SingleFeed has always taken Google Base’s product_type field seriously (it was a required field on SingleFeed long before Google Base made it a required attribute).  Now we’re getting reports from merchants that Google Base is taking down feeds for not properly using the the Product_Type attribute properly.

Google Base maintains a list of aprx. 450 approved product types here.  I don’t think that 450 product types completely covers the entire universe of products submitted to Google Base, so I suspect that Google Base won’t be that strict with this field in the short term.  However, as more and more merchant use this field and Google Base sees that everyone selling the K2 Pontoon Skis designates the product_type as ’skiing’, any derivation from that standard will probably cause a feed error.

Interestingly, as more and more merchants enter information and Google works with data authorities like Channel Intelligence, Google Base will eventually not need merchants to enter additional attributes like product-type because Google Base will already know the proper designation.

There are a lot of ramifications to this, but that’s for another post.  For now, pay attention to Google Base’s list of product types.