As many of you may know, last week Google Product Search started requiring additional unique identifiers such as UPC, MPN, and Brand for all products except Apparel and custom made goods. Books must supply ISBN as well.

Your feed will still be accepted by Google Product Search if you don’t supply these unique identifiers, however, your items may not show up in the search results without them.

We’ve heard from many retailers about the requirement of UPC, some have said it’s unfair or too difficult to obtain this data. In some cases, no UPC or MPN data exists at all for certain types of products.  Google will allow merchants to fill out an exemption request form, and evaluate unique identifiers can be omitted. In most cases where UPC or MPNs are readily available and already provided by other retailers, a merchant’s exemption request will be denied.

Tip 1 – DO NOT make up UPC or MPN data

Tip 2 – Use a UPC look up tool to find values for your products

Tip 3 – Ask your supplier or distributor if they have this data available.