# Importing Your Shopify Catalog

# Introduction

Retail Cloud Connect™ imports all published products in your Shopify catalog to Google Cloud Vertex AI Search for Commerce 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 filter and catalog import settings define how your data should be mapped from Shopify to Vertex AI Search for Commerce attributes. Retail Cloud Connect™ will automatically import Shopify's standard data including product prices, descriptions, and collection data. However, some fields are unique to Vertex AI Search for Commerce and should be mapped to your Shopify metafields, tags, or product options for best results.

Most attributes can be leveraged to create product facets and filters on search and collection pages.

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 like size, color, and material that define how a product differs across its variants.

# Metafields

Metafields often store custom data for your products beyond Shopify's standard fields. Each metafield can be mapped to a Vertex AI Search for Commerce attribute and used to create custom facets for filtering, making them the primary method for importing specialized product information.

# Tags

Tags are simple labels applied to products in Shopify that can be grouped together in an attribute. Selecting multiple tags allows you to organize related tags into meaningful filters when metafields are not available for specific product data.

# Tag Prefixes

Tag prefixes enable bulk import of tags that follow a consistent naming pattern (e.g., "Season:Spring", "Season:Winter"). Instead of selecting individual tags, you can specify a prefix like "Season:" to automatically capture all matching tags as a single attribute group.

# 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 for colors will be imported for each product:

Color - The product color option field by default, or another Shopify data source
Color Family - A group or parent color that the raw product color can be mapped to for simplified filtering

# 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

# Exclude Products

# Exclude Products by Tag

If there are products that you do not want returned by Vertex AI Search for Commerce, such as extended warranties or shipping bundles, you can tag these products with a tag such as, Hidden, to exclude them from imports.

# Exclude Products by Metafield

Similar to tags, you can also set metafield and metafield values to exclude from catalog imports. This is often used if specific product variants should be hidden, as tags can only be applied at the primary product level.

# 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 will still be imported to Vertex AI Search for Commerce. To prevent specific products from being imported, please see the Exclude Products instructions above.

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.

Vertex AI Search for Commerce 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.

# 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 creating 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 (e.g., "Shirts", "Shoes", "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 (or original price) fields, it 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 for collection-based filtering and merchandising logic.

attributes.rcc_collection_id

# Barcode and SKU

Shopify's variant-level Barcode field (UPC, ISBN, etc.) and SKU (Stock Keeping Unit) identifier, often used for Exact Match, high-intent searches and inventory management integrations.

attributes.barcode and attributes.sku