# Importing Your Shopify Catalog

# Introduction

Retail Cloud Connect™ imports all published Shopify products into Vertex AI Search for Commerce and keeps them up to date in near real-time. Inventory and pricing updates are prioritized, followed by collection and product updates, with a full catalog refresh at least once per day.

This page covers how Shopify data sources map into Vertex AI attributes and storefront filters.

Google Merchant Center

If you already sync your catalog data with Google Merchant Center, you should follow the same field mapping conventions for consistency with organic search results and products listed on Google Shopping. Additionally, if you are using Google Merchant Center to sync your product catalog with Vertex AI Search for Commerce, this must be disconnected before continuing with Retail Cloud Connect™.

# Shopify Data Sources

# Product Options

Product options are standard Shopify variant attributes such as size, color, and material.

# Metafields

Metafields are the primary way to import custom product data into Vertex AI attributes and storefront filters.

# Tags

Tags are simple labels applied to products in Shopify that can be grouped into an attribute when metafields are not available.

# Tag Prefixes

Tag prefixes bulk-import tags that follow a naming pattern such as Season:Spring or Season:Winter.

# Vertex AI Search for Commerce Attributes

# System Attributes

# Brand

The Brand field in Vertex AI Search for Commerce is typically imported from Shopify's default Vendor field. However, you can import this data from any Shopify data source.

# Reviews

The Reviews fields in Vertex AI Search for Commerce can be imported from metafields. There are two inputs that make up reviews:

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

REVIEWS.io Integration

If you use REVIEWS.io, the product metafields are reviewscouk.total and reviewscouk.rating

# Colors

Two values are imported for colors:

Color - The raw product color value, usually from a Shopify product option or another Shopify data source
Color Family - A parent color used to simplify storefront filtering

Use Color Families to normalize similar colors such as Burgundy, Wine, and Crimson under one shopper-facing family.

# Audience

The Audience fields in Vertex AI Search for Commerce are Gender and Age Group, and can be imported from any Shopify data source.

# Size

The product size field by default, or another Shopify data source.

# Material

Material can be imported from any Shopify data source.

# Pattern

Pattern can be imported from any Shopify data source.

# Custom Attributes

Outside of System Attributes, custom attributes can be created for additional filtering on your storefront.

Custom attributes can be created from any Shopify data source.

# Advanced Use Cases and Import Settings

Additional catalog import controls such as excluding products, expanding variants into separate products, and using SEO descriptions are managed from Advanced Settings inside the Shopify app.

# Categories and Shopify Collections

Retail Cloud Connect™ imports all Shopify collections as product categories 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.

All Collection Data Imported

Importing specific collections only impacts filtering. All product and collection data still imports to Vertex AI Search for Commerce. To prevent specific products from being imported, use the Exclude Products settings above.

If your primary navigation contains a link to a T-Shirts collection, but you also have another collection called Red T-Shirts that is not linked from 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.

Vertex AI Search for Commerce requires each product to be assigned to at least one category, which is normally a 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, create a Facet Control in your Google Cloud catalog project.

# Retail Cloud Connect™ Attributes

In addition to aligning Shopify with Vertex AI Search for Commerce attributes, Retail Cloud Connect™ also imports another core set of attributes to increase searchability, simplify merchandising rules, and apply additional filtering and sorting logic.

# Product Type

Shopify's native Product Type field, which is a categorization field merchants often use to organize products such as Shirts, Shoes, and Accessories.

attributes.product_type

# Published At

The timestamp of when a product was made available in your Shopify store, used when sorting products by Newest on search and collection pages.

attributes.published_at

# Product Tags

Custom labels that are often applied to products for organization and filtering. These tags are imported to the native Vertex AI Search for Commerce tags field, and also as a custom attribute for maximum flexibility.

attributes.rcc_tags

# Price Ratio

The discount ratio calculated by dividing a Shopify product's current Price by its Compare At Price field, or original price. This can be used to determine discount percentages for sale items.

attributes.price_ratio

# Collection IDs

Contains the unique identifiers of all Shopify collections that a product belongs to, allowing collection-based filtering and merchandising logic.

attributes.rcc_collection_id

# Barcode and SKU

Shopify's variant-level Barcode field, such as UPC or ISBN, and SKU identifier are useful for exact match and high-intent searches.

attributes.barcode and attributes.sku