Feeds

A product feed is a file that shopping and advertising services, such as Google Merchant Center or Meta, read to list your products. Each country you sell in gets its own address, which you paste into the service's console; the service then reads it, usually once a day. You decide which products the feed publishes and when it starts answering. Everything happens in Feeds, under Marketing in the main menu.

Create a feed

1. Open the main menu and, under Marketing, click Feeds.
2. Click Add a feed.
3. On New feed, enter a Name — for example Google France. It names the feed here and in the service's console.
4. Choose the service that will read the feed (for example Google Merchant Center), or Other.
5. Click Create the feed.

The message Feed created, paused. appears, with an Open the feed link. The feed already holds every country your shop sells in, but it stays paused so you can check it before anything is published.

Note — A shop can hold up to 20 feeds. Every feed is written in the Google product format, which all the services in the list can read.

Give a feed's addresses to the service

1. Open Feeds and click Detail at the end of the feed's row.
2. Click the Markets tab. Each row is a country and a language, with its Feed address.
3. Optionally, click Preview on a row to see the feed exactly as the service will read it.
4. In the service's console, add a product source read from a URL, choose the country and language shown on the row, and paste its Feed address.

Repeat for each row: there is one address per country and language. The row's figures appear after the first read or your first preview, and are refreshed at most once an hour.

Note — The preview works even while the feed is paused. Its link is private and expires after a day. If a row shows No public address yet, your shop has no public address so far.

Add or remove a country

1. On the Markets tab, click Add a market, choose the Country, then click Add the market. The message Market added. appears.
2. To take a country off the feed, click Remove on its row, then Remove again to confirm. The message Market removed. appears.

Only the countries your shop sells in can be added. A country you add back gets the same address and its earlier figures. After removing one, delete the matching source in the service's console too.

Choose which products a feed publishes

1. Open the feed and click the Products tab.
2. On the Selection box, click Edit.
3. Under Categories, leave Published categories on All categories, or choose Only these categories and tick them. Ticking a category includes its whole family.
4. Under Rules, choose what happens to Out-of-stock items — Left out or Listed as out of stock — and to Products with no photo — Left out or Use a photo of the same product group.
5. Click Save.

The message Selection saved. appears, and the next read of the feed follows the new selection.

Note — If Items published is shown, changing it changes every item's ID, and the service starts each item's history again.

Exclude a single product

1. On the Products tab, click Edit on the Product exclusions box.
2. Under Add a product, search the Product by name or SKU and pick it.
3. Click Exclude.

The message The product is excluded from this feed. appears: this feed never publishes it, whatever the other rules say. To publish it again, click Remove on its row under Excluded products, then Remove to confirm — the message The exclusion is removed. The feed publishes the product again. appears.

Tip — Before you activate a feed, check Left out at last build and Warnings at last build on the Products tab. A Most repeated price shared by many items is often a placeholder: correct those products first.

Set custom labels and link tracking

Custom labels let the service group items and set bids, for example by grade or by brand. Link tracking adds words to every item's link so you can recognise the visits the adverts bring.

1. Open the feed and click the Products tab.
2. On the Item details box, click Edit.
3. Under Custom labels, choose a value for each Custom label you need: Grade, Brand, Category, Top category or Product group — or leave None.
4. Under Link tracking, enter the Source (utm_source), Medium (utm_medium) and Campaign (utm_campaign).
5. Click Save.

The message Item details saved. appears. The tracking words show in your Audience dashboard as the source, medium and campaign of those visits.

Note — Tracking words accept only lowercase letters, digits, hyphens, underscores, dots and plus signs.

Activate or pause a feed

1. Open the feed.
2. Click Activate (or Pause if the feed is already active).
3. Check the Current status and the New status, then click Activate (or Pause).

The message Feed activated. (or Feed paused.) appears. The service notices at its next read, usually within a day. A paused feed's addresses answer "not found"; the service keeps the items it last read until they expire.

Note — A feed can be activated only once your shop has a public address and the feed has at least one country. Otherwise the message Activate it once the boutique has a public address. or Add a market first. appears.

Rename or delete a feed

1. Open the feed.
2. To rename it, click Edit, change the Name or the service, then click Save. The message Feed saved. appears, and its addresses do not change.
3. To delete it, click Delete, then Delete the feed. The message Feed deleted. appears.

A deleted feed's addresses stop answering for good, and it cannot be restored: to publish again, add a new feed, which gets new addresses.

Important — After deleting a feed, remove its source from each service's console so the service stops trying to read it.