Adding Magento products to Google Merchant Center

Adding Magento products to Google Merchant Center

This post describes how to add Magento products to Google Merchant Center (formerly known as Google Base) using a product feed and explains some of the issues you might encounter. This post used to be about adding Magento products to Google Base, but since Google swapped Google Base for Google Merchant Center, I revamped this article with up to date data.

Setting up the Google Merchant Center account

Head over to Google Merchant Center page to create a Google Merchant account. Important note: While you’re able to add additional users to one Google Merchant Center account through Users tab in Settings, every Google account can be associated with only one Google Merchant Center Account.

Generating a Magento product feed for Google Shopping Ads

While there are several solutions in form of extensions out there, so far we’ve only used our custom in-house developed code to generate the product feed.

If you can’t have the in-house solution, there is an official extension by Magento called Google Content API for shopping, but that extension seem to have a lot of issue judging by reviews. I’d probably try some of the other solutions.

If you’ll create a custom product feed generation solution, here are the full feed specifications that you should go through.

EDIT: Good mates left some nice options for feed generation in the comments bellow this post so make sure to check those out.

EDIT 2: Right now, if you don’t have a custom feed generating solution, we would recommend Rocketweb’s Google Shopping Feed extension for Magento.

We tried it on several projects and compared to other feed generating solutions it’s much more flexible, meets a lot of needs and has fewer bugs.

Mapping your Magento categories to Google Product Taxonomy

One thing you must keep in mind that’s not mentioned in Google Support or in feed specification is that Google has a different product taxonomy for each country. This means that, altough the language is pretty much the same, some things are actually differently organized in UK taxonomy than in US taxonomy.

Test the new product feed

Once you’ve generated your product feed, it’s time to upload it into the Google Merchant Center and test it. Within GMC, go to the data feeds tab.

There are two different upload buttons: “New Data Feed” and “New Test Data Feed”. Use the test feed to test if your feed is generated correctly.

Add and schedule your product feed to GMC

Once you tested the feed and solved any issues, go to the data feeds tab once again and add your feed using a “New Data Feed” button.

You can create a schedule for Google Merchant Center to automatically fetch your data feed at certain time of the day every day, week or month. In most cases I’d recommend generating and fetching the feed daily.

Common reasons for Google Merchant Center to disapprove your products

The most common reason for Google to disapprove your products are your images.

For apparel products images must be at least 250x250px. Max image size for any category is 4MB.

If your products (apparel) come in several colors or even sizes, Google requires a different image for each variation.

Your images may not have a watermark on them.

Your images must be crawl-able by Google, make sure you didn’t block them by robots.txt disallow or if they are on CDN make sure your CDN is not blocking them with CDN’s robots.txt disallow.

Apparel products must have a color. It can’t be a pattern (you can’t put “chevron pattern” under color attribute). You must use the “dominant” color instead, and you may add additional colors. Also color can’t be #ffffff, it needs to be the actual name of the color “white” or “black” or “red” etc.

Your price might have changed between the time you generated the feed and the time someone reviewed the products in your feed. If price is different in the feed compared to the price on the live store, your products will get disapproved.

Product reviews in Google shopping ads

Google recently started including product reviews into their shopping ads. This is only available in the USA, but when it comes to features such as this one we can expect it to roll out into UK and some other countries soon as well.

To be able to display your product reviews (and star rating) within your Google shopping ads, you need to either use one of the authorized 3rd party review systems (fore full list scroll down in this article) or create a product review feed.

In any case, you’ll need to fill out this form.

If you use your own product review system, as I mentioned, you’ll need to create a review feed. There are two types of feed supported, a full feed and an incremental feed. Click here for feed specifications and here for a sample feed.

Google Trusted Stores Feeds

Besides accepting product feeds for your shopping ads, Google Merchant Center is also a place where you submit your shipment and cancellation feeds for Google trusted stores program.

If you don’t know what this program is, it’s Google’s amazing trust seal that boosts the trust of your customers into your store since Google has your shipment and order cancellation data and asks your customers for feedback. Within GTS, Google also offers your customers up to $1,000 purchase protection.

Unfortunately, for now Google Trusted Stores program is only available in the US.

EDIT: Google Trusted Stores program is now available in the UK and it’s called Google Certified Shops program. We already have one of our clients accepted into the program – Zee&Co!

Should you require any help with this make sure you check out our AdWords management service for eCommerce businesses.

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127 comments

  1. HI, i have a problem with manage feed section. Till yesterday i could click on Generate button in the Action column, but this morning the specific option disappeared. How can I fix this problem?

  2. The link you give to the Google Content API for shopping extension isn’t any good. This was for v1 and Google as of February is moving to v2 and the Magento extension will no longer be supported. So it looks like for now all that are available is the paid version(s) by individuals which costs hundreds of dollars. The Google Content API for shopping was free.

  3. I second to James Simpson, I’ve been using Wyomind Simple Google Shopping from almost 2 years and have deployed it on more than 15 installations successfully. It lets us easily add any new attribute Google introduces in the feeds and it has a detailed documentation for all the options. Sometimes I’ve ran into problems but easily resolved with the help of their excellent, free life-time support.

    I have also got a chance to use other extensions like – GoMage Feed Pro, RocketWeb Google Shopping Feed extensions for generating feeds but both seems way too overpriced for functionality they offer. GoMage Feed pro can let you create templates for CSEs (NexTag, PriceGrabber etc) but I’ve ran into problem with GoMage and they only have 6 month support and paid support is expensive. RocketWeb don’t even have option to generate feeds on demand basis and have some hard coded schedule which generates feed on midnight.
    I have used Wyomind Data Feed Manager on more than dozen installations for multi-channel (CSE) feeds and it comes with pre-configured templates for most sites. It’s more competent, powerful, have detailed documentation and cost less than GoMage or RocketWeb.

  4. I am using Magento extension for Google shopping. i configured extension for country Netherlands. Now, i want to map special price in Google shopping while that extension allow sale_price but it is for US.
    Can i map special price for country netherland? How is it possible?
    Hope you reply as soon as possible
    Thank you

  5. Hey,
    I am using Google shopping feed extension for my magento e-commerce site. and i have generated feed by using this extension. but when i am uploading this feed to google merchant center, its showing errors like identifiers error, google product type error, product category.
    Can you please help me. i want to use product listing ads through google adword.

  6. As for generating feeds for Google Merchant, you can have a look at his module http://amasty.com/product-feed.html. It creates feeds for many shopping engines in addition to Google shopping. Feeds are created in a few clicks and can be updates and re-submitted automatically which is very convenient, especially if you have large inventory.

  7. Hey thank you #James Simpson for mentionning Wyomind :).

    Indeed we provide an extension quite complete that allows you to send your products data to Google via an xml feed – Simple Google Shopping. You can find a preconfigured template where you have to change some things according to your products such as the currency, VAT…
    As James said, you can map your categories to Google ones within a few minutes. We also provide detailed documentation on our extensions (including a tutorial).

    Last month, we launched our newbie, Google Trusted Stores. It allows you to automatically send your shipments and cancellations feed to Google when applying for Google Trusted Stores program. I’m sure this could be interesting for some of you.
    The best would be to visit our page at http://www.wyomind.com.

    Cheers,
    Laurie

  8. The best and fastest solution which has hit the market up to now is probably http://www.feedexporter.com We worked very hard to have an indexer based feed generator tool, so we can do 100k+ products as fully flexible xml/csv in just a few minutes. Google Shopping Template comes out of the box… You need performance for your customers but you also need always up to date data feeds, this is where Cartware_FeedExporter comes in handy. Made in Germany.

  9. I have had a great experience with the “Simple Google Shopping” plugin by Wyomind, it allows you to assign Google categories to your categories, so it attaches the google categories when building the feed. And its also quite simple to pull parent data into the simple product when it builds the feed, for grouping goods (Shoes and Clothes) into one ad.

    1. I have the parent child products with the right and left eyes for contacts and glasses.
      I would be interested in how you set up the Simple Google Shopping to accommodate that.

  10. Hi everyone,

    I just revamped this old post. It used to talk about adding Magento products to Google Base. Since Google swapped Google Base for Google Merchant Center I changed the entire content of the article to help you find your way in adding Magento products to the Google Merchant Center.

  11. Anybody know how to call the thumbnail url for the feed? We have a unique situation and need to have 125×125 thumbnail images in our feed. Would love some help!

  12. I have successfully set up attribute mapping for google content/shopping. Products have upload and are seen in Merchant Center account. However, no images have uploaded via the magento go Google Content submit feature. I am looking for a solution thru Magento Go to submit images, is there a way or do I need to make this correction in Google Merchant Center?

  13. Hi. Where can I find the xml that this extension generates ? I need to inform it to a MarketPlace and they need the xml file…

  14. I added the new attributes to our online chandlery and managed to get the feed to upload chandlery products to Google Base but I was then unable to edit the products without removing them from the feed again. Has anybody else had a similar problem?

  15. As I posted on this thread long ago, a very good alternative is : http://www.gomage.com/extensions/advertising-marketing/gomage-feed-pro.html/

    Yes it does cost $139 BUT as it is an XML feed builder, if Google change the paramters of uploading products (they do this occasionally) then these changes can be fixed without needing a programmatic solution.

    Also, you can use it to push your products to a wide range of other feeds.

    At PB we can install and configure this for you for about £160 + VAT + cost of the extension (and we get a nice big discount too)

    I’ve put this module on at least 4 sites and once done and configured on CRON you can just about forget about it!

  16. @Robin,

    Yes, that’s an official Magento extension for connecting with the new Google Merchant Center.

  17. Hi,

    After adding the attribute ‘Condition’, i tried the Add attribute mapping, but still getting error

    Expected response code 200, got 502 Google

    502. That’s an error.

    The server encountered a temporary error and could not complete your request.

    Please try again in 30 seconds. That’s all we know.

    How to resolve it?

  18. i am using magento ver 1.4.1.0

    when i am trying to create attribute it give me error

    => read time out 10 second
    and if i make it 30 then also same and if i set more then 30

    then

    =>Expected response code 200, got 502 Google

    502. That’s an error.

    The server encountered a temporary error and could not complete your request.

    Please try again in 30 seconds. That’s all we know.

  19. Didn’t know it has been phased out. I was looking for it everywhere in enterprise 1.11.1.0 and couldn’t find it. NO WONDER 🙂

  20. I have this error after submitting a product to Google Content. “No products were added to Google Content.” I am using Magento 1.6.0. Any suggestion how to do that?

  21. Following the instructions, when i get to the Google Base > Manage attributes there is ‘No records found’

    Can anyone help please?

  22. I sorted the taxonomy issue in two steps

    1. by adding the required taxonomy classes to

    magento/app/code/core/mage/googleshopping/helper/Category.php

    so that they appear in the dropdown

    2. creating a new attribute set for each new taxonomy entry.. since all products with the same attribute set are forced to have the same taxonomy entry in this extension..

  23. Hi, I wonder why I only see 2 items when I click “view all products” when managing items for googlebase. How do I show all my products once again so I can synchronize to googlebase?

  24. We use gomage extension to generate feeds.
    It’s careful design makes it both easy to use and very flexible.
    I recommend the extension to anybody who wants to export their products as feeds – whether it is for Google Base/Merchant, Bing Shopping, Yahoo, etc.

    Hope this helps

  25. @Vader,

    Definitely did a full backup before I installed it, as I couldn’t jeopardize anything happening to my subscribers, etc. So I had a full restore ready, but my host took a while to get it all settled correctly for me.

    The thing that bothered me the most about the extension is that I could not add the categories and such as required by Google now for Apparel/Shoes… so it was a complete waste of time. I tried and tried, but couldn’t get it.

    Does this extension modify Magento core files? I don’t think I can stomach trying it again due to the category issue (taxonomy), but I’m definitely in need of something to fix the issue (extremely low budget!).

  26. @Shoetopia…

    You should ALWAYS backup your entire website including databases before you do any integrations.

    I would not even attempt this integration for versions before 1.6.

  27. please forget my last post, for anyone else having that problem, in the config i added my user name and password as the ftp details in merchant centre instead of my email and password 🙁 oooops

  28. vader7 i have installed this and now get

    The product “iPhone 4S Screen replacement UK” hasn’t been added to Google Content.
    No products were added to Google Content

    I have added the products mapping correctly and added gmcf_condition in the label options and added everything i should 🙁 i have also googled the problem and nothing comes up. Surely its not just me

  29. That extension royally screwed my site and it took 16 hours and help from my hosting to restore my backup… NOT recommended!

    Also, I don’t think taxonomy was enabled on there. Was just a bunch of issues… installed and wanted it off and after the uninstall it just totally destroyed my site.

  30. @Vader7 -> thank you for this excellent update. I would like you to read the comment of Mau 16-08-2011 at 22:19
    [quote]http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/Magento%20Core/extension/6887/mage_googleshopping

    Starting this year, Google has launched new Shopping APIs that will replace Google Base Data API for shopping use cases.[/quote]

  31. @Hans -> Thanks for the heads up. Won’t break my module if it goes away though. I just happened to break the core module and put code in my module to repair the damage I caused. 🙂

    Also, thanks for this blog! I referred to several of the articles here as I was writing this module. Great stuff!

  32. @Dennis -> excellent job… but… be aware that “The Find Feed” will be obsolete soon.

  33. Just completed a very flexible module for Magento version 1.6 (may work on previous versions, but is untested at this time) that will create an XML file to be submitted to Google Merchant Center that will be compatible with the changes on Sept. 22nd. It has reporting to check products before they are added to your feed. It uses a Java Script taxonomy checker to get the Google Product Category for your product (no more cut and paste from Google to your product and create a custom attribute). It allow for custom mapping for certain attributes. It accounts for up to 10 additional images per product (per Google specification). Uses Magento Cron to schedule file generation.

    Check out the user guide at: http://fancyfiber.com/studios/products/en/buy/google_merchant_center_feed_user_guide

  34. The best way to do for me I found in using the PSMextV2 Modul. Okay, you have to pay for but i already did coz i needed the function to send the prices and items to several search engines. You can provide a datafeed that will be parsed by google.

  35. Instead of installing yet another module or try to fix the Magento extension one can also take a step back and figure out what you’re dealing with.
    Google Shopping only wants to be able to import a data feed provided from the Magento installation. If the given modules don’t work you can also create your own feed with php using a cronjob to refresh that feed on a daily base.
    The following blog tells you all about it. http://www.e-commercewebdesign.co.uk/blog/magento-tutorials/products-in-google-updated.php
    And since it’s PHP you can alter the code to your own need.
    Enjoy

  36. @Berny I’d love to buy the module, but at the price I just can’t afford it. I haven’t ‘launched’ the site 100% yet and have spent a bit on modules already, so it does kinda suck as mentioned by tberger above… something simple and already working has to be paid for :-/.

    I decided to just let it go unless someone can post an external fix. I installed the Magento Google Shopping module on 1.6 last night and just did not feel comfortable as it was somewhat getting the job done, but not correctly. Google Product Category is what’s driving me insane :-(.

  37. With the magento implementation, it does seem to work, but you will have to delete your expired products manually (in magento) and re-submit them. Not optimal but it works.
    A free option that has some great potential can be found at http://www.RetailTower.com

  38. may be good the GoMAGE, but it’s not free. I know that usually good software has got it’s price, but the integrated stuff was working perfect and know i shall pay just because someone wasn’t able to migrate in a correct way? naaaaahhhhh 😉

  39. Forget the Magento module, go and buy the GoMage feed module. I’d be happy to post the setting for Google here. The module can also be used to push your products to other feeds, eg ShopZilla – so nice and flexible.

  40. We now use GoMage;s Feed extension – gomage.com – we had to tweak the code a bit to our needs but it gets all our products onto Googlebase AND updates them.

  41. Does Google Base allow individual products in Grouped Products and Configurable Products to upload, especially if these products were selected as “Not Visible” when creating the product in Grouped.

    Since these individual products in Grouped are not visible, does this also mean the product information is also not visible to search engines and only the “Main Grouped Product” description is? Sorry, I am new to all this and need these questions answered so any help would be appreciated.

  42. Hi,
    Great website and advice with each post. Like that you do not aggressively try sell here by cutting in the middle but you provide decent advice to rookies like me. Will definitely contact you for a quote to help me with small improvements on my shop.
    Keep it up.
    Thank you.

  43. Whilst my feed is working I still get the “Missing Product Type Values” feedback. I’ve added the “product_type” to the attribute set in the same way as “condition” and resynchronized but without any success. The only alternative I’ve seen is adding “product_type” as a text field rather than a drop-down with only 1 option. Has anyone else had this issue?

  44. I got the this to work at first, but now its time to refresh the items and all I get is errors. I tried synchronising the items but the expiry date didn’t change, and for some items I get the error:

    Expected response code 200, got 404. Type: request. Reason: Cannot find item.

    I’m now deleting all the items from the feed and re-listing them (a very sloooooowwww process!), and I still get the above error for some items. This prevents me from removing them from the list!?!

    Is anyone else having similar problems?

  45. @Thorsten: Thank you for your reply. I know where to go and add; however, do not knwo what to put in the properties. Also, how the new attribute i created will know that this attribue carries the value i wanted to put?

  46. @Chris: AFAIK google does not accept any special prices. Something i was wondering about too, but at least it’s okay, cause special prices are temporary and you could change them from one day to the other, so google wants your real price. you have to change the base price of the products to show the special price.

    @Abe: just jump into magento backend CATALOG – ATTRIBUTES – MANAGE ATTRIBUTES, get your attributes done and put them into ALL REQUIRED and used attribute-sets. After fill them with the fitting value and resync.

  47. I love google base – but how can i get Magento to send the “Special Price” to google base and have the new lower price as the price? I have tried custom attribute mapping and its not working!

  48. I have everything working, but Google sent us email saying that I need to insert “Brand, MPN, GTIN” in the attributes. Can you help me creating those 3 attributes so that I add them in the Google Base => Manage attributes ?

  49. Can anyone help I am getting no errors when I submit but then items are all Disapproved emailed them they provide a general response.

  50. Has there been any update on the ‘Unable to read response, or response is empty’ error?

    Was getting other errors and got rid of them but now the above. Just seen the step-by-step guide in post from Artur Jach (hopefully there might be something there to help)!

  51. We have the very same issue with the following error: Expected response code 200, got 404. Type: request. Reason: Service not found.
    Have contacted google on this error as i did read somewhere else that they sorted it for someone else, will keep you posted on what they say.

  52. hi jenny
    I get the same promble as you,”Expected response code 200, got 404. Type: request. Reason: Service not found.”,i don`t know why,If you have solves,please tell me,thank you,my email cawords66@yahoo.com

  53. Hi,
    When i tried to submit items to googlebase from magento,i got “Expected response code 200, got 404. Type: request. Reason: Service not found. “.I have tried everything to solve the problem?Can anyguys help me to solve it or figure out what’s wrong.
    Thanks!

  54. Well,
    We use Rewrite rules in the .htaccess file:

    Here’s something to get you started :

    ## REMOVES ? parameters from URL
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^desirable.*$ [NC]
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^(.*)admin(.*)
    RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^SID
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /$1? [NE,R=301,L]

    #RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^desirable.*$ [NC]
    RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^p=
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /$1? [NE,R=301,L]

    #RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^desirable.*$ [NC]
    RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^___SID
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /$1? [NE,R=301,L]

    #RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^desirable.*$ [NC]
    RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^___from_store
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /$1? [NE,R=301,L]

    # END

    Please note that :
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^(.*)admin(.*)

    Is critical as if you omit this then it chops of ? parameters in admin which (believe it or not) stops you uploading images on the product pages

  55. I was experiencing problems with products with no description. Google Base refuses to accept them.

    I simply copied the file : /app/code/core/Mage/GoogleBase/Model/Service/Item.php
    to: /app/code/local/Mage/GoogleBase/Model/Service/Item.php

    and added these lines after:
    if ($object->getDescription()) {
    $content = $service->newContent()->setText( $object->getDescription() );
    $entry->setContent($content);
    }

    I added:
    else
    {
    $content = $service->newContent()->setText( $object->getName() );
    $entry->setContent($content);
    }

    Change getName() to whichever attribute you want in the description.

  56. Marcia, I got the same error message and managed to solve it by going back and NOT mapping any attributes to “description”. Google Base then seems to automatically take the long description to use.

  57. There is a MUCH easier way to update the “Condition” attribute on all of your existing products without using SQL.

    0. Create the Condition attribute if not existing yet. Set default value as ‘New’ if that’s what you want.
    1. Magento Admin -> Catalog -> Manage Products
    2. Select all products or applicable products.
    3. Under Action, select “Update attributes”.
    4. On the next page, set ‘Condition’ attribute to ‘New’
    5. Click Save/Update and you’re done.

  58. @Toni…Thanks for your answer.

    I have searched everywhere and I cannot see where the information is mapped per your response..” two different Magento’s attributes mapped to Google base’s description attribute”

    Where can I search for where the atrributes are mapped

  59. Does anybody know why in Magento, when I try to add an Attribute Mapping for Google Base, the following error occurs:

    Notice: Undefined offset: 1 in /home/loviecom/public_html/app/code/core/Mage/GoogleBase/Model/Service/Feed.php on line 120

  60. Marcia,

    It seems to me that you might have two different Magento’s attributes mapped to Google base’s description attribute. Remove one of them if this is the case.

  61. Expected response code 200, got 400. Type: data. Field: description. Reason: Duplicate description

    I attempted all the directions above and got the following message. I ran a test using just one product

  62. do you know how to remove the ?___store=default that keeps on coming up on the end of the urls when they are submitted to google base? I am sure this must be a simple fix to remove this. Thanks

  63. Here are the queries from a PHP script I wrote :
    SELECT entity_id FROM catalog_product_entity WHERE sku = ‘???’

    The above query gets the entity_id from the product you need.

    INSERT INTO catalog_product_entity_int (entity_type_id, attribute_id, store_id, entity_id, value) VALUES (4, 535, 0, ‘entity_id’, 312)

    Here is the insert for the attribute value.
    Description of fields:
    entity_type_id : Always 4 in my system – this comes from the eav_entity_type table. You need to look for the record where entity_type_code is ‘catalog_product’ and take the id from there.

    Attribute ID : Look in the table eav_attribute for the attribute you created. You can search on the attribute_code field for the name you gave when you created the attribute. Probably the last field in the table – take the attribute ID from there.

    Store_id : Look in table core_store and take the store_id from the ADMIN store. Usually 0

    Entity_id : From the product table (see the first query)

    Value : The numerical value allocated to the attribute value. This one is a little more tricky to locate. First search the eav_attribute_option table on the attribute_id field and use the value for attribute_id as determined above. Make a note of the option_id values. Now search the eav_attribute_option_value table for those option_id values. The TEXT you entered for the possible values comes up in the value field. When you finf the right text, use the correct option_id.

    I hope this guides you all but as always DONT fiddle unless you are SURE you know what you are doing and always TEST IT FIRST on a copy database.

  64. @Toni

    I am not sure how to write a query for SQL. What is the string to put in to run to mark them all new? This would save me a lot of time. I have tried rebuilding the index and it doesn’t set everything to new. I have to do 1500 products one by one.

    I’m still unable to submit anything to GB. I keep getting service not found and I can’t seem to find anything that covers this issue. In the Google Base setup I put my username and password. Am I missing something? Why is it not finding the service?

    Great video work and answers for everything else. I got everything setup…just can’t find the service.

  65. Hi I want to add my configurable product in google base .
    I have tried it and it only display basic information on the google base page . i want that configurable attribute to show on the google product page. is there i m missing to configure.

  66. Finally got the Magento/Base integration to work! Thanks for your help. Now the store wants to change prices on a number of products. How do I update my items in Google Base to reflect the changes in the shopping cart?

  67. @David, I’m not sure, but I think that’s the way we did it.

    The other way around would be to find where the condition attribute is in the database and make an SQL query that will set all product values to New.

  68. I set the field as required and default value to “New” but all products still do not show as New. Does it make a difference if this setting is Global, website, etc?

  69. @David: Try system > Cash management > Rebuild Catalog Index

    @Kris: Didn’t try it, don’t know.

  70. Have you figured out a way to get the special price to map to the price attribute when submitting to Google Base? I’ve tried mapping ‘Special Price’ and ‘Minimal Price’ to ‘Price’ however none of those work.

  71. @David: Try setting the field as required and default value to “New” and then go and rebuild the catalog.

  72. Finally, the attribute appears. Now, is there a way to add the condition-new to all of my products in my shopping cart? I want to add 900 items to Google Base.

  73. @David:

    If you go to Catalog > Manage Products, you will see a row that defines which attribute set is each of the products using.

    It is most likely your products are using default attribute set. If so, make sure you’ve dragged the condition attribute into the default attribute set.

  74. Are you sure your products are using that attribute set? Because if they are, there is no reason why the new condition value wouldn’t appear in these products.

  75. @David,

    You most likely don’t see it because you skipped the Step 2:

    Step 2: Go to Catalog > Attributes > Manage Attribute Sets and drag the attribute “Condition” from the right column to the appropriate place in the left column. Make sure you have dragged it into the attribute set you’re using with Google Base if you have more then one attribute set defined.

  76. Everything seems to be fine except that when I go to “3. You assigned the value (New or Used) to the items you’re trying to add” I do not see a field for Condition in the products I am trying to add. Do I have to add a new attribute again for each product? Is there a way to add new as the default for my entire store?

  77. Hi Toni

    I tried that to no avail. For some reason i have to go in and set each product up as the default is blank, Neither Used or New is selected.

  78. @Scalesmart:

    i think we did it this way: Set the field as required, and the default value to New. Then go and rebuild the catalog.

  79. Great!

    I just followed your guide and did a test product and finally managed to get it up on GoogleBase!

    Is there a way of making the default option “YES” as it doesn’t seem to do that in my store?

  80. The connection to google shopping works fine. Now the first products have run out of the period.

    I wonder how to restart the export process to google again. Until I do not delete the products completely from the google merchant center the products are not available in the magento backend for a new export.

    WHY? And what is the easiest and fastest process to restart products that do not have any changes in their conditions?

    Thanks for all your help

    informixx

  81. @David,

    I’ve seen your e-mail, you probably missed this step:

    “Step 2: Go to Catalog > Attributes > Manage Attribute Sets and drag the attribute “Condition” from the right column to the appropriate place in the left column. Make sure you have dragged it into the attribute set you’re using with Google Base if you have more then one attribute set defined.”

  82. David, make sure:

    1. You created the attribute “Condition”
    2. You made it’s value “New” or “Used”
    3. You assigned the value (New or Used) to the items you’re trying to add
    4. You mapped the condition attribute to the condition attribute in Google Base

  83. Expected response code 200, got 400. Type: data. Field: condition. Reason: The item is missing a required attribute.

  84. I followed all of the steps for the first known issue but continue to receive the error when I try to add my products in Google Base > Manage Items. What could I be doing wrong? To start, I have only added condition and price as attributes. Do I have to add more?

  85. In Step 2 of the first error, I don’t see anything to “drag”. How do I do this? I am using Magento version 1.3.2.4. Thanks.

  86. @eCommerceCircle – I didn’t have chance to use it with Grouped/Config items so I can’t tell but I guess there would be some issues.

    @Robert Reynolds – I’m not sure if the time period (30 days) would be restarted if we simply rebuilt products without changing anything while having the “Update Google Base item when product is updated” dropdown set to “Yes” in System > Configuration > Google API > Google Base

    If it does, it would be a pretty nice solution.

  87. I haven’t been able to find this out either way, but if you are using Configurable Products – do you have to submit the Configurable and Simple Products or just the Configurable Products?

    At the moment I am just submitting all products as it is difficult to quickly submit just the Configurable Products.

  88. @Sherrie Rohde

    I’ll have to think about that one. I’ll probably post an update to this post if we find a good solution.

  89. Have you figured out how to set Magento’s Google Base integration so that it doesn’t expire every month? That’s my biggest pet peeve with the way it’s setup. It’s extremely time consuming to go through and re-add everything every month. On one of our sites I have a custom script setup to process the items to Google Base, but I have to remember to activate it every so often to update my listings so that’s not ideal either.

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