Happy Valentines Day, Canada! We noticed an interesting new warning in Google Merchant Center for Canadian merchants.
It looks as if the heightened GTIN restrictions that were applied to US Google feeds in mid-2015 will be applied to Canadian feeds next year. So far this has not been applied to the other international Google Shopping countries.
The screenshot above is what you will see for any Google Shopping Canada merchants who are selling products sold by other merchants.
The set of Canadian products that are displaying this warning is almost identical to the set of US products which are already disapproved for requiring GTINs, so it might be safe to assume that if a product requires a GTIN in the US now, it will require a GTIN in Canada after February 14, 2017.
Brian Roizen is the Cofounder and Chief Architect of Feedonomics, a full-service feed optimization platform that optimizes product data for hundreds of channels. He has been featured on numerous podcasts and eCommerce webinars, and regularly contributes to Search Engine Land and other industry-leading blogs. Brian graduated summa cum laude from UCLA with both a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering.
