In the comparison shopping world, somewhere out there an online retailer is selling the same product you are. And that same retailer could be including more information in their data feed about that product than you are. If you want to compete for relevancy and rank at any comparison shopping site, you need to include as much information as possible about that product (also important that the information is accurate and intelligible). The more data you provide, the more opportunities you give the CSE’s search algorithm to find a match between your product and a shopper’s search term. And in theory, the more your product matches various searches, the more impressions and traffic you will get. Is there a priority list for these optional attributes? Well, as mentioned previously, you should include as much information as possible; include as many optional attributes as you can. But here’s a short list of the optional attributes with the most potential to improve your ranking. SingleFeed requires some of these attributes, but for the most part these are considered “optional” by a majority of the shopping engines. We think you ought to consider them “highly recommended”. 

– MPN/UPC/ISBN

– Manufacturer/Brand

– Shipping Cost

– Shipping Weight

– Promotional Message

– MSRP

– Sale Price

– Keywords

– Product Type (for Google Base)

– Length (Google Base only)

– Height (Google Base only)

– Width (Google Base only)

– Payment Accepted (Google Base only)

– Department (Google Base only)

If you sell clothing/apparel/shoes, you should also add Color, Size, and Gender to your list. Google Base supports a ton of additional optional attributes. The list is long, so for brevity’s sake, you can just go here to view them. Google also supports custom attributes, which we highly recommend you take a look at as well. If you want the quick nitty gritty on custom attributes, hop over to our blog post on them.