The Palos Publishing Company

How to Clear Manual Edits to Products in Google Merchant Center (GMC) Next

If you have a Google Merchant Center (GMC) account where a significant amount of manual product edits have been made, you might encounter issues where these edits are outdated or no longer necessary. In such cases, you may want to revert these manual changes and rely on the product data feed for product updates. Unfortunately, Google Merchant Center does not provide a direct, bulk “clear all edits” or “revert all edits” feature in its UI. However, there are alternative methods that can help you clear or revert these stale manual edits, enabling you to restore data from your feed.

This guide will walk you through the solution, including the use of the Content API for clearing manual edits, and some best practices to ensure that your GMC account remains up to date with your product feed.

Step 1: Understand the Issue with Manual Edits in GMC Next

In GMC Next, manual edits refer to any changes made directly within the interface of Google Merchant Center to product attributes, such as titles, descriptions, prices, or availability. These changes may have been made by prior management or your team, and while they may have been correct at the time, they can become outdated and stale over time. When these manual changes are left unaddressed, they can override updates from your data feed, causing discrepancies and poor performance in your Google Ads campaigns.

The manual edits in GMC Next can be problematic because:

  1. Stale Data: Over time, manually entered values may no longer reflect the most accurate or current product information.
  2. Feed Conflicts: Manual changes can create conflicts with your data feed, where the feed will try to update certain attributes, but the manual edit overrides it, leading to errors or inconsistencies.
  3. No Bulk Revert Feature: As of now, GMC Next does not offer a bulk “clear all manual edits” or “revert to feed values” option via its user interface.

Step 2: Use the Content API to Clear Manual Edits

While there is no built-in bulk revert option in the GMC Next UI, the Content API for Shopping provides a programmatic solution to clear or reset these manual edits. The Content API allows you to interact with Google Merchant Center programmatically, making it possible to update product data and remove manual edits in bulk.

Key Steps to Clear Manual Edits via the Content API:

  1. Set Up Content API:
    • Ensure that you have access to the Content API for Google Shopping. To use the Content API, you will need to set up a project in the Google Cloud Console and enable the Content API for Shopping.
    • Create credentials and obtain an API key for authentication. You will need OAuth 2.0 credentials to authenticate your application with the Google Ads API.
  2. Identify the Products with Manual Edits:
    • You will need to identify which products have manual edits. These can typically be found by reviewing the product details in the GMC Next interface or via the Content API’s product retrieval endpoint.
    • Query the product data to check for the presence of manual overrides for attributes like titles, descriptions, prices, etc.
  3. Update Product Data Using the Content API:
    • To clear the manual edits, use the product update functionality in the Content API. This involves sending a request to the API that updates specific attributes of the products back to the values provided in the feed.
    • You can set the attributes to null or omit them entirely in the request body, allowing the values to revert back to what is provided by the product feed.
    • For example, to clear the title or price field, you would make a request that omits those fields, allowing the product data to be pulled from the feed.
    Here’s a simplified example of how the API request could look:jsonCopy code{ "product": { "id": "1234567890", "title": null, // Remove manual title edit "description": null, // Remove manual description edit "price": null, // Remove manual price edit "availability": null // Remove manual availability edit } }
  4. Revert All Edits in Bulk:
    • If you have a large number of products that require this change, you can loop through your product inventory programmatically and send batch update requests to the API. This allows you to update all the affected products in bulk and revert the manual edits to the feed data.
  5. Verify Changes in GMC Next:
    • Once you have made the necessary updates through the Content API, check your Google Merchant Center account to verify that the manual edits have been removed.
    • You can use the Diagnostics tab in GMC to ensure that the products are now being populated with the correct feed values and that any errors related to manual edits have been resolved.

Step 3: Automate and Maintain Consistency

After clearing the manual edits, it is important to ensure that your product data is consistently updated through your product feed. Here are some best practices to maintain accuracy and avoid future manual edit issues:

  1. Regular Feed Uploads:
    • Ensure that your product data feed is being uploaded to Google Merchant Center regularly. This will keep your product information fresh and accurate, minimizing the need for manual edits.
    • Set up automatic feed updates via your eCommerce platform (e.g., Shopify, WooCommerce) or any other third-party service you may be using.
  2. Implement Feed Validation:
    • Before uploading a feed, validate it to ensure that all the required attributes are properly filled out, avoiding issues that might cause the system to override them with manual edits.
    • Tools like Google’s Feed Rules feature can help automate this process.
  3. Monitor Feed Performance:
    • Continuously monitor your feed’s performance in the Diagnostics section of Google Merchant Center. Look for errors or warnings related to manual edits or feed data discrepancies.
    • Set up email notifications or alerts to be notified of any feed issues that could trigger manual edits or data inconsistencies.

Step 4: Request Feature Enhancement (Optional)

While the Content API provides a powerful solution for clearing manual edits, it would certainly be beneficial for Google to offer a bulk “clear all manual edits” feature within the Google Merchant Center UI. If you believe this would significantly improve your experience, consider submitting feedback directly to Google through the Google Merchant Center Help section, where you can request new features or improvements. Google continuously updates its platform based on user feedback, and your suggestion could help them prioritize this enhancement.

Conclusion

In the absence of a bulk “clear all edits” or “revert all edits” feature in the Google Merchant Center UI, the Content API for Shopping is the most efficient solution to clear manual edits and revert to feed data. By using the Content API’s product update functionality, you can bulk update product attributes and ensure that your product data is pulled directly from your feed, eliminating stale manual changes. Following best practices for feed management and regular uploads will help maintain consistency and accuracy in your product listings.

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