Google have just issued an email to Google Merchant Centre users (which powers Google Product Search), telling merchants who sell electronics that they need to start including at least two unique product identifiers from a choice of MPN, Brand and EAN.
The email reads as follows:
Starting in the first months of 2011, we are making some changes to how your products in the Electronics category may appear on the UK and German versions of Google Product Search. In order to provide as much information as possible to our users, we need your help in matching your products to our “product pages” where users are able to view useful data such as product specifications or reviews. If you are submitting products in the Electronics category, please start including at least two of the following three unique product identifiers: MPN, Brand, and EAN.
These attributes will not be required for your feed to process correctly, however, to avoid seeing a drop in traffic from Product Search, we urge you to start including these unique identifiers as soon as possible. You can find unique product identifier information on Product Search product pages, under the “technical specifications” section for Electronics items.
For more details, including what specific identifiers you should include for each category of item, please see our Help Center at https://www.google.com/support/merchants/bin/answer.py?hlrm=en&answer=160161
Clearly your product rankings are going to suffer if you don’t follow their suggestion, so if you don’t already put these identifiers into your Merchant Centre feed, now is the time to sort it out! 🙂
One thought on “Selling Electronics Using Google Merchant Centre? New Guidelines”