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What is a feed?
A feed is a file that lists the products you wish to advertise through the Merchant Center. To upload your product data to the Merchant Center, you will need a feed into which you can submit that data.
The Merchant Center uses various types of feeds. The primary feed is the main data source the Merchant Center uses to access and display your product data and is the only feed type that can add or remove products. Supplemental feeds are used to add or update information in your primary feed. A supplemental feed can therefore never be the main data source.
Your feed can be used multiple times across multiple Merchant Center features. Once a feed is created and registered, you can update the existing feed without needing to register it again.
How to create a primary feed
Google recommends that you submit all your products into a single primary feed. If your primary feed contains all the core product data necessary to show your products in Google Shopping, you don’t have to create a supplemental feed.
Follow these steps to create a primary feed:
- In the left Merchant Center menu, navigate to Products, Feeds.
2. At the top of the page, you will see the primary feeds section. Use the + button to create a new primary feed.
3. Enter all the information following the prompts:
- Select the country and language in which products from this feed are sold. Remember to make sure that you meet all requirements for the country you submit.
- After you have selected the language, you can choose one or more feed destinations. The feed destinations allow you to manage which Google features can use the items in your data feed.
- You can enter a descriptive and unique name in this menu. It’s a common misconception that the feed name and the name of the file you will submit must match. This is not the case. You can read more about the feed file name here. If for any reason you want to edit the primary feed name later, this is possible by editing your primary feed settings. After entering the feed name, you can choose an input method.
- Depending on the input method you have selected, you may have the option to enter the file name of the file you are submitting. The file name should be identical to the name of the file you created. The file name should also include a valid extension. Valid extensions include .txt, .xml, .gz, .zip, and .bz2.
- Click continue to complete the primary feed creation.
That’s it! You have just created your primary feed. You can now view and manage your feed in the Merchant Center under Feeds.
If you would like to show your product data in additional countries, you can add a country of sale by clicking Add below Additional countries or clicking the three dots in your feed’s Settings tab.
If you experience any issues with your product feed regarding policy violations or account suspension, read this article to help you solve them.
We hope this article has been helpful. If you have any questions about this topic or would like our help creating your feed, please contact us at css@shoparize.com
