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Find Holiday Profits with Revamped Google Product Search
By Jennifer Schiff
October 20, 2008

Using the service is easy, said Broussard, whose company currently lists over 20,000 items on Product Search. "We just downloaded the feed schematic, built a feed and there it goes."

Google's Tips on Product Search

1. Submit your product data using alternative feed formats. If you've never submitted feeds to Google Product Search, you can start submitting your products by using existing feeds you've prepared for other shopping engines, saving you time and effort. You can take advantage of this option when you register a data feed in your account, when you'll have the opportunity to chose from a drop-down list of feed formats.

2. Include unique product identifiers. Be sure to use product identifiers like MPN, UPC or ISBN in your data feeds to describe your products. Valid product identifiers go a long way in describing the products you're selling — and help shoppers find them more easily. By including product identifiers, you're also providing more information to help Google include your products on Google Product Search product pages (Google's merchant comparison pages) when multiple merchants are selling the same product.

3. Use effective titles. Titles are extremely important in telling shoppers, at a glance, what product you're selling, so be sure to use detailed and descriptive titles for your products. However, don't use really long titles, since Product Search truncates titles to under 70 characters. So keep your titles succinct, descriptive and under 70 characters long.

4. Use the "condition" attribute. Remember to include the "condition" attribute, which allows you to include one of three values to describe your product: new, used or refurbished.

5. Submit your feeds frequently. Keep your feeds and product information current by submitting more frequently to Product Search, up to once per day, to ensure that your items are accurate and relevant to what shoppers are looking for.

Jennifer Lonoff Schiff is a regular contributor to Ecommerce-Guide.com and runs a blog for and about small businesses.

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