Philadelphia Web Design Firm Tips for Optimizing Google Product Search Listings

The use of unique product identifiers has recently become more important in Google Product Search listings. This article will explain these unique product identifiers and why Philadelphia Web Design firms should encourage their ecommerce clients to begin using them on Google Product Search feeds.



Most Philadelphia Web Design firms have been cognizant of the importance of Google product search results in the universal listings for quite some time. Many have implemented automated feeds to Google of all the products in their client carts, and tried to optimize these listings so that they show up in Google shopping results.



In August, Google announced that there were several unique product identifiers that would be instrumental in product listing placement within the Google Shopping results. The mandatory fields for Google product search include product title, description, price, shipping, etc., but there are many other fields that are not required but which sellers should also try to fill with content about products. Specifically, the unique product identifiers will be important for electronics, books, and media categories starting in August of 2010, but it is strongly suggested for every product that has one of these identifiers to add it in the product search feed.



Unique product identifiers are product codes associated with an individual product. They include UPC (Universal Product Code), EAN (European Article Number), and ISBN (International Standard Book Number). These identifiers, along with brand and MPN, help Google match users' searches to your products. Google indicates that every product should have the category identifier, and that electronics products need to have at least two of the following three identifiers: UPC, Brand, or MPN. Media products like music, movies and video games need the UPC identifier, and books should have the ISBN unless they were published before 1970.



If you do not know the product UPC or EAN you can look them up online on the UPC Database website. You can find ISBNs at ISBNdb.com, or check them on ISBN-13 on Google Product Search.



Other tips for Google Product Search placement include adding search terms to titles and descriptions of products, uploading the feed at least once a week, adding the search term into the URL of the product and the image URL, including shipping and tax information, making sure the information on Google product search matches the information on the website, filling in all the fields that Google allows a search or filter on, and using Google product extension ads if the client is also running Adwords.