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Enable automatic item updates

Automatic item updates is a Google Merchant feature which improves pricing and stock information updates in Google Shopping. It uses microdata from your Product pages to maintain fresh price and availability info, by updating this several times a day. 

Activating Microdata item updates on your feed config will add hidden microdata information on your store product pages. Make sure to clear cache and check your product pages to make sure they still render properly.

Benefits

If you update prices during the day, regularly hold promotions and special offers, or have low-stock items that sell fast, then microdata will help you:

  • keep prices, availability and condition fresh in Google
  • validate your products in Google's strict pricing consistency rules
  • improve user experience, traffic to your product listings, and higher conversion rates because users already see the correct price on Google Shopping

In contrast, if you choose not to enable automatic item updates in your account, items with mismatched price and availability will be temporarily disapproved rather than updated.

Prerequisite

You'll need to have price and availability columns in the feed, these are enabled and set up by default.

Step-by-step guide

If you don't update prices more than once per day, you can still benefit from Microdata for stock information:

  • Google will be able to see when a product goes out-of-stock, or back in stock, and mark it in Shopping.
  • This will prevent item rejection due to mismatched stock info.

 

 

  1. Activate Microdata item updates from System > Configuration > .Rocket Shopping Feeds > General (see Fig 1.20)

Fig 1.20 Activate Microdata item updates

GGsmicrodata.png

1. Activate Microdata item updates from System > Configuration > .Rocket Shopping Feeds > General

2. Enable automatic item updates in Google Merchant. (see Fig. 1.21)

 

  • Go to "Settings" in the left-hand menu, then "Automatic item updates"
  • Click "Edit Settings"
  • Check "Enable automatic item updates"
  • Select "Price and Availability" and check "Also update items that are 'in stock' on my website but 'out of stock' on Shopping."
  • Click Save changes

 

Fig 1.21 Enable automatic updates

[missing screenshot: microdata_setup_merchant.png]




Troubleshooting

Google provides a handy tool to see what microdata is enabled on your product pages. 
Just paste the URL to a Product Page and you should see all the items on that page with their respective price and stock status.

→ http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets

Microdata missing?

You should first verify that this particular product is included in the feed.

  • if the product is not in the feed, then microdata may not appear correctly
  • if the product is missing Stock and Price columns in the feed, then microdata will be missing them as well 
  • and that all caches are cleared - you'll need to see a fresh Product Page for the new info to work. So a full clear of Full Page Cache / Block Cache / 3rd party Varnish caches will be needed before your product pages will contain microdata. The "Flush Cache Storage" button will clear all caches in a default Magento installation

 

If you use another extension that outputs microdata in the Product Page, you should consider disabling it, or removing price and stock info from its output.
Our extension will always output the exact Product ID, availability, price and currency that you send in the feed - this is important for successful Google Merchant validation.

 

 

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