For More Accurate Shipping Rates In Google Shopping, Merchant Center Gets Shipping Configuration Tool

Google launched new features today to help merchants customize the shipping rates that display in Google Shopping. The shipping configuration tool is now available in Google Merchant Center, and a new shipping label attribute can be used in product feeds to group products with similar shipping requirements.

The updates are meant to help eliminate situations in which consumers find higher shipping costs on a merchant’s website than what was shown in Google Shopping.

The shipping configuration tool offers:

• More Shipping Models: There are now more shipping options and merchants can now set rules-based customized shipping methods
• Multiple Shipping Methods: Offer different shipping methods, say ground and express, in the same country.  Google will display the lowest possible price.
• Customize For Location: Set rates based on countries, states, or cities.
• Simple Exclusions: Indicate when products do not ship to certain regions.
• Shared Library: Save shipping methods to reuse across custom configurations.

The shipping label attribute allows merchants to assign a label to a set of products that have specific shipping requirements, such as perishable, promotion or bulky.

Google is automatically migrating shipping settings to the new tool. For more information on using the shipping configuration tool, see the Google support page.