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AI isn’t assisting discovery. It’s rewriting it.
Explore how AI is reshaping shopper behavior — and what brands must do to stay visible.
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Need help with Google Shopping Feed Optimization and Categorization?
We optimize and categorize millions of products daily for our clients. Find out what we can do for your eCommerce store. Get a !
We even have a way to automatically categorize products for the Google taxonomy using Artificial Intelligence
There are thousands of categories in the taxonomy that should be provided in your Google Shopping feed. While some providing your category for Google Shopping is sometimes optional, some categories are required, like 'Apparel & Accessories', 'Media', and 'Software'. For all other categories, it is recommended but not required to include Google Product Categories for increasing your relevancy as well as for better bid segmentation grouping.
The relevancy gains of providing Google product categories are immense, and should not be overlooked. Our full-service feed optimization team can help you categorize thousands or even millions of products into great categories for bidding purposes and just better relevancy overall.
Google Product Categories can be subdivided only in the UK, US, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, Netherlands, Brazil, Norway, Sweden, Turkey and Australia. Product type is recommended for segmentation for other countries.
Turns out it doesn't matter. Google converts their IDs to names in their backend, so you can use either Category IDs or Category numbers for Google Product Categories. It is of course easier to see your categories as actual names.
The main product in a bundled item should be used for the category of the bundle. For example, when submitting a digital SLR camera bundled with a bag the correct Google Product Category would be ‘Cameras & Optics > Cameras > Digital Cameras’, because the digital SLR camera is the main product in the bundle.
Items in the ‘Apparel & Accessories category’ can be generally specified or more specifically. For example, Coats and Jackets could be put under 1604 or 'Apparel & Accessories > Clothing' or 203 or more specifically 'Apparel & Accessories > Clothing' > Outerwear' or even more specifically 5598 or 'Apparel & Accessories > Clothing' > Outerwear > Coats & Jackets'.
Some categories may fit under several categories, but only one Google Product Category is allowed. Choose the category that best describes your item and which is the most specific.
If you’ve ever found yourself asking "how do I map my products to Google Shopping categories as granularly as possible?", we can actually do all the heavy lifting! Feedonomics lets you easily see your data and write powerful transformation rules to create the absolute best Google Shopping categories for bidding and performance.
We also have a way to automatically categorize products for the Google taxonomy using Artificial Intelligence
Remember, if you are on Google Merchant Center, you can take advantage of Google Shopping Actions. Google Shopping Actions lets you get your products on Google Express, enable 1-click reordering, and be accessible through the voice-controlled Google Assistant. See everything you need to know to get started with Google Shopping Actions.
Brian Roizen
