2.3 Auto Sync

Introduction and Business Impact

---

It is imperative to sync your merchants catalog and settings changes automatically and frequently. This prevents any disruption of their business with potential needed and fast changes (for example, sales prices changing or out of stock) which can help maximize their impressions and clicks.

Tech Guidance

---

Sync products Overview

The Products API allows a merchant to create an online store catalog, which is the list of products and products that are available on Shopping.To create and upload per-product information using the Content API, use the Products resource, which contains the fields described by the Product data specification along with some other fields needed for per-product information upload. For more information about making a request, see Making Requests.

We recommend syncing your merchants catalog to the content API as much as possible so merchants can make adjustments (for example, prices) to reflect accurate product data.

Syncing products - Recommendations and best practices

To improve your integration and make the end user experience better, below are recommendations to follow:

• Uploading rich product data: We recommend rich product data to help improve clicks and impressions.

• Targeting free listings in multiple countries: We recommend having your merchant send product data in the most optimal way by specifying which countries they'd like to target.

• Batch request: Sending a batch request lets you group several API calls, known as "entries" into one single HTTP request.

• Keeping product data up-to-date at any time: use products.update to partially update product attributes which often change (for example, price, quantity).

• Avoid Product expirations: Make sure to call products.insert or products.update to reset the expiration time of the item before it expires. Ideally, updating products to match your merchants inventory & price changes is recommended. This needs to happen every 25 days, at the latest and we recommend not waiting longer.

• Make sure to respect API quotas: To ensure you are able to send your requests without issues. You can contact the Content API for Shopping support team to request an increase.

• Best practices: Read the API Best Practices guide to learn additional best practices.