If you’re an online retailer, you likely manage a Google Shopping feed. Odds are, it’s a mess.

Many clients feel like they need everything they sell; every color, option, and upgrade, represented in their product feed. In reality, they just need the basics, enough to guide Google and get consumers in the door (to your site). Google likely takes care of it as best it can, but consider that people don’t often query as specific as your product feed gets. Particular colors, varying sizes, those sorts of details don’t need to be distinguished in your product feed. Because of the lack of that level of specificity in most queries, what you want is to put a basic, popular “version” of each product in your feed. Not every color or size, just a few picked because they’re popular or otherwise standard and applicable to most of the population. At least, applicable enough that consumers express interest, and can later customize the colors, sizes, and other details leading to a checkout on your website.

Your website contains all – ALL – of the details necessary for accurate purchase of your product, but your product feed doesn’t need all of the info related to every possible purchase on your site. In contrast, Google does need all of the attributes and data fields available for the products that you do include in your feed. At a glance, some of the fields are unnecessary, but lend as much info as you have available. It’s a set it & forget it process unless your core products change frequently.