Google announced on Google+ that effective tomorrow, Google will be requiring that all shopping data feeds contain the GTINs, Global Trade Item Numbers for the products listed in the feed.
Google said:
For most products, the manufacturer will provide a Global Trade Item Number (GTIN) to uniquely and completely identify a product in the global marketplace. We’ve found that providing GTINs in your product data feed increases the likelihood that your offers are matched to the Google Shopping product catalog. This helps us surface relevant, accurate results on Google Shopping; in fact, early experiments indicate that offers matched to the catalog receive up to 40% more user clicks than those that do not.
Starting tomorrow, September 15th, Google will require Google Shopping feeds targeting Australia, Brazil, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom or the United States to submit valid ‘gtin’ and ‘brand’ for all products when the ‘brand’ is a designated brand and the ‘condition’ is ‘new’.
Google said tomorrow will "disapprove offers that do not meet this requirement or are submitted with invalid GTINs."
Here is the Google blog post on this topic.
Forum discussion at Google+.
This post was pre-written and scheduled to be posted today. Have a happy, healthy and sweet new year!
