# Shopify Advanced Settings

The **Advanced Settings** page controls how products are imported into Google Cloud after merchants have mapped the main attributes and filters.

<br/>

## Exclude Products

### Exclude Products by Tag

Use Shopify tags when a merchant needs to hide a primary product and all of its variants from:

- Search results
- Collection pages
- Recommendations

This is useful for items such as warranties, service plans, gift wrap, shipping-only products, or other non-merchandise catalog entries.

### Exclude Products by Metafield

Use metafield exclusions when the rule needs to apply at the **variant** level instead of the primary product level.

The current Retail Cloud Connect Shopify App supports:

- **Product Variant** metafields only
- **Boolean** metafields only
- **True** or **False** values selected per metafield

!!!info
Tag exclusions remove the primary product and all of its variants. Metafield exclusions are better when only specific variants should be hidden.
!!!

<br/>

## Expand Products by Product Option

Enable **Expand Product Variants** when variants such as different colors or sizes should appear as separate products in Google Cloud and on storefront results.

Common use cases include:

- Showing each colorway as its own product card
- Giving size or width variants their own search result
- Improving visibility for high-value variants that should not be hidden inside a parent product

After enabling the setting, choose the Shopify product option that should be used to split variants, such as **Color** or **Size**.

!!!warning
Changing this setting alters the imported catalog structure and may require AI models to retrain.
!!!

<br/>

## Product Description Data Source

Set **Product Description Data Source** to a product metafield if that metafield holds more complete descriptive copy than the default product description field.

This setting is helpful when:

- Merchandising teams maintain curated or SEO-tuned copy in a metafield
- Product descriptions are short or inconsistent
- Merchants want AI Commerce Search to rank and understand products using curated text

If the selected metafield yields text, Retail Cloud Connect uses it as the imported description; otherwise it uses the standard Shopify description. This setting replaces **Use SEO Descriptions**, and existing choices are not migrated. To keep using Shopify SEO descriptions, copy them into a product metafield and select it. See [Product Description Source](/shopify/filters-and-data/product-description-source/) for details.

<br/>

## Local Inventory

Use [Local Inventory](/shopify/advanced-settings/local-inventory/) to sync available quantities from selected Shopify locations into Google Cloud and let shoppers filter search and collection results by what is available at their local store.

<br/>

## Category Enrichment

Use [Category Enrichment](/shopify/advanced-settings/enrichment/) when eligible stores need AI assistance assigning product categories before import.

<br/>

## Manual Collection Ordering

Enable **Manual Collection Ordering** to use Shopify's curated product order on collection pages. Merchants select between one and five Shopify collections whose product sorting is **Manually**. After the next successful full import, each selected collection page offers that order as the **Featured** sort option and uses it by default.

**Featured** is collection-only, a shopper's explicit sort selection still takes precedence, and reordering in Shopify becomes visible after the next successful full import.

See [Collection Sort Order](/shopify/advanced-settings/collection-sort-order/) for setup steps, supported sort options, and when changes take effect, including how this setting works with **Collection Default Sort Order** in Layout Settings.

<br/>

## When Changes Take Effect

Changes to variant grouping, product description source, product exclusions,
category enrichment, or manual collection ordering require a full import.
The Data Settings pending indicator remains visible until a full import
starts. Manual ordering becomes available after the full import succeeds
for every market.

Removing local inventory locations does not require a full import. Settings
that only affect storefront behavior do not require a catalog import.

For the main import and attribute mapping workflow, see [Catalog Import](/shopify/filters-and-data/catalog-import/). Advanced and enterprise merchants can also use [Google Cloud](/shopify/advanced-settings/google-cloud/) for project details, service account access, and document search settings.