Feed editor - Metadata
The feed metadata tab contains the settings that define the feed. It includes
- Feed name. For your own reference across the app. Feed name is also used in several other places:
- As the utm_campaign value by default, allowing traffic by the feed can be shown in Shopify Sessions and Sales attributed to marketing reports.
- For Google Shopping file feed, the feed name is used for the created feed in GMC.
- For File feeds, feed name becomes the default file name when you manually download the file from the feed URL.
- Include multiple variants
- If not selected, only the first variant that meet the requirements is included. The use case for this is when you have large store, and you want to keep within the Google Merchant limits (default to 150k items).
- If selected, all the variants that meet the requirements (defined by other settings) are included in the feed and grouped under same item group id. This help enrich your product feed, which will enhance your ads which can lead to better sales.
- Action for out of stock variants
- This option has been removed. Use Variant filter expression instead
- Include unpublished (offline) products. Unpublished products are not available on online store, so they should only be included in special feeds, e.g. local feeds.
Important: Include unpublished products on online feed could have the products or the feed rejected.
- Get stock from locations. You can get the stock data from only specific locations. This is helpful when you are creating feeds for specific locations of a store.
- Filter by sale channels. You can scope the feed to specific sale channels. This is helpful when you want to include only products that have been published on specific sale channels.
- Feed format
- API: using Application Programing Interfaces to send feed to the ads platform. For Google Shopping it is Content API. This generally means faster synchronization. **Please note that this option for Google Shopping does not remove the items from Merchant Center once the corresponding product is removed/excluded from feeds. If that is desired please switch to use one of the file feed options
- XML, TSV, CSV: feed file options. Feeds will be generated as file in the selected format, with an URL which can be used to create feed in the ads platform.
- Compressed file
Most marketplaces accept compressed feed files, including Google Shopping, Facebook Catalog and Bing Shopping. Select this to have the feed file compressed in GZip format, save some space and make our planet a bit greener. The generated file URL will end with ".gz" to indicate compression. Should work the same as uncompressed files
Important: If this settings is changed after the feed has been generated, the feed URL changes too. If the feed was manually added in the targeted marketplace, make sure the configuration is updated to use the updated URL. Auto added feeds (Google Shopping file feeds that are connected to a Merchant Center Account) are updated automatically.
- Password protected file
Secure the feed file with basic HTTP authentication (username/password). Make sure that the credentials are configured in the targeted platform (Google Merchant Center, Facebook Catalogs, etc.) or the feed file won't be fetched.
Good to know:The app set the username/password in Google Merchant Center for you if the feed is connected.
- Throttled
By default file feeds are run at least once a day. In some edge cases less frequent feed runs might be desired. For example, you can use this option to reduce the frequency of Weglot feed runs to control the number of translation requests sent to Weglot servers.
Important: Keep other changing data (stock, price, etc.) in mind when configuring this. If required, use supplement feeds to update quick changing data on a throttled feed
- Custom file name
By default the file name is automatically generated, and this is suffice for most market places. In really rare cases the external market place might request the file name to to be customized.
Important: Do not change unless required, and in that case make sure that the file name is unique across all the feed file names in the server.
- XML template. XML feed format can be fully customizable, or selected from the most common formats
- RSS 2.0
- RSS 1.0
- Atom 1.0
- Atom 0.3
Besides, custom formats can also be used by editing the XML template field. The custom template needs a special attribute entry="true" to pinpoint the tag that will contain the product data
Advanced usage: Some tokens are accepted inside the template, including the {feed_name}, {now} (time of feed run), {feed_id} (the feed file name) and {domain} (store main domain). These tokens will be replaced with actual data in the generated feed file
Contact us if you have suggestion for new XML feed formats. However by customizing the XML template, you should be able to generate arbitrary feed formats that you need.
External FTP hosts
FTP hosts can be added to have copies of the generated feed file uploaded to. Please note that one copy will still be hosted on our server and available at the generated feed URL as usual.
Useful for Bing Shoping product ratings feed, which only accept feeds file uploaded to Microsoft FTP server.
Filters:
- Variant filter expression
- Products filters by variant stock Products can be included in or excluded from the feed depending on quantity in stock.