Google recently sent an email to all merchants using Google Product Search that contained the following:

Starting in late August 2010, we are making some changes to how your products in the Electronics, Books, and Media categories may appear on 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 above categories for the US version of Google Product Search, please start including unique product identifiers, such as MPN, Brand, UPC or ISBN. We will make similar changes to Product Search in the UK and Germany at a later date.

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, the “Tracks” or “Details” section for Media, and the “Overview” section for books.

For more details, including what specific identifiers you should include for each category of item, please see our Help Center at http://www.google.com/support/merchants/bin/answer.py?answer=160161

What does this mean?

If you sell products that are books, electronics, or media, Google is now *strongly* encouraging merchants to include that product’s unique identifier (ISBN for books, MPN for media, UPC/Brand for electronics, etc…).

Although your feed will not fail, your products will likely be ranked below products in these categories that include these unique tags.

How to include these items in ShopSite?

If you are using ShopSite as your e-commerce software, here are a few things you can do to include these identifiers for products that fall under this new requirement:

1. Setting the extra field name to match the Google attribute (i.e. upc, mpn, or isbn)

Preferences -> Extra Fields
for example:
Extra Product field 3: upc
Extra product field 4: isbn

Extra Product Field Config (click image to enlarge)

2. Putting the appropriate codes for each product in the matching extra product field

Products -> Edit Product Info

Enter Unique Codes (click image to enlarge)

3. Sending these extra fields to google:

Merchandising -> Google Search -> Configure

Enable sending unique codes (click image to enlarge)

Note: The “brand” is actually set for each product under “Edit Product Info” so you do not need an extra product field for brand.

Brand is a default field

…

That’s all that is needed to include these new unique identifiers for products that are books, electronics, or media.

Related posts:

1. Google Product Search Changes for ShopSite Merchants
2. More Changes to Google Product Search Feed Submissions
3. Accessing the Google Product Search XML File in ShopSite