Google Shopping | Creating a custom XML feed for Google Shopping

Google Merchant Center (GMC) offers different feed options to upload product data into its platform. While Plytix has a designated Google Shopping channel with a setup template to generate a primary product feed, you may want to create different feed types for GMC. In this article, you will find a guide that you can refer to in order to set up custom XML feeds for Google Shopping using Plytix. 

 

Google Reference Material

Setting up your XML Feed

Customizing the Feed to Fit GMC Specifications

Changing Attribute Names

Processing the Feed

*Skip to any section in this article by clicking on the links above

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Google Reference Material

Google's requirements vary according to the type of product feed you would like to create. To have the most up to date information about setting up these feeds, please refer to these documents provided by Google:

• Specifications: XML product data feed in the RSS 2.0 format
• Product Data Specification
• Google Feed Guide

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Setting up your XML Feed

To start, create a Channel if you haven't already:

1. Go to the Channels icon in the left sidebar.
2. Click the Add Channel button.
3. Select the XML format option and then click the purple Add Channel button.

Once inside the Channel, head over to the "Attributes" tab to add your attributes. This is where you add all the content you want to appear in your XML feed.

In the Attributes tab, you need to select the attributes you want to make up your feed.

1. Click the Add Attributes button.

2. Select the attributes that have the content (not necessarily the name) that matches the content you want to output in the feed. You can also upload a CSV template of the right attributes you need in your store, and match it with existing attributes in your PIM.

3. If you would like to create attribute transformations for your XML channel, click the Add Attributes button and then select Apply an attribute transformation.

Adding products to your feed

A Channel is a Destination, so products are added to your feed by assigning them directly, there's no separate "product list" step.

1. Navigate to the Products tab.
2. Click the Add products button.
3. In the Add products window, use the All products and Selected tabs to browse everything available or review what you've already checked off.
4. Use the Search by SKU or label field to find specific products, or tick the Select all checkbox to select everything shown.
5. Tick the checkbox next to each product you want to include in the feed.
6. Click the Save button to confirm, or the Cancel button to back out.

While you're still in the Add products window, you can deselect a product before saving by heading to the Selected tab and clicking the X icon beside it.

To remove a product that's already assigned to the Channel, tick the checkbox next to it (or multiple checkboxes) in the Products table, then click the trash icon in the bulk action bar at the bottom of the screen and click the Remove from destination button to confirm.

 

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Customizing the Feed to Fit GMC specifications

Next, navigate to the Format tab, to set up the feed so it conforms with the specifications set by Google Merchant Center. With the attributes and products selected, the feed already includes the attribute data for each product. Below we look at how to further define the XML feed.

Example Feed

For this example, we will use the following sample feed:

You can see full GMC feed examples here. Refer to these examples as you work with setting up your feed.

Header

The first part <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> is automatically applied by Plytix. 

RSS Node

Our first task is to add the RSS node. To do this:

1. Click the + Add node button on the top right of the Nodes area.

2. An Add node panel will appear where you can customize the node.

3. In the Node Tag input, remove new_node and write rss.

4. Add the additional information that we saw came after rss in the example feed shown above. This extra information will be contained in node attributes, which you can add by selecting + Add attribute. A node attribute looks like this: xmlns:g and its value is: http://base.google.com/ns/1.0 We add that information in the XML Attribute and Value fields as shown below.

5. Finally click the Add node button at the top of the settings to add the node to the Feed Builder.

Channel

Our next task is to add channel as a subnode to the rss node. To do this:

1. Add a new node using the Add Node button.
2. Set the Node Tag to channel.
3. Then, declare a Parent Node using the dropdown box to select rss. This will place the channel node below the rss node in the Feed Builder. To finish, click the purple Add node button.
   
   

Leaf Nodes

We can now add title, link, and description nodes. These three nodes must all share the channel node as parent and they must be created as Leaf nodes.

1. On the channel node, click the Add subnode icon.

2. In the Add node panel that appears, add title as the Node tag.

3. Check the Leaf node box. This will give us a field where we can write in the corresponding value.

4. Click on the purple Add node button.

5. Repeat these steps for the link and description nodes.

This will create the nodes as direct subnodes to the channel node.

The 'LEAF' text in front of your node values simply indicates the type of node; this text will not be included in the feed.

Product Specifications

As you may have noticed in the examples above, the hierarchy for the products and product nodes does not yet conform to the specifications in the example feed.

To update this: 

1. Go into the settings of products, by clicking the Edit node icon.
   
   
2. Change the Parent node to channel.

This will move the products node and all of its subnodes under the channel node.

By default in Plytix, a product node is called product, so we need to change this to item in order to meet the GMC specifications.

To do this:

1. Click the orange product node's Edit node icon.
   
   
2. After changing the Node Tag to item it should look like this.

Next, we must delete the topmost products node that all our items currently live under. GMC lists all their items one after another (not under an items hierarchy level), so we do not need this products node.

To do this, click the Delete node icon (X) on the righthand side of the top products node.

Deleting the products node moves everything up a hierarchy level, and we can now see that our feed content and hierarchy is starting to take shape.

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Changing Attribute Names

After formatting your XML feed, you will need to change the attribute 'Node Tags' so they match GMC's naming convention. 

To follow the correct naming convention for your selected feed type, make sure to check Google’s documentation. 

 

To change your attribute names:

1. Click the Edit node icon for each attribute node individually.
2. Change the Node Tag for each attribute - and a preview of the output name will display beside the attribute names with opening and closing tags (< >).
3. Press the Okay button after editing each node tag and then click the Save changes button at the top of the Channel page.
4. Repeat for all attributes requiring a name change.

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Processing the Feed

After following these steps, your feed will be completed! All your necessary data is there, your hierarchy levels are in order, and naming conventions are adjusted for GMC.

To finalize the feed, you need to process it. This will apply and update all your product information and generate a feed link and file that you can plug into GMC.

To process your feed:

1. Go to the top of the Channel area.
2. Click the Process now button. In the next window that appears, adjust settings to update/add products and click Start processing.

Once the feed has completed processing, you will see a link appear below the feed name. Click the Copy icon to copy it.

This link can be copied and pasted from Plytix into your GMC account. Once your feed link is in your account, you can update and process your Channel to update products directly in GMC without needing to replace the link.

 

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What's next?

• Learn how to create a product data feed using Plytix’s Google Shopping Template
• Learn how to upload a CSV template into your CSV or XML channel 
• Learn how to define the data format for XML channels

 

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