Updating a big amount of products

[Mike Zorin]

Hello.

There are around 50 k uploaded products via python back-end. 

I was wondering it's possible to update this batch, if new one would be smaller? Or the existing products should be deleted first?

p.s.  How it possible to delete if maxResults in the list method is 250?

Thank you.

[Shopping API Forum Advisor]

Hi Mike,

 

This is Ciara from the Content API support team. Thank you for reaching out to us.

 

I understand that you'd like to update ~50k products on your account. From the Content API's perspective, you can update those existing products and there is no need to delete them first, you can use the supplemental feed or products.update method to send updates to those products. In addition, according to our best practices, instead of making many sequential or parallel requests to the same service, make a single custombatch request that contains all the desired requests, with that said you can also utilize the products.custombatch:update method. Take note of the limits for the custombatch method.

 

Regarding your question about how to delete the products, you can use the products.delete method, which is a different method from the products.list method which is only used to lists the products in your Merchant Center account. The response might contain fewer items than specified by maxResults. Rely on nextPageToken to determine if there are more items to be requested.

 

Let me know if you have any questions.

 

Regards,

Ciara Content API for Shopping Team

ref:_00D1U1174p._5004Q2iPWRk:ref

[va...@adcore.com]

Hello,

I'm Mike's colleague and I want to elaborate his question:
We have feed with 100 items, we uploaded it successfully using products.custombatch.insert.
1. Next time we use same feed but amount of items changed to 50 items
Question: according to best practice what we need to do with missing items? What is your recommendation in this case? Which API we can use?

Same question for 50K items and missing 10k?
2. Next time we same feed but data in items changed (like prices, quantities, etc...)
Question: according to best practice what we need to do: delete all GMC items and re-insert all of them (could it impact some stats)? Find changed items and update only this items? Something else? What is your recommendation?

Same question for 50k items and changed 40k?

Thanks for your help!
Vadim

[Shopping API Forum Advisor]

Hello Vadim,

I’m James, also a member of the Content API Team. Allow me to assist you further.

For question #1, can you please clarify what you meant by mentioning missing items? In the given context, are you asking how you can find and update those 50 out of 100 items using the API? If yes, as mentioned by my colleague in her previous response, you can still use the products.custombatch but this time you need to use the update method. You may refer here for more information. 

As for question #2, when making changes to your existing product data, it is not necessary to delete all the GMC items and re-insert all of them containing the updated data again because it is indeed that might affect the performance of your products. Instead, you need to only specify and update only the expected items that you want to update. 

Please note that the Content API for Shopping imposes quotas and hard limitations on its features, you may refer here for more information. Therefore, it’s recommended that if updates become available individually(using products.update method), send them individually, don't wait until there are several updates so you can batch them up. Likewise, if updates are available in batches(using products.custombatch:update method), send them in batches, do not break them up into individual requests.

If we misunderstood your concern, feel free to correct us and provide more details to your concern so that we can assist you accurately.

Regards,

James Howell

Content API for Shopping Team

ref:_00D1U1174p._5004Q2iPWRk:ref

[va...@adcore.com]

Thanks for answers.
Question 1: in feed was 100 items, become 50; in GMC still we have 100. That mean we currently missing 50 items in feed. Our question is should we delete missing feed items from GMC? Should we use different logic?

Question 2:
Our system can have many items to be updated in same time, as I understand we need to get all products from GMC and compare them to Feed Items and than update only those which changed? Am I right? Or API have some kind of comparison?

[Shopping API Forum Advisor]

Hi,

1. Is your first question related to maxResults? When you mentioned feed is it a Content API feed?
2. When you mentioned feed items, are they Content API feed items?

Using 'Reply privately to author' option, please share the Merchant Center id and screenshots that can help us understand the issue and your questions.

If you are not seeing the 'Reply privately to author' option, then send the details to email shopping-api-support@google.com using the same subject.

Thanks,

Lakshmi

Content API for Shopping Team

ref:_00D1U1174p._5004Q2iPWRk:ref

[va...@adcore.com]

Hey,
1. No, feed is an list of products in our system before GMC. maxResults it's a different question.
2. feed items is a list of items (products) in our system before GMC

[Shopping API Forum Advisor]

Hi everyone,

 

Thank you for the additional context regarding your concern. Now, with your first concern wherein the number of items does not match between your feed(system) and the Merchant Center, if the items that are still on your Merchant account but not on your feed(system) is no longer needed, then you may delete those items from the Merchant Center using the products.delete method.

 

I understand that on your system, many items can be updated at the same time. For updating multiple products on your Merchant account, you can use the products.custombatch and use the update method. Now, can you confirm if you are not able to determine on your end what product changes you made on your feed? If you are unable to do so, then you can post process the result of products.list and compare to your products on the feed to check what attributes you need to update.

 

Hope this helps. Let me know if you have any questions.

 

Regards,

Ciara

Content API for Shopping Team

ref:_00D1U1174p._5004Q2iPWRk:ref

[Vadim Malkin]

Thanks for this information!

ref:_00D1U1174p._5004Q2iPWRk:ref --
You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "Google Content API for Shopping" group.
To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/google-content-api-for-shopping/3YUmDjCsDVU/unsubscribe.
To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to google-content-api-fo...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/google-content-api-for-shopping/PAPV2000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000RPEDWH00Jj5FgUNYSCSoy768CUtmDA%40sfdc.net.