Product Categories
Feeds can carry two kinds of category:
- Google Product Category: a category from Google’s official product taxonomy, such as
Apparel & Accessories > Clothing > Dresses. Google uses it to understand what you sell. - Product type: your own category, taken from the Product type field in Shopify. It’s useful for organising campaigns.
Why the Google Product Category matters
Section titled “Why the Google Product Category matters”For Google Shopping, Feedy treats a missing Google Product Category as an error. Products without one are left out of your Google Shopping feeds.
The category must be set on each product in Feedy. A feed’s Default Google Product Category (on the Basic Settings card) fills in the category in the feed file, but it doesn’t clear the error. So set a category on every product you want in Google Shopping.
Set the category for one product
Section titled “Set the category for one product”- Go to Products and click the product.
- In Google Product Category, start typing (for example “dress”) and pick the best match from the list.
- Click Save.
Pick the most specific category that fits. For example, choose Apparel & Accessories > Clothing > Dresses rather than just Apparel & Accessories.
Get a suggestion from AI
Section titled “Get a suggestion from AI”- One product: click ✨ AI next to Google Product Category.
- Many products: on Products, select products, click Optimize with AI, and tick Google Product Categories.
Each suggestion uses one AI credit, and you review it before it’s applied. See AI Category Suggestions.
Set the category for many products
Section titled “Set the category for many products”- Go to Products.
- Select the products.
- Click Edit Category.
- Enter the full Google category path, for example
Home & Garden > Kitchen & Dining > Cookware. - Save.
See Bulk Editing.
Set a default category for a feed
Section titled “Set a default category for a feed”- Go to Feeds and click the feed.
- On Basic Settings, use Default Google Product Category to search and pick a category.
- Save the card.
The default is used for products in that feed that have no category of their own.
Product type
Section titled “Product type”Feedy sends your Shopify Product type as product_type. To change it, edit the product type in Shopify. Products without a product type get a warning for Google Shopping, but they’re still included.
You can also pick a different source for product type in a feed’s Field Mapping.
Other platforms
Section titled “Other platforms”Feeds for Facebook, TikTok, Pinterest and Microsoft can include a Google Product Category column too, but a missing category isn’t an error for those platforms.