How to Add WooCommerce Products to Google Shopping

One of the best ways to get new customers and lots of traffic is to expand the visibility of your WooCommerce products. Google Shopping is one of the services from Google where you can present your WooCommerce products and attract buyers with prices and discounts. In today’s article, we’ll show you how you can add WooCommerce products to Google Shopping.

But before we dive into that, let’s better understand what exactly is Google Shopping and how it works. Also, we’ll take a look at why you may want to add WooCommerce products to Google Shopping along with the advantages. Let’s begin with the basic idea of Google Shopping in short.

What is Google Shopping?

When you want to buy something, whether it’s a plant, an appliance, or a home decor item, you end up searching for those products in your browser (mostly Google). As a result, you’ll see a series of products that might be what you are looking for along with the product image, title, and price. Those are Google Shopping results.

Depending on your location, you might not see the Google Shopping ads right away. You might have to click on the Shopping tab to generate the results of the ads.

The browser-based marketplace was developed in 2010 so that the users could search for products and compare prices in online stores. Google Shopping results give the user a selection of products that is relevant to the query typed in the search engine.

Also, users can find a product using filters like price, rating, or seller. If they choose a certain offer and click on that, they’ll be redirected to the seller’s website directly.

Why add your WooCommerce products to Google Shopping?

Google Shopping provides online stores with the opportunity to put their products on the virtual market, increase traffic, and interest potential buyers with an assortment, prices, and discounts.

When you link your WooCommerce products with Google Shopping, Google indexes the products of your online store in such a way that whenever someone searches for the products, they’ll get results along with the price. Because of this the user can compare the prices and choose the optimal one. Therefore the buyer goes to the seller’s page and makes an online purchase.

Not only that the buyer can easily narrow down the search for suitable products by marking the desired parameters for a specific product.

Here are some of the advantages of connecting your store to Google Shopping:

  • Instant demonstration of goods and prices
  • Low cost per click compared to contextual advertising
  • An accessible customer feedback system
  • Easy setup and configuration
  • Expand the product to a broader audience
  • Automated products ads in Google

Moreover, the displayed field is more effective than Google Adwords or even regular searches.

This is why it’s very important to add your WooCommerce products to Google Shopping. It is a powerful tool to advertise your business and products. So if you don’t have a Google Shopping account yet, it’s time to create one.

Now, let’s move on to the next step and add WooCommerce products to Google Shopping.

How to add WooCommerce products to Google Shopping?

The best way to add WooCommerce products to Google Shopping is by using a plugin. WooCommerce and WordPress plugins help to extend the functionality of your website. Likewise, there are lots of plugins available in the marketplace which helps you to add WooCommerce products to Google Shopping. Here are some of the most popular ones which let you create a product feed and link it to your WooCommerce products to Google Shopping.

ELEX WooCommerce Google Shopping

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ELEX WooCommerce Google Shopping plugin helps to create a product feed from your WooCommerce store in several file formats such as CSV, TSV, and XML. The generated feed will match the requirements of the users and results are displayed according to the location.

This plugin also helps you to update the product feed of the Google Merchant Center on a regular basis according to a specific schedule. And there is no limit to the number of product feeds you can create with this plugin.

Moreover, the plugin offers unmatched matching capabilities to match your product categories and attributes with Google’s categories and attributes. Overall, the plugin has an intuitive easy-to-use interface and advanced features.

Key Features:

  • Supports all types of WooCommerce products
  • Create custom attribute fields
  • Manage multiple fields from a user-friendly control panel
  • No limit to the number of products and channels
  • Suitable for multiple languages

Pricing

ELEX WooCommerce Google Shopping is a freemium plugin. You can download the free version of this plugin from the official WordPress plugin repository. However, the premium version starts from 60 USD per year with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Google Product Feed

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Google Product Feed is one of the plugins which helps to create a real-time product flow for your WooCommerce store. Using this plugin you’ll be able to create a product feed. Later, you’ll be able to update your product data in the Google Merchant Center with the created feed and thus make it available for Google Shopping ads.

The highlight of the plugin is that a large number of attribute fields it supports in addition to the main fields. It also supports product reviews and offers integration with several other plugins to include user data in feeds.

Along with a rich product data feed, this plugin offers extensive advanced fields. And thanks to the advanced product filters options, you can choose the list of products you want to include in the feed.

Key Features:

  • Advanced mapping capabilities
  • Create additional data fields
  • Ability to add information about a product or variation
  • Regular feed updates to keep your product data up to date
  • Flexibility to customize

Pricing

Google Product Feed is a premium plugin that starts at a 79 USD annual fee with 1 year of updates and support with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

These are some of the plugins with which you can easily add WooCommerce products to Google Shopping. Now let’s see how to use them for a WooCommerce website.

For today’s guide, we’ll be using the Elex WooCommerce Google Shopping plugin since it consists of almost all features required to list WooCoomerce products in Google Shopping without any cost.

But before we start, there are some mandatory requirements. You must have a registered account in the Google Merchant Center account and a Google AdWords account.  To create a shopping campaign to run an ad, you need to add product data to the Merchant Center service and create an advertising campaign in Google AdWords which later appears on Google Shopping results.

That’s why first of all we’ll show you the steps required to create a Google Merchant Center account and Google AdWords. Then, we’ll learn how to link WooCommerce products to Google Shopping with the help of a plugin.

Step 1: Register and Set up Google Merchant Account

The registration in the Google Merchant Center is not complicated and is carried out in just a few clicks.

Once you reach the main page of Google Merchant Center, you can see a big blue button on the top right side. Click on Get started.

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To sign up, you need a Gmail account and we recommend using the same email address for AdWords and Google Merchant Center. It’ll be easier to link the two accounts later.

As soon as you click the Get Started button, you’ll be redirected to a page where you need to add your store’s web address.

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Again, you’ll be redirected to a page where you can see a brief detail about free listings and Google Shopping.  At the end of the page, click on Create Google Merchant Center account.

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Next, you’ll have to simply enter your business details such as name, business country, and timezone.

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Then, you can also select between the different options for the checkout. If you want to change the selected option, you can do that later. Also, remember that if you want your customers to check out in Google Shopping then Google won’t charge any commissions.

On the same page, you need to select the other tools that you might use to promote your products across Google. This enables Google to provide better services for your website and the platform linked with it.

Next, check the box to agree to the terms and conditions of Google Merchant Center. Lastly, you’ll find brief details about Comparison Shopping Services. Once you have agreed to the terms and conditions, click on the Create Account button.

That’s it, these are the required steps to register an account with Google Merchant Center.

Step 2: Create a Google Adword Account

You can create a Google Adword account from the main web page or you also get an option to create a new account directly from the Google Merchant Center Dashboard.

For that, go to the Dashboard > Growth > Manage Programs. Upon clicking on Manage Programs, you’ll be redirected to a page from which you can enable different features. A variety of other eCommerce-related programs by Google can also be seen here. Now all you need to do is click on the Shopping ads box.

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On the left-hand side, you’ll see the option to Link to Google Ads. Then, you can click on the Create an Account button or click on another option if you already have an account with Google Adword and link that account to Google Merchant Center. If you click on Create Account button, then all of the information that you entered previously will be automatically extracted and will be filled.

Lastly, click on Create account and continue.

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Following these steps helps you to create a Google Adword account directly from the dashboard of Google Merchant Center and easily link them with each other.

Step 3: Verify and Claim your Website

Setting up your Merchant Center account requires two essential steps: verifying and claiming your store’s website.

The main reason to verify the website is to prove that you have ownership of the website. And the reason you must claim is website is to create a link between your verified website URL and your Merchant Center account. This secures the website URL for usage with your campaign.

Whenever you enter the URL make sure you enter the right one because later the same URL will also be used in your product data. And if the URL is not matched with your Merchant Center account, the items you submit won’t be approved by Google Shopping.

However, if you already have an existing account in other Google services like Google Search Console then you can skip directly to the claiming part.

To verify and claim your website first of all go to your Google Merchant Center account. Then click on the tools icon from the navigation menu. And click on Business Information under Tools.  There you can find three different tabs from where you should click on the Website tab.

Now enter your online store’s URL that you own and manage and click on Continue. After clicking continue, you’ll get 3 different methods to verify the website.

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Among all of the methods adding an HTML tag to the website is the easiest and quickest way to verify the website. We can copy the generated HTML code and paste it to the site’s homepage.

Go to your Appearance > Theme File Editor from your WordPress dashboard and locate the header.php theme header file. Make sure to paste the code after the <head> section or right before the first <body> section.

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After pasting the code, click on Update File and go back to the Google Merchant Center account. Finally, Verify the website from your merchant center dashboard.

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As a result, you can see that the website is verified but not claimed yet. For that, all you need to do is just click on the Claim website button.

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You have successfully verified and claimed the website. Now let’s move ahead and see other steps to add WooCommerce products to Google Shopping.

Step 3: Install the ELEX plugin to add WooCommerce products to Google Shopping

The very first thing you need to do is install and activate the ELEX WooCommerce Google Shopping plugin. To Install the plugin open up your WordPress Admin Dashboard and click on Plugins > Add New. After this, search for “ELEX Google Shopping” in the search bar on the top right. The plugin should appear in the search results.

Once the results are displayed click on the Install Now button. After the installation, Activate the plugin.

If you want to use the premium version of the plugin, you’ll have to upload and install it manually. Please have a look at our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin manually for more information on it.

Note: Please make sure that you have set up WooCommerce properly without missing any steps and used one of the compatible WooCommerce themes as well. This will help you avoid any theme and plugin conflicts or any other similar issues.

After completing the activation, you’ll see a new menu added to the WordPress Dashboard from where you can access the plugin settings. You can also create and manage the feeds from the plugin dashboard. Now let’s go ahead and see what are the options provided by this plugin and how we can use them.

3.1. Create a Product Feed

If you want to add a new product feed, go to ELEX WooCommerce Google Shopping > Create Feed from your WordPress dashboard.

You can give the project a name and a description, as well as select the country where your products will be sold. Here you can choose a file format (CSV, XML, or TSV), as well as a refresh schedule. If you want to include product variations in the feed, enable the ‘include variations‘ option.

3.2. Map Category

The next step is to map the store categories to the suitable Google category. Simply type in the field and choose from the options that display. Select the Map Products option if you don’t want Google categories to map the individual products.

3.3. Map Attributes

The plugin provides a list of essential Google attributes and maps them to the WooCommerce products if they are relevant to each other. These can be changed by adding text values, appending and prepending values, and defining rules.You can also double-check the mapping and manually map any fields that aren’t automatically filled.

In the required fields, you’ll see a button to add optional fields. For greater product visibility, it’s a good idea to map as many attributes as possible.

3.4. Filtering Products

Filtering options are included in the plugin, allowing you to include specific products in the feed. This can be done by specifying conditions to include products depending on their stock quantity or number of sold items. You can also create a feed by only including your store’s featured products. If you want to exclude products from the feed on the page you can do that from this section. Click the Generate Feed button once you’ve filled all of the required parameters.

And that’s it! You have successfully created a feed. You can view or manage the feeds on the assigned page once it has been generated.

3.5 Manage Feeds

To manage the feeds, click on the Manage Feed tab. You can view and manage all of your feeds in the Manage Feeds section. There are many options such as download, edit, remove, pause the schedule, and many more. You’ll also see the URL for the feed that’s hosted on your site. This URL can be later used to establish a schedule on Google Merchant Center.

Step 4: Submit product feed to Google Merchant Center

You can submit the WooCommerce product feed to Google Merchant Center once it’s ready.

Open your Google Merchant Center dashboard and navigate to Products > Feeds. You’ll find two feeds where you can use primary feeds to display products using text files, XML files, Google Sheets, or Google Content API. Similarly, a supplement feed can be used to add additional data to the primary feed.

Click on the ‘+‘ icon from the primary feeds.

In the basic information section, select the country where you sell your products so that the prices will be displayed according to this. Also, you can add the languages that you use for your business. Then you can check the boxes of free listing and Google Shopping ads. If you check both your products will be displayed on the free listing as well as in Google Shopping ads.  And click on the Continue button.

Next, add a name for your feed and select one method to upload the product data. You can set up your feed in one of four ways:

  1. Google Sheet — It lets you create a new Google sheet or select an existing one. When you make changes to the sheet, your Google Merchant Account will be updated automatically.
  2. Scheduled Fetch — This allows you to choose a product feed URL. When viewing your feed with the ELEX plugin, you can specify the URL of the product feed.
  3. Upload – File formats like XML, TXT, or files with other formats can be uploaded.
  4. Content API for Shopping — The Content API for Shopping allows you to automatically post product listings to Google Shopping, making your products more easily discoverable.

Here we’ll use Schedule Fetch because this method lets us schedule the fetch changes at a certain time each day. The updates are automatically made to the account when the fetch occurs.

Once you select the method to set up your feed click on the Continue button.

The last step set up and connect our WooCommerce product feed data to the Merchant account. These are the data that you must fill in:

  • Enter the feed name and then create a Fetch schedule. Ensure that the name you use for the feed exactly matches the file name.
  • Set a fetch frequency, such as daily, weekly, or monthly, and schedule a time for the fetch.
  • To get the feed, provide the file URL.

Note: The time settings can be different from the time we specified in the plugin while creating a refresh schedule for your feed.

Depending on your items, it may take some time for your feed to appear. It can appear in as little as a minute or as long as 30 minutes. You can check your feed after a while by refreshing the Feeds page.

After you’ve finished submitting your product feed to Google Merchant Center, you’ll need to improve your ads with Google Ads campaigns.

Bonus: Integrate Google Maps with WordPress

Being a business owner it is very important to have Google Maps on your site so that customers can locate you very easily. A large number of people rely on Google maps because of the clarity of its directions. If a consumer finds your location in the Google maps they’ll trust your business and also improves the overall user experience.

Integrating a map on your site can also reduce your bounce rate and help with search engine optimization. With so many advantages, we highly suggest you integrate Google Maps into your WordPress site.

That’s why as a bonus guide we’ve provided this guide on how to integrate Google maps with WordPress.

You can easily do so by using easy steps. Simply open Google maps and enter the address of the location you want in the search box. Now all you need to do is click on Share. A new window will pop up with two tabs where you can share the map in your social media accounts and embed a map.

Select “Embed a map” then all you need to do is copy the HTML code.

Once you have the code, paste it on any post or page of your WordPress website. Depending on the page builder your page editor might be different but the process is the same. Here we have pasted the HTML code in one of our posts.

This is how the preview of embedded Google Maps looks on the WordPress website.

You can add Google Maps to your website using widgets or even a plugin as well. We have a detailed guide on how to integrate Google Maps with WordPress if you need help with it.

Conclusion

And that ends our guide on how to add WooCommerce products to Google Shopping. Advertisement-based service is a great way to promote our products in a huge marketplace. Linking the WooCommerce products is simple and easy however there are some tips we recommend when creating a product feed:

  • Ensure that each product must have its own page
  • Always use higher resolution images.
  • Indicate the cost of each product at least in two currencies. International currency and the local currency
  • Add a detailed description of the product
  • Clearly describe the returning policies and guarantees policies
  • Provide full contact information about the company seller
  • Make sure to study all of the requirements and tips from the Google Merchant Center

These tips should be a great starting point for you if this is your first time using the service by Google. We highly recommend you follow these tips so that there won’t be any issues to advertise your WooCommerce product in Google Shopping ads. Lastly, we had a look at how to integrate Google Maps with WordPress.

If you have confusion while following any steps you can let us know in the comment section. We’ll be glad to help you with our expertise.

Meanwhile, if you want to improve your WooCommerce website why not check out some of our articles: