ChannelAdvisor have published a note on Google Paid search updates that will apply to the UK as well as to Australia, Brazil, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland and the USA.
Last year Google changed their feed specification to require Global Trade Item Numbers (GTINs) for all products falling from any of 50 designated brands. Channeladvisor say that “Soon Google will start to require GTINs for any new, in-stock product that has a GTIN assigned by a manufacturer”.
The key date is the 15th of May, from then onwards you’ll start to see products being rejected by Google from your product feed if you haven’t added the GTIN.
This will of course apply to all merchants and marketplaces, hence it’s essential that you start adding GTINs to your eBay products if you haven’t already done so at eBay’s request. eBay’s deadline is the week commencing 29th February so you have just two weeks left to comply.
You can find further information on the ChannelAdvisor blog, and if of course you use a multichannel management provider like ChannelAdvisor you’ll be able to add GTINs to your products once and then they’ll be propogated to all marketplaces and product feeds.
