Etsy Starts Product Feed Testing

This week Etsy will begin beta testing its product feed to Google's Product Search database. At the beginning of September, Google announced it would no longer accept feeds from individual sellers who maintained shops on venue sites like Etsy and would require such sites to submit products on behalf of their users if they wanted their items in Google's database of products.

Etsy has been working with Google and will be one of three pilot venue sites that have worked with Google to ensure the quality of the data feed and that the sites will be able to field questions from their users - part of the new Google policies is that the site will now offer support to its users on Google Product Search questions, not Google directly.

Since Google is making this move, it says, to prevent duplicate listings of the same item, there are still questions about whether sellers who have products being fed from more than one venue site will have their items considered duplicates. Early indications seem to suggest that if the titles and descriptions are identical, Google may flag them as duplicates and remove them.

As a result, Etsy is recommending that sellers choose just one site for handling their feed. One major advantage Etsy's feed will have over other similar sites is that it will retain the individual shop's name with each item listed in Google, not replace it with the venue site's name.