Guidelines

Follow these guidelines to make sure you submit high-quality data for your products.

Minimum requirements

These are the requirements you'll need to meet to show your product. If you don't follow these requirements, we'll disapprove your product and let you know in the Diagnostics page in your Merchant Center account.

• Describe only the product itself. Don't describe other aspects like details about compatible products, accessories, other similar products available. Don't provide your business’s history or policies.
• Use professional and grammatically correct language. Correct grammar is easier to understand and gives you a more professional appearance, which can lead to more clicks. Also avoid gimmicky ways of drawing attention such as all caps, symbols, and promotional text. Learn more about the editorial & professional requirements.
• Don’t use words from foreign languages, unless they’re well understood such as a product with a foreign name or title. 
  • For example ,“sushi” is a word well understood outside of Japan.
  • Write foreign words using the alphabet of your target language. For example, avoid Japanese characters when targeting the United States. Letters with accents, like  “Les Clés" are allowed. 
  • Don’t use foreign characters for gimmicky purposes. This technique is common in spam and untrustworthy product listings. For example: (ಠ_ಠ) 
• Use XML entities or escaped characters instead of symbols. If you’re submitting your product data in XML or JSON, and you need to include symbols, make sure to follow the XML or JSON specification. So for XML, use XML entities such as ". For JSON, use escape characters such as \". If you automatically encode your description, be careful not to encode it twice.
• Don’t include comparisons or details about other products. For example, don't mention things like "even better than X." Let customers research other products on their own. 
• Don’t include references to categorization systems. For example, don’t include "Toys & Games > Toys > Dolls, Playsets & Toy Figures > Dolls." Include this information using the google_product_category or product_type attribute. 
• Don’t include links to your store or other websites. Include only a link to your product's landing page with the link attribute.
• Don’t use capital letters for emphasis. Capitalized text is common in spam and untrustworthy product listing. You should still use capitalization when it’s appropriate, including for abbreviations, phone numbers, countries, and currency. For example, ADHD, UNICEF, 1-555-CALL-NOW, UK, and USD.
• Don’t include promotional text. Don’t add information such as price, sale price, sale dates, shipping, delivery date, other time-related information, or your company’s name. Include this information with the other attributes such as sale_price or shipping.
• Submit a description for each product. Products that don’t include a value for the description attribute will receive a warning and may experience limited performance. Similar products that include a description may be prioritized.

Best practices

These best practices can help you go beyond the basic requirements to optimize your product data for performance.

• Be specific and accurate. The more specific you are in your description, the easier it is for customers to identify the product they are searching for.
• List the most important details in the first 160 - 500 characters.You can include up to 5,000 characters, but customers will need to click to view product details to see the longer description.
• Include your product’s most relevant features and visual attributes. Examples of types of information to include:
  • Size
  • Material
  • Intended age range
  • Special features
  • Technical specifications
  • Shape
  • Pattern
  • Texture
  • Design. For example, customers can search for very specific visual terms like “retractable ballpoint pens."
  • Variants. List product defining details like color, size, age group, pattern, flavor, or material.
  • Rich descriptions. Customers find descriptions easier to read when they are well-formatted. Include control characters and HTML tags, such as line breaks, italics, and bulleted lists to increase the readability of your description.

Additional guidelines

Review each section closely to determine if the requirements apply to your country or product. If you don't follow requirements that apply to you, we'll disapprove your product and let you know in Diagnostics in your Merchant Center account.

Customized goods