Google product feed setup help

[19ninety]

Any reputable professionals out there who can help get my product feed setup? I've tried a few tutorials and so on but not having any luck resolving the remaining issues.
Using Prestashop with Business Tech's Google Merchant Center v4.5.2

 

[wayzgoose]

If you click on the number next to each failure it will show the products affected., Most of those are self-explanatory. Looks like the feed itself is working ok.

 

[19ninety]

Yes the feed in coming in just fine, I've reduced some of the errors, but I cant figure out how to fix the remaining ones in the image. Some I can't work out how to solve, like 'product type' or two of three references need to be present, but some products don't have a UPC (I've got EAN's for the majority). There isn't any where to enter MPN's or the Brand in Prestashop that I can see.

 

[wayzgoose]

If you look at your products that are ok and see what was in the feed for them, it might point you in the right direction for the problem products. Sorry, I don't know Prestashop.

 

[wayzgoose]

While we're on the subject, does anyone know what I need to look for to fix:

Encoding problem (double UTF8 encoding) in attribute: description

 

[brianlee1982]

Just pass by here and when I setup my webstore, UniqMatcha and TieGrandmaster, I faced the same thing. Hope can help u a little.

If you don't have UPC/MPN/GTIN/Brand, set identifier_exists = false. Do not fill in any of it.

There is a Google forum that assist u. I got some answers from there.

For policy violation: Make sure ur website is conforming to google standards - Your contacts with address, Terms/Policy, have SSL if you are doing a transaction based web, return policy.

For product type, try google for Google Product Feed for better understanding. There is a forum that handle this kind of issue. I can't post the link due to newbie here. Hope that helps.

 

[APWTrading]

Given that the Business Tech's Google Merchant Center v4.5.2 is a paid for module i would suggest kicking this back to their technical support in the first instance and seeing if they can shed any light on it

 

[19ninety]

Am in the process of doing that, pretty time consuming getting this sorted, so hoped to find a easier way to sort it out. Will post back how I get on anyway.

 

[APWTrading]

I would suggest it is probably a configuration issue but see what their guys say first

 

[19ninety]

Oh I know it will be, but I can't even explain how complicated this is to set up. I can noramally fix most things myself, but this is a tough one!

 

[brianlee1982]

I understand the pain of this. I went through 2 weeks to solve it by asking in the technical google merchant forums. If yours is a paid version, ur techincal support should be able to help u. Good luck.

 

[19ninety]

5 minute fix! Everything Prestashop side was right but there was something up with the feed settings in Merchant Centre. All up and running now with a nice orange chart of products pending, just waiting for Google to finish the feed crawl and see from there.... 3 automatic disapprovals though for products, need to contact Google as I can't find any info in Merchant Centre about why they have been, only info telling me I should try to fix it.
Been able to go through and tidy up a few bits and bobs in the outgoing feed now too. Getting there!

 

[APWTrading]

If you wait until google finishes processing the crawl you should be able to access the errors in the merchant centre, then its just a case of working your way through them

 

[19ninety]

OK to there are now a load of products in the green! Next question is .... how come they don't show up in Google searches even though they are active? Does this also take a couple of days to start happening?

 

[APWTrading]

You will need to fund you adds if you to get anywhere

First step is to link your google merchant account to you google AdWords account

 

[19ninety]

Ah yes, and link accounts, all done and now working !! Fingers crossed for some sales!

 

[APWTrading]

Make sure you keep an eye on your spend, and let us know how you get on

 

[19ninety]

Yes there was an option to cap the spend when setting up the campaign, will update here on how it goes.

 

[wayzgoose]

I would suggest keeping your starting bid really low until you see what shows and what position it is.

 

[19ninety]

Have done just to see how it goes.

 

[wayzgoose]

How is the progress going with the shopping feed?

 

[19ninety]

Good so far, £3.90 in paid Adwords clicks has given me 5 sales, doesn't sound much I know but I'm only a small operation and that is a decent sales and profit increase. Currently have £0.10 per click and capped at £1.50 per day.
Looking longer term on this, for some of my products where I don't rank on the 1st or second page in Google, I now have an Ad placed right there at the top of the front page. So long term even if I don't get heaps of sales from this right now, I am getting good exposure which will eventually lead to more traffic and so more sales ... but that's looking ahead months.

Not sure what's going on this week, Merchant Centre has started giving this "Temporary item disapprovals due to incorrect prices" error, but when I look in to this it seems Google has started using the pre-VAT price from my website and is reading inc-VAT price from my feed. I noticed today one of the products on the list yesterday isn't there today, so I'm going to check the list again tomorrow to see if this is just a temporary thing...

 

[wayzgoose]

Can't complain at that - a 13% sale rate. If you can keep that going long term you'll be doing good !

 

[19ninety]

Here's hoping

 

[HBC]

About the VAT/no VAT thing, i've had that also, be careful, Google crawls from the US *and* from Europe, so if you have any automatic settings that adjust prices according to a detected IP etc then Google is not intelligent enough to know. You just have to detect google and make sure the price displayed is consistent. Took me days to figure out.

 

[19ninety]

That last error seems to have sorted itself now, perhaps as HBC says that the feed was crawled by the US Google which has flagged all the errors and then I wonder if it was re-crawled by the EU/UK Google which has cleared the errors?

 

[19ninety]

All errors gone. I even cleared my last 3 disapprovals! Content is king they said, so when I first started out I was re-writing nearly all my product descriptions, especially on particular brand which was HOT at the time (and has now died on its arse profit wise, thanks fleabay). It's crazy that Google's algorithms picked up three product descriptions in which I had worded things in a particular way using certain phrases.