Product data
Product data is everything recorded about a product so it can be found and sold: its name, brand, codes, specifications, category, images and price.
- Product information
What it means
Product data is the set of facts that describe each product you sell, with every fact kept in a field of its own rather than in one block of text. It comes in four kinds:
- Identity: the name, the brand, the barcode number (GTIN) and the manufacturer’s part number (MPN).
- Specifications: the measurable facts shoppers filter on, such as width or capacity.
- Categorisation: where the product sits in your category tree.
- Content: the images, the product title and the product description.
Most of it starts in a supplier’s spreadsheet, written for the supplier’s warehouse rather than for your shoppers. From there it flows into your store, your product feeds and every marketplace you sell on, so one wrong value turns up everywhere at once.
Think of it like this
Think of the label on a medicine box: name, strength, dose, maker and batch number, each in its set place, so a pharmacist anywhere can read it at a glance. Product data does that job for every shop, feed and search engine a product passes through.
For example
An illustrative supplier row reads SKU NX-4821-W, with no name, no brand, Dimensions 1850x595x655 and Colour Steel/Inox. As product data a store can use, it becomes a Brackmore 60cm fridge freezer with height 1850 mm, width 595 mm, depth 655 mm and colour Stainless steel, each in a field of its own.
Why it matters
Every place a product appears is built from its data. A filter can only offer values that are in it, and an AI assistant can only quote what it states. Google Merchant Center marks seven attributes as required for every product, among them an ID, a title, an image link, availability and a price, and a product without them cannot be served in ads or free listings.1
Not to be confused with
A product feed is a different thing from product data. A feed is one file made from the product data and shaped to one channel’s rules, such as Google’s.
Sources
- Google Merchant Center Help. Product data specification.