[PAID] Google Merchant Static Feed

[Brandeline]

A public Thanks to Martin for getting this working on my system I was the Windows system guinea pig!

Nice work, looks great!

[Martin]

I was the Windows system guinea pig!

Yup... and the sqeeeeing noise was just terrible!!

[Martin]

Google posted a postponement of the shipping/tax requirements for GM feeds...

http://googlemerchantblog.blogspot.com/ ... ments.html

The new deadline is September 1st which is a blessing frankly because the ISC code for this is something rather more complex than I first imagined...

[Brandeline]

Google is starting to get a bit of a god complex honestly. They seem to think all the little people have full time programmers on call to make their changes. What ever happened to the search engine that could figure it out with their super smart algorithms?

[Martin]

As this has been asked a couple of times today I'll answer out in the open...

If you want to start publishing a GM feed for another country you must:

1. Be providing the price information in that countries currency
2. Uncomment the appropriate line in the class.froogle.php file (see example below)

One of the criteria for Google Merchant feeds is that the products need to be shown in that feeds currency so if you aren't supporting the currency you would immediately fall foul of that rule and kick your feed right in the backside, and potentially your entire GM account (can we say "Ooops!").


Code Example:
Australia and UK(GB) feeds enabled.

Code: Select all

					$this->country_streams['AU']	= 'AUD';	// Australia
		$this->country_streams['GB']	= 'GBP';	// United Kingdom,
		//$this->country_streams['US']	= 'USD';	// United States of America
		//			$this->country_streams['FR']	= 'EUR';	// France
		//			$this->country_streams['DE']	= 'EUR';	// Germany
		//			$this->country_streams['ES']	= 'EUR';	// Spain
		//			$this->country_streams['IT']	= 'EUR';	// Italy
		//			$this->country_streams['NL']	= 'EUR';	// Netherlands
		//			$this->country_streams['CN']	= 'CNY';	// China - Currency code may be 'RMB' instead
		//			$this->country_streams['JP']	= 'JPY';	// Japan

Setting up currency information is done via the Admin CP
Settings > Currency Settings

If you don't like the existing currency module then remember that I have a couple available here:
http://snailsol.mybigcommerce.com/categ ... t-Modules/

[Martin]

Word of warning...

I just discovered this nugget hidden in the requirements section for each countries target feed:

Payment requirements

Your listings must provide a way for users to purchase the product online through either a payment service or directly from your website. The payment and transaction processing must be secure (SSL-protected). Products must be displayed in, sold and transacted in the appropriate currency of the target country.

Now, I personally have this covered(1) for my SagePay and PayPoint(2) checkout modules, because I wrote the necessary custom code to make that happen BUT pretty much everyone else is going to be falling foul of this issue and probably a heap of other carts are doing the exact same thing.

When time allows I will release the code changes required for SagePay and Paypoint (the latter as a complete module) but if you get a whiff of someone getting set to complain about non-compliance on this point you need to be ready with a plan B...

I think the word is "Ouch!"


Footnotes

1. I have a separate merchant account for each currency I'm taking payment in and this takes around 10+ working days to get organised.. Talk to your merchant provider about this facility and any charges...
2. The PayPoint SecPage module is one I wrote myself and not the same £100 cost version being released via Interspires forum. It should be available to PayPoint customers in a few weeks.

[Martin]

Just a quick update to note that I've done some more work on the module tonight (into the early hours of the morning too) and it looks like I've cracked the shipping attribute for 6.1.1

I will need some volunteers (existing customers only) with 6.0.14, 5.5.4 and earlier versions of ISC to let me on their systems so I can test and debug/fix the same code. Once that's done I'll get that update released.

Next up will be the tax information... With earlier versions of ISC this is likely to be broken or potentially providing bad data so keep that in mind. I won't be fixing the tax code in ISC itself.


Right.. bed... Night all..

[Martin]

Google have just dropped something of a bombshell in terms of requirements for the feed due in September..

http://base-forum-announcements.blogspo ... oduct.html

Summary of Changes
We are confident that the new feed specifications will have a strong impact on the user experience. Below are several examples of how the feed spec is changing in the United States; please note that other countries have slightly different requirements:

• Availability: We’d like a user to be able to find your products even when they are out of stock. For this reason, the [availability] status of all your items will be required.
• Google Product Category: We have added a new required high-level attribute called [google product category] that contains the category of the item in Google’s taxonomy (currently only required for a select number of categories). This is in addition to the current [product type] attribute.
• Images: We’re making [image link] required and we encourage you to submit up to 10 additional product images through [additional image link]. This way, you can improve the visual representation of your products.
• Apparel: In order to create a better experience for product variants such as dresses or shoes that are available in multiple colors or sizes, we ask you to include information like [size] and [color] in your product feed. In addition, we require you to provide [gender] and [age group].
• Data Freshness: We will continue to regularly check feeds for accuracy of pricing, availability, and general product information, and suspend accounts that that are sending stale or incorrect information. In addition, we will be introducing penalties for repeated violation of our standards.

The list above is somewhat ambiguous in terms of who exactly is affected but if Google Merchant are running to type, this will be USA specific initially and then become mandatory for other at some point after.

Looking at the list it seems there's some interesting hurdles to get over with this latest specification, primarily the ones related to size, colour, which almost certainly relate to variations.

I'll post up more once I've had some time to think about how best to tackle this little lot..

[Martin]

This article provides a bit more info on the changes above...
http://www.google.com/support/merchants ... er=1346661

Lots of work coming it seems!

[busi6292]

Hi Martin,

We've just purchased the module and it works very well with little setup time. We bought yours so we could add the automation in for our three files we submit to UK, US, and Australia. I will write a positive review on your site soon.

Anyhow, I wonder if you can help with the following? Perhaps you can add this to your next revision. I'm quite confident that the more optional fields that are added, the better your rank within Google Shopping.

We had a developer add the following to the admin/includes/classes/class.froggle.php file:

Code: Select all

		$this->accepted_payment_types = array('Visa','Mastercard','Check','Discover','Wire Transfer','Cash');
		$this->location = 'Our address, United Kingdom';
		$this->pickup = 'true';

Code: Select all

		$entry = array(
			....
			'g:location' => $this->location,
			'g:pickup' => $this->pickup,
...			
);

Code: Select all

		foreach($this->accepted_payment_types as $pt_key=>$pt_value){
			$xml .= "\t<g:payment_accepted><![CDATA[".$pt_value."]]></g:payment_accepted>\n";
		}

Would you be able to tell me/us where we can add the above to your class.froogle.php file please?


Few other issues we have. GBP is our main currency, so the UK file exports fine but with the US and Australia feed the URL becomes:

http://www.domain.co.uk/[b]products.php ... rrencyId=4

Is it possible for it to become the following like the original ISC one:

http://www.domain.co.uk/product-url-her ... rrencyId=3


Finally, can we add the MPN (manufacture's part number) into the file too? Code we have is:

Code: Select all

		if($row['prodcode']) {
			$entry['g:mpn'] = isc_html_escape($row['prodcode']);
		}

You might already have some of these features on the agenda for the next several months but these I'm sure would help us and others, though I'm sure would be time consuming:

- Shipping cost added (as weights are exported, perhaps you could integrate your Royal Mail module into the feed too?)
- Variations added (as Google now seem to support them)
- Google product category added and a way in admin to apply Google's taxonomy to each of our products
- Additional images added to feed, if applicable
- 'online_only;' attribute added

Any help on the above would be great, thank you.