Hi All:
As part of my SEO, I tried to get my auto glass company listed in Google Merchant.
Now, with auto glass, there really is not a fixed price. It varies by:
- Year, make, and model of the vehicle. Obviously a windshield for a Mercedes will be much more expensive than one for a Honda Accord
- Type of the glass. Windshields, door glasses, vent glasses, back glasses, sliders, quarter glasses all vary in price.
- Brand. There are more than 100 brands out there.
- How competitve the market is.
Availability can vary by the year, make, and model of the vehicle, but more importantly by what is carried by my vendors.
When you know there are more than 10,000 different pieces of auto glass, and multiply it by 100, what do you get? More than 1,000,000 variations. So what did Google want? UPC codes! For EACH different item! For more than a miliion items! And WHERE am I supposed to get the UPC codes, not to mention the time to get them data entered?
So I asked for help in their forum. Here is their reply:
unfortunately, only fixed-priced items are allowed --
items with variable prices are simply not allowed.
brand, mpn, and gtin are global-trade data that must
allow the consumer to trace back an exact item to an
exact brand-manufacturer regardless of which merchants
are selling that item. (GTIN is GoogleSpeak for UPC codes)
availability must match the on-hand physical inventory
with respect and the time the exact item being submitted
will be in-transit to the customer; for example, in stock items
must be in-transit to the customer within 3-business-days --
items must be shippable throughout the target-country.
if you have a physical location google-places might be a better fit for advertising.
http://support.google.com/places/?hl=en
So, if you are in my postition, and are trying to get your site listed in Google Merchant, be aware of their restrictions.
Also, does anyone have a workaround for this?