identifier exists ‘edited’

Hi,

Thanks for using our plugin and reaching out to us.

Allow me to first explain how the plugin works: when you leave the default field mapping in place for your g:identifier_exists field (calculated) than the plugin will look at every product added and decided if the value of the identifier_exists field should be “yes” or “no”. It does so by looking at the unique identifiers brand, GTIN and MPN. When a product has both a brand+GTIN or MPN than the identifier exists will be “yes” in other cases it will be “no”. This is matching Google’s requirements.

According to the debug.log you have left the default field mapping for the g:identifier_exists field in place so the plugin is adding this to your feed for all your products. When looking at the content of your feed this can be verified as all of your products have this field added.

You mention that your GMC shows: “identifier exists” – edited. Honestly we don’t know what it means that the identifier exists has been edited. By whom has this been edited? By Google themselves or by you?

Thank you for your reply and your explanation of how the plug-in works.

We are unsure of who has edited the attribute – Google or Us – regardless it happened before the plugin was installed. However, we are trying to over-turn these edits so that the data flows freely from the plug-in. However, when we go in and over-turn the edit on “identifier exists” within merchant center the edit disappears for a few minutes, then pops back up again. Below is what Google’s documentation is on editing in the merchant center and how anything edited in the merchant center is permanent and can not be overridden.

From Google Merchant Center Help Area:

Once you’ve uploaded your product details in Merchant Center, you can make changes to them at a later time directly in Merchant Center. This article walks you through how to edit product features, descriptions, and other attributes.Instructions

To edit product details in Merchant Center:

1. Sign in to your Merchant Center account.
2. Select Products from the navigation menu, then click All products.
3. Select the product you want to edit.
4. Click the pencil icon  to edit the product.
5. Edit the attributes values you wish to change.
6. Click Save. Google will review your product edits. When the edits are approved, your product will be updated.

Note: Edits are permanent. They also override any updates made directly in your feed and may take several minutes to process. However, automatic item updates to a product’s price or availability take precedence over any edits made in Merchant Center. For offers created by automated feeds, the value of the link [link] attribute cannot be edited.

To undo edits made in Merchant Center:

1. Sign in to your Merchant Center account.
2. Select Products from the navigation menu, then click All products.
3. Select the product you want to edit.
4. Click the pencil icon  to edit the product.
5. Click the revert icon  next to the edited attribute. The value will then show the attribute value in the latest feed upload.
6. Click Save.

Hi,

Are you sure that our feed is the only one that is connected to your Google Merchant Center? Are you not also using another plugin or feed that uploads products to your Merchant Center? Or, do you have the option enabled that Google gets the product data directly from your website perhaps?

Hi.

Thanks for your reply. We only have the one feed from the plug in connected. We also have a google sheet supplemental feed. Our feed rules say to take from the supplemental feed then from plug in feed. Does this need to be reversed?

Question: Where is the setting to determine if we have it enabled to get product data directly from our website? That way I can check and determine if that is the issue.

Some of the issues have resolved however we are still getting the following flags:

Inconsistent value (page crawl) [availability] 15 products

Mismatched value (page crawl) [price] 14 products

Mismatched value (page crawl) [availability] 4

Invalid value for category [price] 4

Limited performance due to missing value [gtin] 13

Incorrect value [identifier exists] 8

Hi,

This is where you find more information about the settings that result in Google scrapping the data from your website instead of your feed: https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/7538732?hl=en

With regards to your supplemental feed question: that depends on what data is in the supplemental feed? Does it contain unique identifier data such as brands, GTINs and MPNs? When that is the case I suggest you remove those from your supplemental feed as they seem to be overwriting data coming from your main Shopping feed.

Thank you! I will look into these settings in Google and also double-check our supplemental feed.