Recently, through work with Duckworths, we had a trickly little problem. We wanted their products appearing on Google Products. A bit of research led us to find we had to submit a product feed to Google Base. After finding a plugin for Zen Cart that allowed us to easily create Google Feeds, we submitted the feed to Google Base.

After 24 hours, we found that whilst listed on Google Base, we weren’t listed in Google Products. After much toing and froing, we fixed it.

There are a number of reasons for why your feed isn’t listed in Google Base, but not Google Products, here are the most common, as the forums are innundated with how to fix it.

You Don’t Specify The Price
Google Products is a rudimentary price comparison site, so if you do not specify a price for your product, you don’t get listed.

Your Feed Contains The rel=”location” Attribute
Google assumes with this attribute that the item on Google Base is a local listing (like your local paper’s classified section) rather than an item you can purchase over the internet. So don’t include it in your google feed.

The above two problems usually sorted out with most feed creator plugins, however even if you use plugins to generate your feed, problems can still arise. Here’s two more common mistakes.

Your Items Aren’t Registered As Products
When you register your feed in Google Base, you need to make sure you list it as “Products”, rather than anything else. Google has a number of resources that utilise Google Base technology, and only Google Base amalgamates all of them. Each feed has different structures and attributes, so not only will you not appear in Google Products, you probably won’t appear in anything apart from Google Base.

You Submit To The Wrong Area
There are a number of different versions of Google Products, make sure you submit to the right one:

If you check the above 4 methods, then your products will appear on Google Products!

Thanks To
DuckworthsUK
Livetech