Google Data Feed Nightmare

[VinceS]

IS ANYONE ELSE EXPERIENCING THIS. I CAN'T BELIEVE I"M THE ONLY ONE.

OK I've spent the better part of three days massaging nearly 15K products trying in vain to get my datafeed approved by Google. Some of the rejections just don't make sense to me.

For instance, Google says that you must have a UPC code OR the Brand and the Manufacturers Part Number (MPN). Well, I'm getting errors saying that the UPC code is missing on products that DON"T HAVE UPC code but do have Brand and MPN present. UPC codes, for those who may not know this, are not free and many manufacturers opt NOT incur the cost and don't register their products for UPC. At first I thought MAYBE the product does have a UPC code but my supplier has not provided it to me so Google knows that a UPC code exists for this product. Plausible. BUT I have products that I know for a fact don't have UPC codes and Google is still rejecting them. Maddening!

I've been on Googles Merchant Forum and was at least comforted in the fact that I'm not alone. These issues are common especially among smaller retailers. The consensus is that if you're not an Amazon, Google doesn't give a rats - about you. What ever happened to Google's business motto to "Do No Evil". I guess its another proof that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Anyway, here's where my Google Merchant Account stands at the moment:
1) My account is suspended. For how long? I don't know. They don't say. What they do say is that if I don't fix the errors I could be suspended permanently.
2) All my items have been removed from Google Product Search.
3) My traffic is down by at least 60%
4) Sales are in the toilet
5) I've wasted three days trying to fix something that apparently is not fixable.

My thought is this,
1) I'm going to upload an empty feed.
2) Let everything just clear out.
3) Wait for the omnipotent Google Gods to reinstate my account (of course I'll probably be out of business by then)
4) Slowly load products back over time

Comments, suggestions and mortgage donations will be greatly appreciated.

[Jim]

Have you actually contacted Google by email and been told these things or are you just going by messages in your Google account? Some times it takes a personal email to them to get actions.

What version of ShopSite are you using? If it is not ShopSite 11sp1 r2 I recommend that you upgrade to that version as there have been many changes for Google Product search added recently for new fields and new data format.

Also are you using the FTP method to submit your feeds or are you using the API method? The two methods do not use the same data format so you can't use the API method in ShopSite to generate a feed and then manually submit that feed using the FTP method.

[VinceS]

Hi Jim
No I have not tried to contact Google directly. I have been concentrating on "fixing" errors.
From posts on Google's Merchant Forum it appears that emails don't get much attention, though as I said I haven't tried.

I only upgraded to SS v11 Pro recently (like last Monday). To the best I can figure, my Google account was suspended on December 28th, prior to the upgrade.

I use FTP directly from the backoffice.

As my previous post says, I think the only option I have right now is to back-out all my products by un-checking "Include in Data Feed" and sending an empty file (or maybe 1 product), then wait until the feed is approved and my account is re-instated.

Once reinstated, I'll re-submit products a few at a time.