Feed settings (or rules) defines how different feed attributes are derived from Shopify product data. Feed settings can be as simple as a one-one map:
feed description = {product description}
or a sophisticated expression
feed price = {product price} * 1.1 + 10
It is important to understand that the effective feed settings actually is a combination of settings at different levels which are listed top down: account, feed, collection and product levels. This allow flexibility in feed building, with settings at the lower levels are considered "more specific" and, if presented, override the settings configured at higher levels.
This applies only to Google Merchant Center feeds, which include GMC account shipping and tax settings which you can either import from shop settings or manage manually inside GMC.
A feed represents a product list, and can be regarded as the vehicle to "send" products to market places (e.g. Google, Facebook, etc.). Feed can be a TSV, CSV, XML or API feed (API is available on Google only).
Settings of feed are configured in the feed editor, can be configured using expressions, and by default will apply to all the products that are "listed" by this feed if not customized by lower-leveled settings below.
Feeds are scoped within product groups, which are defined by collections, feed settings can be defined in these collections, which are regarded as collection level feed settings and effective for all feeds within the same product group.
In a product group, collections can play 2 roles:
- to "include" (mandatory): to select the products which are being listed. An "include" collection can host feed settings, which apply to all products that belong to it. Include collections are mandatory to define the product group.
and
- to "modify" (optional): change the listing as either
- an "exclude" collection to exclude products from listing. The final listing will include products of the "include" collections LESS the products of the "exclude" collections, if any.
- a "customized" collection, which host feed settings that applied to its product being listed.
Settings at this level that are typically shared by products in the same collection (Google product category, age group, gender, custom labels, promotion id and included destinations) which will be used if no corresponding data can be derived at the lower levels (product levels).
In case both a customized collection and include collection have custom settings, the settings of customized collection take precedence.
Product levels feed settings can be accessed from the Products tab, assigned to individual products/variants (therefore it can be regarded as product level and variant level).
* Please be reminded that feed items are corresponding to variants. If a product has multiple variants, it can generate multiple feed items.
* Variant level settings override settings at the corresponding product, if presented.
The product level settings include:
- Inclusion (whether to exclude a product/variant from feeds)
- Custom settings (customized settings of a product/variant in feeds)
Product level feed settings can be scoped to all feeds (global), or to a single feed, which take precedence over global settings if presented.
Scoping allow a product/variant can be excluded or have custom settings in all or only specific feeds.
The effective feed settings will be a combination of settings at the levels, in which setting at the more specific levels will take precedent over settings at the less specific levels.
Combination also means if a setting exists at a higher level and not being overridden in lower levels, it will apply to the final feed settings.
For example, if a feed that has shipping settings configured, it will override (or at least combined with) the shipping settings at the account level. Similarly, if a special product has the material set at the product level, that information will be used for that product in all the feeds that it is included, regardless of what value the material is set to at the feed level.
