Keeping the Momentum Going in 2011

Now that you’ve settled into 2011, you’re probably thinking about what you need to do to make it a great year. To help get you started, we’d like to offer two suggestions to improve your Google Product Search experience:

• Include “rel=canonical” tags on your website. Many merchants have several identical product pages for each item. With the rel="canonical" tag, your webmaster can indicate which URL you'd like to include on Google.com. This tag is necessary for participation in Rich Snippets, and also allows you to provide clean, user-friendly URLs that don’t include excess tracking or category navigation parameters. You can read more about the “rel=canonical” tag in a previous blog post. 

• Update your technical contact in the Google Merchant Center. If you’ve ever wondered why your feed didn’t process, then you should ensure that your contact information is up-to-date in the Google Merchant Center’s Settings page. We'll send an email to this address if there are technical issues with your account, such as problems with the content you submitted. We may also send you helpful suggestions on topics like data quality.

Posted by Natasha Prats, Partner Manager, Google Product Search