Google Product Search – Electronics Category

Google recently announced that in early 2011 they will be making changes to the Electronics category in Google Product Search UK and German. They have requested that all listings within you Electronics category include two of the following product identifiers: MPN, Brand and EAN.

These identifiers explained:

MPN – This stands for Manufacturer’s Part Number.  This is a unique code usually assigned to the product by the manufacturer.

Brand – This is the Brand name of the product not your company.

EAN – This stands for European Article Number. It is a unique numerical identifier for commercial products that’s usually associated with a barcode printed on retail merchandise. Typically it is 13 numeric digits but occasionally can be either 8 or 14.

The reason Google wishes that you included at least two of these identifiers is because they wish to provide as much information as possible to their users. These identifiers will match your products to the correct product pages on Google and display product specifications or reviews alongside the listings.

These identifiers are not compulsory, so your feed will still process without them. However, not including them may result in your traffic from Google Product Search drop. For more details, including what specific identifiers you should include for each category of item, please see our XML / Data Feeds section of our website.