provide direct-to-consumer shipping rates, as per our Program Policies. Rates for other methods, like ship-to-store delivery, are not allowed.
When to include: If you want to specify shipping cost for this item, or you want to override the default shipping cost specified in the Merchant Center settings. Learn more.

Type	Each delivery attribute group consists of three sub-attributes: Name Requirement Description Examples country required The country to which an item will be delivered (as an ISO 3166 country code). The default value for this attribute is your feed's target country. NL region Not used in the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Czech Republic, Brazil, Switzerland, Canada, India, Russia, or the Netherlands service optional The service class or delivery speed Standard price required Fixed delivery price (including VAT) 4.95 EUR Note: You can submit multiple values for this attribute.
Text/Tab-delimited	Separate each sub-attribute with a colon and each delivery attribute group with a comma. Do not enclose sub-attribute values within quotations. All colons, even for blank values, are required, i.e. three colons are required. NL:::4.95 EUR NL::Standard:4.95 EUR,NL::Express:10.00 EUR
XML	The three sub-attributes are country, service and price. Include each delivery attribute group as a separate attribute. <g:shipping>    <g:country>NL</g:country>    <g:service>Standard</g:service>    <g:price>4.95 EUR</g:price> </g:shipping>

This attribute provides the specific shipping estimate for the product. Providing this attribute for an item overrides the global shipping settings you defined in your Google Merchant Center settings.
This attribute has four sub-attributes:

• country (required): The country to which an item will be delivered (as an ISO 3166 country code). The default value for this sub-attribute is your feed's target country.
• region (optional): The geographical region to which a delivery rate applies.
• service (optional): The name of the shipping method.
• price (required): Fixed delivery price.

You can include this attribute up to 100 times per item to specify shipping cost for individual regions. If you decide to submit it explicitly for each part of the country, make sure to cover each region or to specify if the item has free shipping.
Note: Please remember that you must only provide direct-to-consumer shipping rates, as per our Program Policies. Rates for other methods, like ship-to-store delivery, are not allowed.
When to include: If you want to specify shipping cost for this item, or you want to override the default shipping cost specified in the Merchant Center settings. Learn more.

Type	Each delivery attribute group consists of three sub-attributes: Name Requirement Description Examples country required The country to which an item will be delivered (as an ISO 3166 country code). The default value for this attribute is your feed's target country. ES region Not used in the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Czech Republic, Brazil, Switzerland, Canada, India, Russia, or the Netherlands service optional The service class or delivery speed Standard price required Fixed delivery price (including VAT) 4.95 EUR Note: You can submit multiple values for this attribute.
Text/Tab-delimited	Separate each sub-attribute with a colon and each delivery attribute group with a comma. Do not enclose sub-attribute values within quotations. All colons, even for blank values, are required, i.e. three colons are required. ES:::4.95 EUR ES::Standard:4.95 EUR,ES::Express:10.00 EUR
XML	The three sub-attributes are country, service and price. Include each delivery attribute group as a separate attribute. <g:shipping>    <g:country>ES</g:country>    <g:service>Standard</g:service>    <g:price>4.95 EUR</g:price> </g:shipping>

This attribute provides the specific shipping estimate for the product. Providing this attribute for an item overrides the global shipping settings you defined in your Google Merchant Center settings.
This attribute has four sub-attributes:

• country (required): The country to which an item will be delivered (as an ISO 3166 country code). The default value for this sub-attribute is your feed's target country.
• region (optional): The geographical region to which a delivery rate applies.
• service (optional): The name of the shipping method.
• price (required): Fixed delivery price.

You can include this attribute up to 100 times per item to specify shipping cost for individual regions. If you decide to submit it explicitly for each part of the country, make sure to cover each region or to specify if the item has free shipping.
Note: Please remember that you must only provide direct-to-consumer shipping rates, as per our Program Policies. Rates for other methods, like ship-to-store delivery, are not allowed.
When to include: If you want to specify shipping cost for this item, or you want to override the default shipping cost specified in the Merchant Center settings. Learn more.

Type	Each delivery attribute group consists of three sub-attributes: Name Requirement Description Examples country required The country to which an item will be delivered (as an ISO 3166 country code). The default value for this attribute is your feed's target country. IT region Not used in the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Czech Republic, Brazil, Switzerland, Canada, India, Russia, or the Netherlands service optional The service class or delivery speed Standard price required Fixed delivery price (including VAT) 4.95 EUR Note: You can submit multiple values for this attribute.
Text/Tab-delimited	Separate each sub-attribute with a colon and each delivery attribute group with a comma. Do not enclose sub-attribute values within quotations. All colons, even for blank values, are required, i.e. three colons are required. IT:::4.95 EUR IT::Standard:4.95 EUR,IT::Express:10.00 EUR
XML	The three sub-attributes are country, service and price. Include each delivery attribute group as a separate attribute. <g:shipping>    <g:country>IT</g:country>    <g:service>Standard</g:service>    <g:price>4.95 EUR</g:price> </g:shipping>

This attribute provides the specific shipping estimate for the product. Providing this attribute for an item overrides the global shipping settings you defined in your Google Merchant Center settings.
This attribute has four sub-attributes:

• country (required): The country to which an item will be delivered (as an ISO 3166 country code). The default value for this sub-attribute is your feed's target country.
• region (optional): The geographical region to which a delivery rate applies.
• service (optional): The name of the shipping method.
• price (required): Fixed delivery price.

You can include this attribute up to 100 times per item to specify shipping cost for individual regions. If you decide to submit it explicitly for each part of the country, make sure to cover each region or to specify if the item has free shipping.
Note: Please remember that you must only provide direct-to-consumer shipping rates, as per our Program Policies. Rates for other methods, like ship-to-store delivery, are not allowed.
When to include: If you want to specify shipping cost for this item, or you want to override the default shipping cost specified in the Merchant Center settings. Learn more.

Type	Each delivery attribute group consists of three sub-attributes: Name Requirement Description Examples country required The country to which an item will be delivered (as an ISO 3166 country code). The default value for this attribute is your feed's target country. GB region Not used in the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Czech Republic, Brazil, Switzerland, Canada, India, Russia, or the Netherlands service optional The service class or delivery speed Courier price required Fixed delivery price (including VAT) 4.12 GBP Note: You can submit multiple values for this attribute.
Text/Tab-delimited	Separate each sub-attribute with a colon and each delivery attribute group with a comma. Do not enclose sub-attribute values within quotations. All colons, even for blank values, are required, i.e. three colons are required. GB:::4.12 GBP GB::Royal Mail:4.12 GBP,GB::Courier:10.00 GBP
XML	The three sub-attributes are country, service and price. Include each delivery attribute group as a separate attribute. <g:shipping>    <g:country>GB</g:country>    <g:service>Royal Mail</g:service>    <g:price>4.12 GBP</g:price> </g:shipping>

Important:

• For feeds targeting the US, UK, Germany and France, it is required to provide shipping costs for every item, either by specifying the global default shipping costs in the Merchant Center settings, or by providing this attribute. If you do not provide shipping costs using one of these methods for each item, your items won’t show up in Google Shopping results.

This attribute provides the specific shipping estimate for the product. Providing this attribute for an item overrides the global shipping settings you defined in your Google Merchant Center settings.
This attribute has four sub-attributes:

• country (required): The country to which an item will be delivered (as an ISO 3166 country code). The default value for this sub-attribute is your feed's target country.
• region (optional): The geographical region to which a delivery rate applies.
• service (optional): The name of the shipping method.
• price (required): Fixed delivery price.

You can include this attribute up to 100 times per item to specify shipping cost for individual regions. If you decide to submit it explicitly for each part of the country, make sure to cover each region or to specify if the item has free shipping.
Note: Please remember that you must only provide direct-to-consumer shipping rates, as per our Program Policies. Rates for other methods, like ship-to-store delivery, are not allowed.
When to include: If you want to specify shipping cost for this item, or you want to override the default shipping cost specified in the Merchant Center settings. Learn more.

Type	Each delivery attribute group consists of four sub-attributes: Name Requirement Description Examples country required The country to which an item will be delivered (as an ISO 3166 country code). The default value for this attribute is your feed's target country. BR region optional Not used in the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Czech Republic, Brazil, Switzerland, Canada, India, Russia, or the Netherlands service optional The service class or delivery speed Ground price required Fixed delivery price (including VAT) 11.42 BRL Note: You can submit multiple values for this attribute.
Text/Tab-delimited	Separate each sub-attribute with a colon and each delivery attribute group with a comma. Do not enclose sub-attribute values within quotations. All colons, even for blank values, are required, i.e. three colons are required. BR:::11.42 BRL BR::Standard:11.42 BRL,BR::Express:23.10 BRL
XML	The four sub-attributes are country, region, service and price. Include each delivery attribute group as a separate attribute. <g:shipping>    <g:country>BR</g:country>    <g:region>BR-SP</g:region>    <g:service>Standard</g:service>    <g:price>11.42 BRL</g:price> </g:shipping>

Important:

• For feeds targeting the US, UK, Germany and France, it is required to provide shipping costs for every item, either by specifying the global default shipping costs in the Merchant Center settings, or by providing this attribute. If you do not provide shipping costs using one of these methods for each item, your items won’t show up in Google Shopping results.

This attribute provides the specific shipping estimate for the product. Providing this attribute for an item overrides the global shipping settings you defined in your Google Merchant Center settings.
This attribute has four sub-attributes:

• country (required): The country to which an item will be delivered (as an ISO 3166 country code). The default value for this sub-attribute is your feed's target country.
• region (optional): The geographical region to which a delivery rate applies.
• service (optional): The name of the shipping method.
• price (required): Fixed delivery price.

You can include this attribute up to 100 times per item to specify shipping cost for individual regions. If you decide to submit it explicitly for each part of the country, make sure to cover each region or to specify if the item has free shipping.
Note: Please remember that you must only provide direct-to-consumer shipping rates, as per our Program Policies. Rates for other methods, like ship-to-store delivery, are not allowed.
When to include: If you want to specify shipping cost for this item, or you want to override the default shipping cost specified in the Merchant Center settings. Learn more.

Type	Each delivery attribute group consists of three sub-attributes: Name Requirement Description Examples country required The country to which an item will be delivered (as an ISO 3166 country code). The default value for this attribute is your feed's target country. CZ region optional Not used in the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Czech Republic, Brazil, Switzerland, Canada, India, Russia, or the Netherlands service optional The service class or delivery speed Standard price required Fixed delivery price (including VAT) 124.42 CZK Note: You can submit multiple values for this attribute.
Text/Tab-delimited	Separate each sub-attribute with a colon and each delivery attribute group with a comma. Do not enclose sub-attribute values within quotations. All colons, even for blank values, are required, i.e. three colons are required. CZ:::124.42 CZK CZ::Standard:124.42 CZK,CZ::Express:248.82 CZK
XML	The three sub-attributes are country, service and price. Include each delivery attribute group as a separate attribute. <g:shipping>    <g:country>CZ</g:country>    <g:region></g:region>    <g:service>Standard</g:service>    <g:price>124.42 CZK</g:price> </g:shipping>

This attribute provides the specific shipping estimate for the product. Providing this attribute for an item overrides the global shipping settings you defined in your Google Merchant Center settings.
This attribute has four sub-attributes:

• country (required): The country to which an item will be delivered (as an ISO 3166 country code). The default value for this sub-attribute is your feed's target country.
• region (optional): The geographical region to which a delivery rate applies.
• service (optional): The name of the shipping method.
• price (required): Fixed delivery price.

You can include this attribute up to 100 times per item to specify shipping cost for individual regions. If you decide to submit it explicitly for each part of the country, make sure to cover each region or to specify if the item has free shipping.
Note: Please remember that you must only provide direct-to-consumer shipping rates, as per our Program Policies. Rates for other methods, like ship-to-store delivery, are not allowed.
When to include: If you want to specify shipping cost for this item, or you want to override the default shipping cost specified in the Merchant Center settings. Learn more.

Type	Each delivery attribute group consists of three sub-attributes: Name Requirement Description Examples country required The country to which an item will be delivered (as an ISO 3166 country code). The default value for this attribute is your feed's target country. CH region optional Not used in the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Czech Republic, Brazil, Switzerland, Canada, India, Russia, or the Netherlands service optional The service class or delivery speed Standard price required Fixed delivery price (including VAT) 6.15 CHF Note: You can submit multiple values for this attribute.
Text/Tab-delimited	Separate each sub-attribute with a colon and each delivery attribute group with a comma. Do not enclose sub-attribute values within quotations. All colons, even for blank values, are required, i.e. three colons are required. CH:::6.15 CHF CH::Standard:6.15 CHF,CH::Express:12.90 CHF
XML	The three sub-attributes are country, service and price. Include each delivery attribute group as a separate attribute. <g:shipping>    <g:country>CH</g:country>    <g:service>Standard</g:service>    <g:price>6.15 CHF</g:price> </g:shipping>

This attribute provides the specific shipping estimate for the product. Providing this attribute for an item overrides the global shipping settings you defined in your Google Merchant Center settings.
This attribute has four sub-attributes:

• country (required): The country to which an item will be delivered (as an ISO 3166 country code). The default value for this sub-attribute is your feed's target country.
• region (optional): The geographical region to which a delivery rate applies.
• service (optional): The name of the shipping method.
• price (required): Fixed delivery price.

You can include this attribute up to 100 times per item to specify shipping cost for individual regions. If you decide to submit it explicitly for each part of the country, make sure to cover each region or to specify if the item has free shipping.
Note: Please remember that you must only provide direct-to-consumer shipping rates, as per our Program Policies. Rates for other methods, like ship-to-store delivery, are not allowed.
When to include: If you want to specify shipping cost for this item, or you want to override the default shipping cost specified in the Merchant Center settings. Learn more.

Type	Each delivery attribute group consists of three sub-attributes: Name Requirement Description Examples country required The country to which an item will be delivered (as an ISO 3166 country code). The default value for this attribute is your feed's target country. CA region optional Not used in the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Czech Republic, Brazil, Switzerland, Canada, India, Russia, or the Netherlands service optional The service class or delivery speed Standard price required Fixed delivery price (including VAT) 10.00 CAD Note: You can submit multiple values for this attribute.
Text/Tab-delimited	Separate each sub-attribute with a colon and each delivery attribute group with a comma. Do not enclose sub-attribute values within quotations. All colons, even for blank values, are required, i.e. three colons are required. CA:::10.00 CAD CA::Standard:10.00 CAD,CA::Express:15.25 CAD
XML	The three sub-attributes are country, service and price. Include each delivery attribute group as a separate attribute. <g:shipping>    <g:country>CA</g:country>    <g:service>Standard</g:service>    <g:price>10.00 CAD</g:price> </g:shipping>

This attribute provides the specific shipping estimate for the product. Providing this attribute for an item overrides the global shipping settings you defined in your Google Merchant Center settings.
This attribute has four sub-attributes:

• country (required): The country to which an item will be delivered (as an ISO 3166 country code). The default value for this sub-attribute is your feed's target country.
• region (optional): The geographical region to which a delivery rate applies.
• service (optional): The name of the shipping method.
• price (required): Fixed delivery price.

You can include this attribute up to 100 times per item to specify shipping cost for individual regions. If you decide to submit it explicitly for each part of the country, make sure to cover each region or to specify if the item has free shipping.
Note: Please remember that you must only provide direct-to-consumer shipping rates, as per our Program Policies. Rates for other methods, like ship-to-store delivery, are not allowed.
When to include: If you want to specify shipping cost for this item, or you want to override the default shipping cost specified in the Merchant Center settings. Learn more.

Type	Each delivery attribute group consists of three sub-attributes: Name Requirement Description Examples country required The country to which an item will be delivered (as an ISO 3166 country code). The default value for this attribute is your feed's target country. IN region optional Not used in the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Czech Republic, Brazil, Switzerland, Canada, India, Russia, or the Netherlands service optional The service class or delivery speed Standard price required Fixed delivery price (including VAT) 10.00 INR Note: You can submit multiple values for this attribute.
Text/Tab-delimited	Separate each sub-attribute with a colon and each delivery attribute group with a comma. Do not enclose sub-attribute values within quotations. All colons, even for blank values, are required, i.e. three colons are required. IN:::10.00 INR IN::Standard:10.00 INR,IN::Express:15.25 INR
XML	The three sub-attributes are country, service and price. Include each delivery attribute group as a separate attribute. <g:shipping>    <g:country>IN</g:country>    <g:service>Standard</g:service>    <g:price>10.00 INR</g:price> </g:shipping>

This attribute provides the specific shipping estimate for the product. Providing this attribute for an item overrides the global shipping settings you defined in your Google Merchant Center settings.
This attribute has four sub-attributes:

• country (required): The country to which an item will be delivered (as an ISO 3166 country code). The default value for this sub-attribute is your feed's target country.
• region (optional): The geographical region to which a delivery rate applies.
• service (optional): The name of the shipping method.
• price (required): Fixed delivery price.

You can include this attribute up to 100 times per item to specify shipping cost for individual regions. If you decide to submit it explicitly for each part of the country, make sure to cover each region or to specify if the item has free shipping.
Note: Please remember that you must only provide direct-to-consumer shipping rates, as per our Program Policies. Rates for other methods, like ship-to-store delivery, are not allowed.
When to include: If you want to specify shipping cost for this item, or you want to override the default shipping cost specified in the Merchant Center settings. Learn more.

Type	Each delivery attribute group consists of three sub-attributes: Name Requirement Description Examples country required The country to which an item will be delivered (as an ISO 3166 country code). The default value for this attribute is your feed's target country. RU region Not used in the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Czech Republic, Brazil, Switzerland, Canada, India, Russia, or the Netherlands service optional The service class or delivery speed Standard price required Fixed delivery price (including VAT) 10.00 RUB Note: You can submit multiple values for this attribute.
Text/Tab-delimited	Separate each sub-attribute with a colon and each delivery attribute group with a comma. Do not enclose sub-attribute values within quotations. All colons, even for blank values, are required, i.e. three colons are required. RU:::10.00 RUB RU::Standard:10.00 RUB,RU::Express:15.25 RUB
XML	The three sub-attributes are country, service and price. Include each delivery attribute group as a separate attribute. <g:shipping>    <g:country>RU</g:country>    <g:service>Standard</g:service>    <g:price>10.00 RUB</g:price> </g:shipping>

This attribute provides the specific shipping estimate for the product. Providing this attribute for an item overrides the global shipping settings you defined in your Google Merchant Center settings.
This attribute has four sub-attributes:

• country (required): The country to which an item will be delivered (as an ISO 3166 country code). The default value for this sub-attribute is your feed's target country.
• region (optional): The geographical region to which a delivery rate applies.
• service (optional): The name of the shipping method.
• price (required): Fixed delivery price.

You can include this attribute up to 100 times per item to specify shipping cost for individual regions. If you decide to submit it explicitly for each part of the country, make sure to cover each region or to specify if the item has free shipping.
Note: Please remember that you must only provide direct-to-consumer shipping rates, as per our Program Policies. Rates for other methods, like ship-to-store delivery, are not allowed.
When to include: If you want to specify shipping cost for this item, or you want to override the default shipping cost specified in the Merchant Center settings. Learn more.

Type	Each delivery attribute group consists of four sub-attributes: Name Requirement Description Examples country required The country to which an item will be delivered (as an ISO 3166 country code). The default value for this attribute is your feed's target country. US region optional The geographical region to which a delivery rate applies: In the US the two-letter state abbreviation, ZIP code or ZIP code range, using * wildcard. MA service optional The service class or delivery speed Ground price required Fixed delivery price (including VAT) 6.49 USD Note: You can submit multiple values for this attribute.
Text/Tab-delimited	Separate each sub-attribute with a colon and each delivery attribute group with a comma. Do not enclose sub-attribute values within quotations. All colons, even for blank values, are required, i.e. three colons are required. US:::6.49 USD US:024*:Ground:6.49 USD,US:MA:Express:13.12 USD
XML	The four sub-attributes are country, region, service and price. Include each delivery attribute group as a separate attribute. <g:shipping>    <g:country>US</g:country>    <g:region>MA</g:region>    <g:service>Ground</g:service>    <g:price>6.49 USD</g:price> </g:shipping>

More detailed examples for the US

Tab-delimited examples:

• Nationwide shipping rate:
  US::ground:8.95 USD
  
• State-level shipping rate:
  US:CA:ground:7.95 USD
  
• Zipcode range shipping rate:
  US:943*:ground:6.95 USD
  
• Zipcode-level shipping rate:
  US:94343:ground:5.95 USD
  

XML examples:

• Nationwide shipping rate:
  
  <g:shipping>
    <g:country>US</g:country>
    <g:service>Ground</g:service>
    <g:price>8.95 USD</g:price>
</g:shipping>
• State-level shipping rate:
  
  <g:shipping>
    <g:country>US</g:country>
    <g:region>CA</g:region>
    <g:service>Ground</g:service>
    <g:price>7.95 USD</g:price>
</g:shipping>
• Zipcode range shipping rate:
  
  <g:shipping>
    <g:country>US</g:country>
    <g:region>943*</g:region>
    <g:service>Ground</g:service>
    <g:price>6.95 USD</g:price>
</g:shipping>
• Zipcode-level shipping rate:
  
  <g:shipping>
    <g:country>US</g:country>
    <g:region>94343</g:region>
    <g:service>Ground</g:service>
    <g:price>5.95 USD</g:price>
</g:shipping>

Important:

• For feeds targeting the US, UK, Germany and France, it is required to provide shipping costs for every item, either by specifying the global default shipping costs in the Merchant Center settings, or by providing this attribute. If you do not provide shipping costs using one of these methods for each item, your items won’t show up in Google Shopping results.

shipping weight [shipping_weight] - Weight of the item for shipping

This is the weight of the product used to calculate the shipping cost of the item. If you have specified a global shipping rule that is dependent on shipping weight, this attribute will be used to calculate the shipping cost of the item automatically.
When to include: Required if you have set up a shipping rule in the Merchant Center that is based on weight.

Type	We accept only the following units of weight: lb, oz, g, kg.
Text/Tab delimited	3 kg
XML	<g:shipping_weight>3 kg</g:shipping_weight>

Important:

• The weight must include a number and a unit of weight. We accept the following units: lb, oz, g, kg.

Merchant-Defined Multipacks

Multipacks are packages that include several identical products to create a larger unit of sale, submitted as a single item. Merchant-defined multipacks are custom groups of identical products submitted as a single unit of sale.
multipack [multipack] - Submit merchant-defined multipacks

The ‘multipack’ attribute indicates the number of identical products in a merchant-defined multipack.
When to include: Required if applicable to submit merchant-defined multipacks for all target countries.

Type	Integer, greater than 1 (multipacks cannot contain 1 item)
Text/Tab delimited	6
XML	<g:multipack>6</g:multipack>

Important:

• The price attribute must contain the total price for the multipack.
• The main image of the multipack must display the base product: the single manufacturer-defined product that is the base item of the multipack (i.e., one unit of the custom multipack).
• The unique product identifiers of the base product should be submitted according to the Unique Product Identifier Rules.
• This attribute should NOT be used to indicate the number of items in a manufacturer-defined multipack.
• When the base product of a merchant-defined multipack is a manufacturer-defined multipack, the attribute should indicate the number of manufacturer-defined multipacks being bundled, and the unique product identifiers for the manufacturer-defined multipack should be provided.
• Images, descriptions, and all other attributes submitted for multipacks must be in alignment with the our feed specifications and the Google Shopping Policies.

Example of a merchant-defined multipack submission:
A custom multipack containing 6 bars of soap: the ‘multipack’ attribute should be 6, the unique product identifiers for a single bar of soap should be provided according to the Unique Product Identifier Rules, and we recommend that the description should include "multipack" and include the quantity (6).

Adult Products

Google cares about the family status of the product listings you submit in order to make sure that appropriate content is shown to an appropriate audience. You should use the ‘adult’ attribute to indicate that individual items will be considered “adult” or “non-family safe”.
For more information on our “adult” or "non-family safe” status please refer to our Family Status Policy.
adult [adult]

The adult status assigned to your product listings through the ‘adult’ attribute affects where product listings can show. For example, "adult" or "non-family safe" product listings aren't allowed to be shown in certain countries or to a certain audience.
If your website generally targets an adult audience and contains adult-oriented content with or without nudity, sexually explicit content or language, you are responsible for labeling your site as intended for an adult audience by ticking the checkbox “This site contains ‘non-family safe’ or adult products as defined by our policy” in the “General settings” section of the Merchant Center account. Where you fail to do so, Merchant Center accounts containing product listings considered as “non-family safe” will be suspended.
If your website doesn’t generally target an adult audience but you are promoting some product listings containing adult oriented content with or without nudity, sexually explicit content or language, such product listings should be submitted with an ‘adult’ attribute value set to TRUE. This will indicate that the correlating product listing contains “adult” or “non-family-safe” content as defined by our policy. Where you fail to do so, your account will be considered as “adult” or “non-family-safe” and disapproved and your items will not appear on Google Shopping.
When to include: If you are submitting items that are considered “adult” or non-family safe and would like to label them at the item level for all target countries.

Type	Boolean: TRUE or FALSE
Text/Tab delimited	TRUE
XML	<g:adult>TRUE</g:adult>

Important:

• This attribute is a supplement to the option in the General settings tab of Merchant Center to select that your account includes data feeds that may contain product listing that will be considered "non-family safe." By using the ‘adult’ attribute, you are acknowledging that individual items, rather than your entire website, may be “non-family safe.”
• You need to ensure that the landing page being accessed from a family safe product listing is completely free from adult content.
• If the checkbox “This site contains ‘non-family safe’ or adult products as defined by our policy” in the “General settings” section of the Merchant Center account is not checked and the value of the ‘adult’ attribute is left blank or the attribute is not provided, we will assume that the value of adult is FALSE.

AdWords attributes

These attributes help you to organize your AdWords campaigns and track the traffic to your website.

adwords grouping [adwords_grouping]

Used to group products in an arbitrary way. It can be used for Product Filters to limit a campaign to a group of products, or Product Targets to bid differently for a group of products. This is a required field if the advertiser wants to bid differently to different subsets of products in the CPC or CPA % version. It can only hold one value.

Type	string
Text/Tab delimited	comforters
XML	<g:adwords_grouping>comforters</g:adwords_grouping>

adwords labels [adwords_labels]

Very similar to adwords_grouping, but it will only only work on CPC. It can hold multiple values, allowing a product to be tagged with multiple labels.

Type	string
Text/Tab delimited	clothing, shoes
XML	<g:adwords_labels>clothing</g:adwords_labels>, <g:adwords_labels>shoes</g:adwords_labels>

adwords redirect [adwords_redirect]

Allows advertisers to specify a separate URL that can be used to track traffic coming from Google Shopping. If this attribute is provided, you must make sure that the URL provided through 'adwords redirect' will redirect to the same website as given in the link attribute.

Type	URL
Text/Tab delimited	http://www.merchant.com/product.html
XML	<g:adwords_redirect>http://www.merchant.com/product.html</g:adwords_redirect>

Unit Prices (EU Countries and Switzerland Only)

These attributes allow you to submit the unit pricing for your applicable products in feeds targeting European Union countries and Switzerland.
Please note that you should not submit both unit prices and energy labels for an item.
unit pricing measure [unit_pricing_measure]

The ‘unit pricing measure’ attribute allows you to specify unit pricing information for an item. This attribute defines the measure and dimension of an item, e.g. 135ml or 55g. The unit price refers to the volume, weight, area, or length of the product without any packaging or the net drained weight of the product (in the case of food).
Unit pricing attributes are recommended only for specific products that require unit pricing to comply with local, state, or federal laws applicable to the country your product listings are targeting. For example, if your product listings are targeting any of the EU member states or Switzerland please consider the legal requirements on this matter defined in the national implementation acts of the EU directive 98/6/EC and any other applicable local law.
When to include: Recommended if applicable for items in feeds targeting the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, and the Netherlands. It is also recommended to submit the ‘unit pricing base measure’ attribute in conjunction with ‘unit pricing measure’.

Type	Numerical value + unit. Weight (mg, g, kg), volume (ml, cl, l, cbm), length (cm, m), and area (sqm) are supported.
Text/Tab delimited	225g
XML	<g:unit_pricing_measure>225g</g:unit_pricing_measure>

Important:

• The price attribute or the sales price attribute (if the sale is active) will be used in order to calculate the unit price of this item (e.g. if price is 3 EUR, ‘unit pricing measure’ is 150ml, and ‘unit pricing base measure’ is 100ml the unit price would be 2 EUR / 100ml).
• The unit price will be rounded to the nearest amount allowed in the local currency and values exactly half-way between two values will be rounded up (e.g. 0.5 EUR-cent will be rounded up to 1 EUR-cent)
• The numerical value has to be a positive number. Examples: 1.5kg, 150ml, 3sqm

unit pricing base measure [unit_pricing_base_measure]

The ‘unit pricing base measure’ attribute specifies your preference of the denominator of the unit price (e.g. 100ml). You should only submit this attribute if you also submit ‘unit pricing measure’.
You should only submit unit pricing attributes for specific products that require unit pricing to comply with local, state, or federal laws applicable to the country your product listings are targeting. For example, if your product listings are targeting any of the EU member states or Switzerland please consider the legal requirements on this matter defined in the national implementation acts of the EU directive 98/6/EC and any other applicable local law.
When to include: Recommended if applicable for items in feeds targeting Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, and the Netherlands. You should only submit this attribute if you also submit ‘unit pricing measure’, but it is not required to show unit prices.

Type	Integer value + unit. Weight (mg, g, kg), volume (ml, cl, l, cbm), length (cm, m), and area (sqm) are supported.
Text/Tab delimited	100g
XML	<g:unit_pricing_base_measure>100g</g:unit_pricing_base_measure>

Important:

• The integer value has to be 1, 10, or 100. Additionally, 75cl, 50kg, and 1000kg are accepted.
• ‘Unit pricing measure’ and ‘unit pricing base measure’ have to use the same type of measurement (e.g. you cannot use weight units for one and volume units for the other one).
• A unit without a integer value is not accepted.
• Google might show a different base measure in order to make the unit prices on a page more comparable.

Energy Labels (EU Countries and Switzerland Only)

This attribute allows you to submit the energy label for your applicable products in feeds targeting European Union countries and Switzerland.
Please note that you should not submit both unit prices and energy labels for an item.
energy efficiency class [energy_efficiency_class]

The 'energy efficiency class' attribute allows you to specify the energy efficiency class for certain product categories as defined in EU directive 2010/30/EU.
You should only submit the energy efficiency class attribute for specific products that require it to comply with local, state, or federal laws applicable to the country your product listings are targeting. For example, if your product listings target any of the EU member states or Switzerland, please consider the legal requirements on this matter defined in the national implementation acts of the EU directive 2010/30/EU and any other applicable local law.
When to include: Recommended if applicable for items in feeds targeting Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, and the Netherlands.

Type	Enumeration: G, F, E, D, C, B, A, A+, A++, A+++
Text/Tab delimited	A+
XML	<g:energy_efficiency_class>A+</g:energy_efficiency_class>

Important:

• Products that might require this attribute include but are not limited to: refrigerators, freezers, combined washer-driers, wine-storage appliances, washing machines, tumble dryers, dishwashers, ovens, water heaters and hot water storage appliances, air conditioners, electrical lamps and luminaires, and televisions.
• For conventional water heaters, solar water heaters, heat pump water heaters, and packages of water heater and solar device the water heating energy efficiency class should be provided.
• For reversible air conditioners, the energy efficiency class for heating (average season) should be provided.

Nearby Stores

If you are a multi-channel retailer with physical presence, Google Shopping can show your store locations next to your products. If the user is looking at one of your products and has specified a location close to one of your stores, Google Shopping will show your store(s) on a map. We will display the phone number in case the user wants to check availability of the item, and the user can get driving directions to find your store easily.
To enable this feature, you need to submit your store locations through Google Places. Learn more. Once you have provided your store locations, you may specify if an item is only available for purchase online and not in your physical store by providing the attribute below.
online only [online_only] - Whether an item is available for purchase only online

This attribute is only available for feeds targeting countries where Nearby Stores are available (Learn more).

This is used to indicate if you have a product that is only available online and not in your physical store.
There are only two accepted values:

• 'y': if any item is not available in your store to purchase.
• 'n': if a customer can buy the posted item at your physical location - this is the default assumption.

When to include: Required if you've submitted your store locations, and you have items that you sell online but not in your physical stores.

Type	Boolean: y or n
Text/Tab delimited	y
XML	<g:online_only>y</g:online_only>

This is used to indicate if you have a product that is only available online and not in your physical store.
There are only two accepted values:

• 'y': if any item is not available in your store to purchase.
• 'n': if a customer can buy the posted item at your physical location - this is the default assumption.

When to include: Required if you've submitted your store locations, and you have items that you sell online but not in your physical stores.

Type	Boolean: y or n
Text/Tab delimited	y
XML	<g:online_only>y</g:online_only>

Loyalty Points (Japan Only)

The attribute below only applies to feeds which target Japan. It lets you specify how many and what type of loyalty points the customer receives when buying a product.
loyalty points [loyalty_points] - Loyalty points that users receive after purchasing the item

This attribute is only available for feeds targeting Japan.

This attribute is only available for feeds targeting Japan.

This attribute is only available for feeds targeting Japan.

This attribute is only available for feeds targeting Japan.

This attribute is only available for feeds targeting Japan.

This attribute is only available for feeds targeting Japan.

This attribute is only available for feeds targeting Japan.

This attribute is only available for feeds targeting Japan.

This attribute is only available for feeds targeting Japan.

This attribute is only available for feeds targeting Japan.

This attribute is only available for feeds targeting Japan.

This attribute is only available for feeds targeting Japan.

This attribute is only available for feeds targeting Japan.

This attribute is only available for feeds targeting Japan.

This attribute is only available for feeds targeting Japan.

We only support loyalty points that have specific monetary value. For example, we don’t support mileage, loyalty points that are only exchangeable with goods, etc. Loyalty points have to be issued by you. For example, points associated with credit cards and electronic money are not supported. We do support loyalty program platforms that support cross-industry points, as long as you issue the points.
When to include: Recommended for items targeting Japan for which the user gets loyalty points.
This attribute has three parts:

• name (optional): Name of loyalty points program. It is recommended to limit the name to 12 full-width characters or 24 roman characters.
• points value (required): The retailer’s loyalty points in absolute value.
• ratio (optional): The ratio of a point when converted to currency. Google assumes currency based on Merchant Center settings. If ratio is left out, it defaults to 1.0.

Type	Each loyalty point program group consists of three sub-attributes: Name Requirement Description Examples Name (text) Optional Name of loyalty points program. It is recommended to limit the name to 12 full-width characters or 24 roman characters. Program A Points value (number) Required The retailer’s loyalty points in absolute value. 100 Ratio (number) Optional The ratio of a point when converted to currency. Google assumes currency based on Merchant Center settings. If ratio is left out, it defaults to 1.0. 1.5
Text/Tab-delimited	Separate each sub-attribute with a colon. Do not enclose sub-attribute values within quotations. All colons, even for blank values, are required, i.e. three colons are required. You should include attributes in the order of priority. Program A:100:1.0 This means 100 points where 1 point equals 1.0 currency unit. Program B:100:0.5 This means 100 points where 1 point equals 0.5 currency units. Program C:100: Leaving 'ratio' blank, which defaults to 1.0 :100: Simplest form
XML	The three sub-attributes are name, points, and ratio. Include each loyalty points attribute group as a separate attribute. <g:loyalty_points>    <g:name>Program A</g:name>    <g:points_value>100</g:points_value>    <g:ratio>1.0</g:ratio> </g:loyalty_points>

Multiple Installments (Brazil Only)

The attribute below only applies to feeds which target Brazil. It lets you specify an additional option for users to pay in multiple installments.
installment [installment] - Number and amount of installments to pay for an item.

This attribute is only available for feeds targeting Brazil.

This attribute is only available for feeds targeting Brazil.

This attribute is only available for feeds targeting Brazil.

This attribute is only available for feeds targeting Brazil.

This attribute is only available for feeds targeting Brazil.

This attribute is only available for feeds targeting Brazil.

This attribute is only available for feeds targeting Brazil.

This attribute is only available for feeds targeting Brazil.

This attribute is only available for feeds targeting Brazil.

This attribute is only available for feeds targeting Brazil.

This attribute is only available for feeds targeting Brazil.

This attribute is only available for feeds targeting Brazil.

This attribute is only available for feeds targeting Brazil.

This attribute is only available for feeds targeting Brazil.

This attribute is only available for feeds targeting Brazil.

If you offer multiple options to pay in installments, you can choose which one to include. The option needs to be visible on the landing page.
When to include: For items submitted to Brazil that can also be paid in multiple installments.
This attribute has two parts:

• Months (required): The number of installments the buyer has to pay.
• Amount (required): The amount the buyer has to pay per month. Include the currency.

Type	Each installment group consists of two sub-attributes: Name Requirement Description Examples Months (number) Required The number of installments the buyer has to pay. 6 Amount (number) Required The amount the buyer has to pay per month. Include the currency. 50 BRL
Text/Tab-delimited	Separate each sub-attribute with a colon. Do not enclose sub-attribute values within quotations. 6:50 BRL This means payments for 6 months at 50 BRL per month.
XML	The two sub-attributes are months and amount. Include each installments attribute group as a separate attribute. <g:installment>    <g:months>6</g:months>    <g:amount>50 BRL</g:amount> </g:installment>

Important:

• The installment option you include must not require the possession of a loyalty card.

Additional Attributes

The two attributes below allow you to control the destination of your items, and the period during which your items are valid.
excluded destination [excluded_destination] - Excluded destinations of your items

By default, your items will also appear in Google Commerce Search if you’re submitting to Google Shopping. Learn more.
When to include: If you are using either Google Shopping or Commerce Search and you would like to exclude the item from either of these destinations.

Format	Two predefined values accepted: Shopping Commerce Search
Text/Tab delimited	Commerce Search
XML	<g:excluded_destination>Commerce Search Search</g:excluded_destination>

expiration date [expiration_date] - Date that an item will expire

This is the date that an item listing will expire. If you do not provide this attribute, items will expire and no longer appear in Google Shopping results after 30 days. You cannot use this attribute to extend the expiration period to longer than 30 days.
When to include: If you would like an item to expire earlier than 30 days from the upload date of the feed.

Type	ISO 8601 format: YYYY-MM-DD. Note are GMT
Text/Tab delimited	2004-08-19
XML	<g:expiration_date>2004-08-19</g:expiration_date>

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