In the world of Google Shopping campaigns, Missing GTINs and MPNs in your product feed used to mean mass product disapprovals in your Google Merchant Center (GMC) account. The rules around these Unique Product Identifiers in GMC have changed.
Find out which countries are affected, the details of the update, and how Google’s new rules will impact your shopping campaigns.
MPNs and GTINs Google Shopping updates
Google Merchant Centre has updated its policy regarding Unique Product Identifiers (URIs). Common product identifiers include Global Trade International Number (GTIN), Manufacturer Part Number (MPN), and Brand Names are all affected.
How to fix “Limited performance due to missing identifiers including MPN, GTIN, and brand”
Google states in its announcement:
“Items missing required APIs will no longer be disapproved. These items will now be eligible to serve in Shopping ads. However, similar items with correct UPIs will receive higher priority than items that do not have correct UPIs.All items will continue to serve, but the performance of items without correct UPIs may be limited. Make sure to provide the correct UPIs to maximize the performance of your items. Items for which the idenfitier_exists attribute is incorrectly set to “false” and for which there is evidence that a UPI exists will be disapproved.
If the same GTIN is used across multiple different products, the items will be considered ambiguous and will be disapproved.”
Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to troubleshoot this issue: Google Support.
To offload this task to a highly skilled Product Feed Management company contact Highstreet.io to manage your product feed and GMC issues.
Countries affected by GTIN & MPN rule change
Google Shopping sellers from the following countries will be affected by this update.
- Australia
- Austria
- Belgium
- Brazil
- Canada
- Czechia
- India
- Denmark
- France
- Germany
- Italy
- Japan
- Mexico
- the Netherlands
- Norway
- Poland
- Russia
- Spain
- Sweden
- Switzerland
- Turkey
- the United Kingdom
- the United States
This is great news for retailers who have trouble sourcing the GTINs or MPNs for the products they sell.
While their Product Listing Ad (PLA) performance may suffer compared to their competitors with the correct GTINs, they won’t be completely locked out of Google Shopping through product disapprovals anymore.
Maximize your product exposure
The advice from Google on including all your Unique Product Identifiers in your product data is very similar to what it was before their latest update.
Google provided the following guidance on how to maximize your product exposure.
“Be sure to submit correct GTINs, MPNs, and corresponding brands for all new in-stock products. This will improve the richness and relevancy of the ads we show to potential customers. Contact your manufacturer to request the correct UPI for your products.”
To learn more on how to optimize your feeds and get more information on GMC product identifiers, contact Highstreet.io , and will discuss all the details of how these recent updates can benefit your business.