Google’s robots are ADHD.

They are paranoid that someone will click a Product Listing Ad and see different data on your product page than you listed in your ad.

That’s why Google’s robots hang out on your website and watch your product data. You can satisfy their ADHD — and get more sales — by using Automatic item updates.

WHAT ARE AUTOMATIC ITEM UPDATES?

Many product feeds are updated daily. Changes made in the previous 24 hours to prices, availability, etc. are written to Google and your Product Listing Ads are updated.

Automatic item updates happen more frequently than feed updates. Google crawls your product pages in search of the two core metrics most likely to change — price and availability — and updates the data in your Google Merchant Center account if they find product pages with data different than what you submitted in your feed.

Get started with Automatic item updates.

USE MICRODATA TO MAKE GOOGLE’S ROBOTS HAPPY

Microdata is a structured data markup scheme that you can add to your webpages.

Google’s robots read the microdata on your product pages to determine what price and availability you’re showing your customers. They write that information back to your Google Merchant Center account, where discrepancies are automatically fixed.

Learn more about microdata for Google Shopping.

ENABLE AUTOMATIC ITEM UPDATES IN YOUR GOOGLE MERCHANT ACCOUNT

  1. Log in to your Google Merchant Center account
  2. Go to Settings > Automatic item updates
  3. Click “Edit Settings”
  4. Select “Specify my own settings”
  5. Select “Enable automatic item updates”
  6. In the drop-down menu, select “Price and availability”
  7. Select “Also update items that are ‘in stock’ on my website but ‘out of stock’ on Shopping”
  8. Save changes

FIND PRODUCTS MISSING MICRODATA

After you enable Automatic item updates, wait for 24 hours or so and you’ll start seeing messages about Automatic item updates under the Diagnostics tab.

You can use Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool to identify errors in your microdata.

THREE REASONS TO USE AUTOMATIC ITEM UPDATES

  1. Keeping your product details up-to-date keeps you from wasting money advertising out-of-stock products and avoids frustrating customers with inaccurate pricing.
  2. If Automatic item updates is enabled, Google will fix discrepancies itself instead of temporarily disapproving products. The fewer disapprovals your account experiences, the less likely it is that you’ll have account-wide policy issues.
  3. Google wants to use the most accurate, detailed, and recent data possible. Use Automatic item updates to get a competitive edge over advertisers who only update their pricing and availability daily.

Are you looking for more ways to increase your sales from Google Shopping? Give us a call at (888) 545-8404 or request our free AdWords evaluation.