Get your products found: your product feed

Where your feed shows up

Your products appear on your brand page, in Shop by gear (Jackets, Tents, Footwear and the rest), in search, and in the matches creators get when they tag gear in a post. All of it comes from the feed your network sends us, refreshed nightly.

When a product is missing details, it lands in the wrong place or doesn't show: a men's jacket in a women's search, ten colors of one jacket listed as ten products, a kids' jacket in the adult list, or a sold-out item shown as in stock.

If your network's Shopify app builds your feed

AvantLink, impact.com and the other networks each have a Shopify app that builds your product feed from your store. They send a short list of fields: title, description, vendor, product type, price, compare-at price, images, barcode, SKU and stock (AvantLink's app also sends your tags as keywords).

The AvantLink and impact.com apps don't send gender, age group, color or size as fields of their own, and other networks' apps are similar. So GearCred reads those from what does get sent: your titles, variant names, product type and tags. Getting them right in Shopify is what makes an app-built feed work.

The Shopify checklist

• Title: lead with who it's for and end with what it is, like "Men's Better Sweater Fleece Jacket" or "Women's Trail Runner 2". Leave color and size out of the title.
• Variant options named Color and Size, with the values in them. Give each color its own variant image.
• Product type: a plain category such as Jackets, Fleece, Hiking Boots or Tents. It becomes the department or category in your feed.
• Vendor: your brand name, the same on every product.
• SKU on every variant. AvantLink's app skips products without one.
• Barcode (UPC) on every variant. It ties your product to the same item at other stores.
• Compare-at price when an item is on sale, so the markdown shows.
• Track inventory, so sold-out items show as out of stock instead of sending shoppers to a dead end.
• Tags for who it's for and what it's for: mens, womens, kids, unisex, plus activities like hiking or ski.
• A real description. AvantLink cuts its short description at 140 characters, so put the essentials first.
• Status Active and published to your online store. Draft and archived products aren't sent.

A title that sorts itself

Shopify's category and category metafields

In each product's Category field, pick the Shopify standard category (for example Apparel & Accessories > Clothing > Outerwear > Coats & Jackets). That unlocks category metafields such as target gender, age group, color and size. Google's channel uses them today, and they're the cleanest place to keep this data if you move to a full feed.

Google Shopping feeds

If you already send a feed to Google Merchant Center (from Shopify's Google & YouTube channel or a feed tool like DataFeedWatch, GoDataFeed or Feedonomics), that's usually the most complete file you have. Ask your network rep to use it for your affiliate catalog instead of the app's short version. These are the Google attributes that matter most, on GearCred and in other shopping channels:

• item_group_id: the same value on every size and color of a product. It's what lets us show one product with its colors.
• color and size on every variant, as plain words (Black, Industrial Green; S, M, L, 10.5).
• gender (male, female, unisex) and age_group (adult, kids, toddler, infant, newborn).
• condition (new, used, refurbished), so used or refurbished gear isn't mixed in with new.
• gtin on every variant, plus brand and mpn.
• availability (in_stock, out_of_stock), and sale_price during a sale.
• product_type with your own path, like Apparel > Jackets > Down Jackets, and google_product_category.
• image_link with a large photo on a plain background, and additional_image_link for back, detail and on-model shots.
• title written the way people search, and a full description.

Other feed formats

Networks also take their own files: AvantLink a CSV or XML file by hosted URL or FTP, pulled daily (keep the file name the same, or the connection breaks), and impact.com catalog uploads. Whatever the format, the same information needs a column of its own:

• A parent or group ID on every size and color (impact.com's Parent SKU, AvantLink's Parent Group ID).
• Color and size in separate columns, not only in the product name.
• Gender and age group (impact.com takes Gender as Male, Female or Unisex, and Age Group as Adult, Kids and others).
• Condition, a UPC or GTIN per variant, and in-stock status.
• Extra photos and feature bullets where the format has them (impact.com takes up to 10 additional photos and a bullets field).

Check the result on GearCred

Open your brand page after your network updates the feed (changes reach GearCred the next night). Your products should sort into categories, the men's and women's filters should split them correctly, and tiles should say "6 colors" rather than repeating the same product. If something looks off, tell us which product and we'll check what your feed sends.