A feed is a file that contains a list of products you want to advertise through Merchant Center. When you add your products, you’ll assign attributes to each one. Your product feeds will use these attributes to group your products together. After you’ve created a feed, it can be used multiple times across as many Merchant Center features as you need.
There are multiple types of feeds in Merchant Center. The types of feeds you use will depend on your needs as a retailer. The product attributes you use to describe your products to Merchant Center are the same across all types of feeds.
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Primary and supplemental feeds
- Primary feeds are the main data sources for your Merchant Center inventory. If every product you add to your primary feed meets Merchant Center’s data and eligibility requirements, you won’t need to create any more feeds.
- Supplemental feeds are used only to update product data that already exists in one or more primary feeds. You can have multiple supplementary feeds, and each one can supplement data in any number of primary feeds.
Learn how to Create a feed.
Multi-source feeds (advanced)
Google Content API for Shopping (advanced)
The Content API for Shopping allows apps to interact directly with the Merchant Center platform, vastly increasing the efficiency of managing large or complex Merchant Center accounts. The Content API for Shopping can be used to manage your Merchant Center configuration, act as an input source for your product data, and provide reporting. Learn how to Get started with Content API for Shopping.
Note: If you plan to upload a large number of feeds or make frequent changes to your product data, it is strongly recommended that you upload this directly using the Content API.
Regional product inventory feeds (advanced)
Regional inventory feeds are a type of supplemental feed that can be used to override your existing product data in the primary feed in order to show regional pricing or availability for a selection of products in your predefined regions. Regional inventory feeds can't be used to add or remove products or be used as standalone feeds. However, they can be used to override existing product data.
Regional inventory feeds support the following required attributes:
- ID
[id](offer ID) - Region ID
[region_id](merchant-defined region name)
Regional inventory feeds also support the following optional attributes:
- Price
[price] - Sale price
[sale_price] - Sale price effective date
[sale_price_effective_date] - Availability
[availability]
Regional inventory feeds are available in the United States and are available for beta sign-up in Australia, France, and Germany. Learn more about Regional availability and pricing.
Product attributes
Attributes are the key pieces of information that describe a product. Some, such as condition [condition] and availability [availability], have standardized or accepted values. Others, including ID [id] or title [title], are left open for you to fill out for each of your products.
When you use the required and suggested attributes to accurately describe your items, it helps your customers search and find your items more easily.
There are a number of policies in place around how to use each attribute, and how often to update your product data. Be sure to Shopping ads policies carefully to make sure you understand the requirements.
When you’re ready, start creating your feed.