Google Shopping Feed for Shopify

Shopify, Google Merchant Center, product feed – that's all you need to start selling on Google Shopping. If you plan to run an ad campaign, you also must add Google Ads to this list. But how exactly do you put all these elements together, you may ask?

You first configure Google Merchant Center, Shopify and, if necessary, Google Ads. You can do that in just five steps:

1. Make a Google account on accounts.google.com if you don’t have one yet. It’s your key to dozens of Google services, including Merchant Center and Google Ads.
2. Now you can get started in the Merchant Center. To do that, click “Start now”, log into your Google account and follow a simple registration process. Refer to the "Register an account" section of this guide if you’re having any trouble.
3. You can set shipping and tax rates at the Merchant account level. In that way, you won’t need to include this information in the feed for each product separately. Read the FAQ section of this guide to find out how you can specify shipping and tax details.
4. Now let’s add Shopify to your setup. You must link your Shopify store website and your Merchant account. By doing this, you tell Google that you’re the owner of the website. Follow the step-by-step tutorial in the “Verify and claim your website” section of this guide to connect your store with Google.
5. This step is optional. If you want to create paid ad campaigns, you have to link your Google Ads and Merchant accounts. This Google guide on Google Ads will help you do it whether you have a Google Ads account or not.

And finally, let’s set up the Shopify Google product feed. You use it to give Google your products’ information. That’s where you need Mulwi. Our product feed software makes Shopify shopping feed management easy and effective. With Mulwi, you can create a feed that meets the Google Shopping product feed specification in just a few clicks. And once you connect the feed to the Merchant Center, you just watch Mulwi take care of the rest. Mulwi will keep the product data in your Merchant Center up to date with the information in your Shopify store. And installing Mulwi is just as easy as clicking the “Install” button in the Shopify app store.

With Mulwi, you now have to take only three final steps: create the feed, check it, and upload it to the Merchant Center.

You might need to configure some things in Mulwi when creating the feed. You would find it easier to do now rather than during the process. Here are these things:

• If you have multiple product categories, create a Category Mapping.
• If you want to choose what products to include in the feed, create a Product Filter.
• If you want to use Shopify Markets and Price Lists, enable them in Apps > Mulwi Feeds > Settings.
• If you need to translate your feed, enable translation in the Settings.

Now, follow the instructions below to create a feed for Google Shopping in Shopify with Mulwi:

1. In your Shopify store admin dashboard, go to Apps > Mulwi Feeds > Feeds and click the Add Feed button.
2. Choose the Google Shopping Feed template in the Most Popular Feeds section.
3. Pick XML, CSV, or TXT feed file format and click Create. The Local Inventory Feed is an additional feed that shows what products are available in the physical store. You shouldn’t use it without a primary XML, CSV, or TXT feed. Сreate and upload a primary feed to Google first, and then add a Local Inventory Feed if needed.
4. Ensure that the feed’s status in the This feed is currently section is set to Active so that this feed is visible to Google Merchant Center.
5. Provide basic feed information:
   • Feed Internal Name. You will find the feed in Mulwi by this name.
   • Filename. Enter a name for your file that is unique across all your feeds in Mulwi.
   • Max Number of Items per File. You can limit how many products to include in one feed.
   • Compression. You can make the feed file more compact by compressing it.
   • Protect feed with password. If you need to, protect the feed from unauthorized access with a username and a password.
   • Applied Filters. You can use product filters to add only specific products to the feed.

6. Pay attention to the Template section:
   • Connect your categories to those in the Google Product Taxonomy with the Google Shopping Categorization field. Select Static Value if you have only one category. In this case, choose the right category from the dropdown list. If you have multiple categories, use Dynamic Mapping. Pick the right category mapping from the dropdown menu.
   • Pick values for Google’s required attributes in the Specific fields section. You can add dynamic values with Dynamic Conditions and Dynamic Expressions.
   • Fill in the Shipping details section. You can use the Shipping details section only if you want to use different shipping settings than those set in your Merchant Center.

7. Check and configure the remaining sections:
   • Source of prices. You can use Markets and Price Lists as price sources.

• Stock locations. Select specific stocks from which you want to sell. By default, all stocks will be included in the feed.
• Translation. You can translate your product information if necessary.

• Google Analytics. If necessary, add your analytics campaign’s UTM codes.

8. Finally, click Save to create a feed.

Great! You’ve created your Shopify feed for Google Shopping! With our preinstalled template, you have already included everything Google must know about your products. But if you need to customize the feed to your needs, see this guide for a CSV and TXT template, or consult this guide for an XML template.

Now let’s see how you can find out if there are any problems with your feed.

If you check your feed and fix problems now, Google will approve the feed from the first try. And Mulwi has a tool to help you. With quality control, you can find the feed’s weak spots and see ways to improve them.

Every feed has a Quality Control section on the right side of the feed page:

Quality control has three types of checks:

• Errors. These are the problems you absolutely must fix. Products with errors will not appear on Google.
• Warnings. You don’t have to fix these problems, but if you do, your products will rank higher on Google.
• Improvements. If you use these tips, Google will show your products even higher.

On the feed page, you can see only a total number of issues for each check. You will find more details in the report, which you can get by clicking “Download PDF report”.

In this report, you can see which products require attention, what types of issues the product has, and how to solve these problems. Before moving on to the final step, check your feed’s quality control report and fix any problems your feed has.

You can upload your Shopify Google Shopping feed to the Merchant Center in three ways:

• Give your feed’s URL.
• Configure an SFTP connection.
• Download the file from Mulwi and manually upload it.

Pick your method and go to the respective tutorial below to finish connecting your feed. If you run into any problems, you can also check the “Upload the feed” section of this guide for help.

Upload feed via feed URL

Follow this tutorial to upload the feed with a Shopify feed URL:

1. On the top panel of your Merchant Center, click the gear icon and select Data Sources > Add product source.
2. Select Add products from a file > Enter a link to your file.
3. Copy the feed URL from Mulwi. To do that, go back to your feed’s page, choose the URL upload option in the Feed section and click Copy feed URL.
4. Return to the Merchant Center and paste the copied link in the input field.
5. Set how frequently Google should update the feed in the Edit schedule block.
6. If your feed has password protection, edit the Add authentication information block.
7. At the bottom of the page, select the countries where Google will show your products and pick the feed language.

8. Finally, click Continue to upload your feed.

Great job! You’ve successfully connected your Google Shopping feed to the Merchant Center! However, Google needs some time to load your products in the Merchant Center. Be sure to check the Products section later.

Upload feed through SFTP connection

Follow this tutorial to upload the feed with an SFTP connection:

1. On the top panel of your Merchant Center, click the gear icon and select Data Sources > Add product source.
2. Select Add products from a file > Add a file using SFTP or Google Cloud Storage.
3. Forget about the input field for now: you will fill it in later. Instead, click View SFTP and Google Cloud Storage details and copy all the credentials except Fingerprint. Don’t forget to generate a new password and save it to a secure location.
4. Now let’s enter these credentials in Mulwi:
   • Go back to your feed’s page and choose the FTP/SFTP upload option in the Feed section.
   • Click the Manage FTP/SFTP button to start setting up your connection.
   • Set how frequently Mulwi should update the feed in the Auto Upload field.
   • Choose SFTP in the Protocol field.
   • Enter Host and Port values from the Merchant Center in the Host and Port fields respectively.
   • Pick Password as the Authorization type and enter Username and Password values from the Merchant Center in the User and Password fields respectively.
   • Leave the Upload Directory field empty.
   • Click Save to save new settings.
   • Click the arrow near the FTP/SFTP Settings title to go back to the feed’s page.

5. Copy the feed name from the Feed section. You must copy the feed name and its extension, for example google_shopping.xml.
6. Return to the Merchant Center, close the window with the credentials and paste the copied feed name in the input field.
7. At the bottom of the page, select the countries where Google will show your products and pick the feed language.
8. Finally, click Continue to upload your feed.

Great job! You’ve successfully connected your Google Shopping feed to the Merchant Center! However, Google needs some time to load your products in the Merchant Center. Be sure to check the Products section later.

Manually upload feed file

Follow this tutorial to upload the feed from your device:

1. On the top panel of your Merchant Center, click the gear icon and select Data Sources > Add product source.
2. Select Add products from a file > Upload a file from your computer.
3. Download the feed file from Mulwi. To do that, go back to your feed’s page, choose the URL upload option in the Feed section and click Download.
4. Return to the Merchant Center and click Browse to open the file explorer. Find the feed on your computer, select it and click Open.
5. At the bottom of the page, select the countries where Google will show your products and pick the feed language.

1. Finally, click Continue to upload your feed.

Great job! You’ve successfully uploaded your Google Shopping feed to the Merchant Center! However, if your products change in Shopify, they will not be updated in your Merchant Center. You will have to re-upload a new feed every time you need to update products.