Hi, I'm Clarice Lin, the ROI doctor who helps small businesses and online stores get on
Google and YouTube page one.
Today's question is, is Google enhanced listings free for my Shopify store?
The answer is, yes.
If you're a Shopify store owner, you have to be in the Google enhanced listings program.
This is, this means that your product in your store will be found on the Google Shopping
tab.
And you want to be found there because in 2020, 2 billion people bought services and
products online through Google, so you don't want to miss out on a slice of the pie.
Previously, you have to pay to get on Google Shopping tab but since last year, Google has
made it free for any retailers to list their products for free on the shopping tab, because
they know that online buyers or browsers, instead of going to in-store they're spending
more time online researching on it.
So they want to be the number one location where people would go to if they are researching
on their products.
If you have a Shopify store, you definitely have to be found on Google Shopping.
And this is how you do it.
You need three things, you need to set up a Google Ads account, you need to install
the Google App on your Shopify store, which is also free.
And you also need to open a Google Merchant Center account which is called the GMC account.
For exact details how to set it up, I have recorded another video all about it.
So you can head on to check it out on the step by step process with screenshots to follow
along.
And once you have all this setup, you need to set up also a product feed making sure
that Google can extract your product information from your Shopify store directly to Google.
For your product feed to be successfully approved by Google, you need to make sure that you're
sending the correct information for each of your products to Google, there's a list of
publicly available official product requirements that you need to fulfill.
So you need to follow that.
I'm going to hit onto my computer, so I can show you the list of all this information.
And I'm going to go into details, what does each of these attribute mean and what you
need to fill it up.
First of all, this is the free listings on the shopping tab page.
This is for setting up free listings, whether it's the standard listing or the enhanced
listings for your products to get onto Google.
This is the main page and you can see that this is the Sign In button or get started
button if you want to set up a new account.
Essentially free listings is divided into two parts.
One, which is the standard listing and the other one is the enhanced listings.
Both are for free.
What's the difference?
For free listing, this is how your product is going to show up on Google search, you
can see that the rating price and availability can be seen on the Google search page.
Next, on the image search results page, you can see the images of your products showing
up.
There will be a product tag here that shows the shopping tab and availability will also
be listed.
This is what will happen if you have successfully fulfilled the criteria for a listing.
What's the criteria for a free product listing?
This is the official page.
You can see right here support.google.com/merchants/answer/9199328.
So that's the URL.
You will see this page says product data requirements.
If you submit a product feed to Google for the first time, you can enable your products
appear for free on Google.
And that's what I've shown you in the previous slide.
The minimum required attributes to show your inventory for free on Google, these are the
five attributes for standard listings standard free listings, ID, title, link, image link
and the price.
So for ID if you're on the Shopify store, this will be an automatically generated ID
when you create your product page.
This will be transmitted to Google Merchant Center.
Title will be the title of your product obviously and the link could be your product page link.
Image link is this specific URL where your image is hosted.
There will be one specifically on Shopify and the price of your product.
Once Google receives all this five attribute information, then, then they will approve
if all of this is up to standard.
So this is pretty straightforward.
Most of you should be able to get this up on Google Merchant Center approved very easily.
Challenging part comes when you need to fulfill the criteria for the enhanced free listing.
Enhanced free listing meaning that your product will show up on Google Shopping tab.
That will look like this.
When you go to your Google Shopping tab, you can see basically, there is this part that
says sponsored over here, which is for paid ads.
So if you are planning to run Google Shopping ads, that's when your products are going to
show up here.
Whereas those that are down below here, there's not under the sponsored carousel, these are
the free shopping lists.
So all this and below.
For your products will be able to show up here on the shopping tab, as part of big free
Google shopping listings, you need to fulfill this other criteria.
To be able, to be for your products to show up on the Google Shopping page.
As what I've shown you in the previous slide, you need to look at this enhanced listings
criteria.
This enhanced listings criteria will appear in content rich formats on the shopping tab,
which may boost traffic and drive sales.
People who go to the shopping tab.
These are usually shoppers, people who have intention to buy.
On top of the requirements or attributes that you have fulfilled previously, the five different
attributes, you need to assess this other attributes over here whether it's applicable
for your products.
So there are specific attributes or specific information that's only applicable for certain
countries or regions or certain industry or certain product type.
So you need to look through all of these 15 attributes to see which are the ones that
are compulsory for your products.
And you need to make sure you're filling the correct information.
Description, which is pretty straightforward.
It's part of your products, you can fill it up and it will be there.
Availability, this is also compulsory for all products, which there is a standard information
or standard format that you need to provide it in.
You have to check it out what is available, make sure you have the correct information
and condition which is required for each used or refurbished product.
So if yours is a new product in general, so you might not necessarily need to fill it
in.
But then you can also choose to enrich your product information by putting in new, for
condition you can put in as "new" and then if it's used or refurbished, you could use
those information accordingly.
So brand, if you have a branded product, if you're manufacturing your own products, you
need to also provide this information.
So theoretically, what happens is when Google Merchant Center pull the product feed from
Shopify, it doesn't automatically pull a brand information, that's when you need to transform
this piece of information in the feed in Google Merchant Center account.
I'm not going to show you how you need to do it in this video.
But if you want to know a little bit more about product views transformation in the
product feed I have another video which talks about, if you're, if you're manufacturing
your own product, you're not getting your products from other manufacturers and you
don't have a GTIN number, nor a MPN number, then you need to transform this information,
so you can check out that iden, identifier exists video that I have.
If your product is a multipack you need to fill it in.
So if your product is a individual product by itself, then you don't need to fill up
this information.
Next is bundle.
If it's an individual product, similarly, you don't need to fill up this information,
just ignore it.
And color is required for apparel and accessories.
So if you're selling clothes, swimwear, anything, that's something you put on the body and accessories,
putting in the color is a basic requirement.
So you need to fill this up.
If you're selling food, then obviously you wouldn't need to fill up this information.
Next thing is looking at size.
So that's also a requirement if you're selling cloth related items or accessories that the
product is needs to be standardized or customized to small, medium, large, something along those
lines.
So you need to fill up the size requirements as well.
Age group, that's also required for apparel and accessories if a product falls under that
category, otherwise it's not needed because for example, if you're selling let's say you're
selling skincare products, or if you're selling food products, along those lines, there is
no specific age group who can use those products, who can use or eat that product.
Next thing, gender, that's also a core requirement for apparel and accessories as well.
And then item group ID that's also required for product variants.
So if you have various different sizes, if you have like one product and then you have
different flavors, so that it's also an item group ID which you need to fill in, otherwise
you don't have to and you also need to fill up the shipping requirements.
So the shipping information, how long it takes to turn around so you need that shipping information
as well as tax for your products, taxing on your products.
If you're selling in the US there's different tax requirements you need to fill in, so you
need to make sure you fill up both this information shipping and tax in the settings part.
If you need more help around filling up shipping information I have another video which explains
exactly how you fill up this shipping information in the settings in Google Merchant Center
account.
So do check it out.
There's also screenshots for you to follow along so I highly recommend you to check that
video out.
This is the list of all the attributes you need to review when you want to successfully
get your products up on the Google Shopping feed.
I hope that's useful information for you.
So you can check this information out on this official page which is right here merchant/answer/9199328
that's the one.
Okay, I hope that tutorial was useful for you.
If you still find all of this too much for you and you need help, I also offer services
to help Shopify stores get on Google Shopping.
You can check out the link in my description below for more instructions and details.
And if you enjoyed this video and found it really useful, tap on the like button, and
don't forget to subscribe to my channel for future videos on getting your Shopify store
on Google Shopping.