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Google Product Category Updated

Jul 23, 2011

We have updated all Google feeds (Advanced and Basic, for all e-commerce platforms) as follows:

  1. The 'product_type' field has been renamed to 'google_product_category'.
  2. The 'c:store_department:string' field has been renamed to 'product_type'.

These changes were made to comply with Google's new requirements.

Google Product Category
Starting Sep. 22, Google will require you to provide a 'google_product_category' for every item in one of the following categories:
  • Apparel & Accessories > Clothing
  • Apparel & Accessories > Shoes
  • Apparel & Accessories (Note that submitting this value for clothing and shoes is not acceptable.)
  • Media > Books
  • Media > DVDs & Movies
  • Media > Music
  • Software > Video Game Software
For all other categories, it is strongly recommended. You can only provide values from Google's official taxonomy in this field. See configuring the google_product_category field for more information
Product Type
'product_type' is a recommended field and you can provide your own, merchant-specific category in this field. It is pre-configured to the 'Path' field from your Yahoo Store. For any items without a Path, you can set a 'DefaultPath' by going to "Manage Feed > Define Fields > Edit product_type".
Google Feed Analysis
Go to "Manage Feed > Google Feed Analysis" to see which items are missing 'google_product_category' or 'product_type' information in your data feed.

We will send announcements for more changes in the coming weeks. This and other useful announcements will be posted in our Facebook and Twitter pages.

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