# Importing Your Shopify Catalog


# Introduction

Retail Cloud Connect imports all published products in your Shopify catalog to Google Cloud Vertex AI Search for Retail and keeps it up-to-date in near real-time. Inventory and pricing updates are prioritized, followed by collection changes and product updates. Your full catalog will also be indexed at least once per day for continuity.

Your catalog import settings define how your data should be mapped from Shopify fields to Google Cloud's Retail API fields. Retail Cloud Connect will automatically import Shopify's standard data including product prices, descriptions, and collection data. However, some fields are unique to Google Cloud's Retail API and should be mapped to your custom metafields, tags, or metafields created by third-party apps for best results.

Imported fields are used to create product facets and filters on search and collection pages.


# Vertex AI Search for Retail Fields

# Brand

The Brand field in Google Cloud's Retail API can either be imported as Shopify's default Vendor field, or, you can use a custom metafield.

# Reviews

The Reviews fields in Google Cloud's Retail API can be imported from a custom metafield. There are two inputs that make up reviews:

  1. Rating Count - The number of ratings that a product has
  2. Average Rating - The average value of a product rating, such as 4.5

# Audience

The Audience fields in Google Cloud's Retail API are Gender and Age Group, and can be imported from custom metafields or Tag values.

You can Search for Tags or Type Tag Values Manually
You can Search for Tags or Type Tag Values Manually

# Custom Attributes

# Metafields

Metafields encompass the custom data in your catalog. Each enabled metafield will create a custom attribute for filtering your product display pages.

# Tag Groups

Tag Groups can be used for additional filtering if product data is not available in a metafield.

To create additional product filters using tags, name a tag group and select the tags you would like associated with the group. You can also use a tag prefix to capture all tags that utilize the same format.

# Color Families

Two values for colors will be imported for each product:

  1. Color - The product color field by default, or another custom field
  2. Color Family - One of 13 colors that the product color is mapped to

If the default color field is changed, press Refresh Colors to re-index the product catalog. Large product catalogs can take several hours to sync.

Each Color can be mapped to one or more Color Families
Each Color can be mapped to one or more Color Families

# Exclude Products

If there are products that you do not want returned by the Retail API, such as extended warranties or shipping bundles, you can tag these products with a tag such as, Hidden, to exclude them from imports.


# Advanced Use Cases

# Collection Filters

Retail Cloud Connect imports all Shopify collections by default. However, some merchants use collections for marketing campaigns or landing pages and prefer to only import a subset of collections to simplify navigation or product filtering.

If your primary navigation contains a link to a "T-Shirts" collection, but you have another collection called "Red T-Shirts" that is not linked from your navigation, you may prefer to import it as a specific collection. This would allow users to select "Red T-Shirts" as a filter from the "T-Shirts" collection page.

If some red t-shirts are also in other collections, such as a "Spring Sale" marketing campaign collection, importing specific collections prevents navigation clutter by stopping "Spring Sale" from displaying on the T-Shirts collection pages.

Google Cloud's Retail API requires each product to be assigned to at least one category (Shopify Collection). If you are using Collection Filters, you may see Default returned as a filter on your storefront.

To prevent the Default filter from appearing, simply create a Facet Control in your Google Cloud catalog project.