Prepare your data feeds for the holidays with Google Shopping Office Hours

With less than three months to Black Friday, the holiday shopping season is quickly approaching. We know that advertisers with Product Listing Ads campaigns are in search of new ways to optimize their product data and drive more traffic to their stores.

Last week, we hosted Google Shopping Office Hours via Hangouts on Air to share general advice on data feeds and unique product identifiers. We saw great engagement and will be broadcasting additional sessions, deep-diving into topics that will help prepare your data feeds for the holidays.

Below is a calendar of Google Shopping Office Hours for the upcoming months. We encourage you to attend sessions of interest. We’ll discuss the topic for the first 20 minutes then open up the forum to live Q&A. If you already know what you’d like to ask or want to request a topic, feel free to submit your responses here. Questions on the event pages below will also answered in the Q&A.

Pricing, Taxes & Shipping
Tuesday, September 10, 2013 @ 10:00 AM PT
How do I include the right price into my data feed?
How does tax & shipping work?
What if I have a sale or promotion for free shipping?
Registration Link

Troubleshooting Disapprovals
Tuesday, September 24, 2013 @ 10:00 AM PT
What do I do if my feed is disapproved?
What are the common data feed and data quality pitfalls?
How do I ensure all my products are approved?
Registration Link

Scaling Inventory Updates
Tuesday, October 8, 2013 @ 10:00 AM PT
What are the best practices for updating and editing my feed?
What are the various data feed upload methods?
What are the pros and cons of each method?
Registration Link

Optimizing Product Attributes
Tuesday, October 22, 2013 @ 10:00 AM PT
How do I improve my data quality?
What should I optimize?
Registration Link

Posted by Chris Azalde, Product Specialist, Google Shopping

Updates to Google Merchant Center Terms of Service

(Cross-posted from the Google Commerce blog)

Back in January, we announced our new Google Terms of Service to provide a more consistent experience for users across Google's products. Starting today, March 29, Google Merchant Center will be covered by the new Google Terms of Service along with a short set of additional terms and conditions specific to Merchant Center.

While the substance in the additional Merchant Center terms and conditions remains unchanged from the previous version, the new additional terms and conditions are shorter and reworded to be easier to understand. We encourage you to take the time to review the new Google Terms of Service along with the additional Merchant Center terms and conditions.

Posted by Mayuresh Saoji, Senior Product Manager, Google Merchant Center team