The component looks like this

It takes all the products from Virtuemart and shows them here, it then gives you extra fields to attributes to.

If we select a product, we have this new form.

This allows us to add new information to the product, so Google can understand more about the product. The most basic required information needed by Google to accept your feed, isn't possible with the feeds that Virtuemart provides, so I have had to make this component which adds new fields to each product that is then merged together in the XML feed.

All the titles are links to my site, so if your not sure on what something does, you can click on the link and it will take you directly to the correct page on this site and read a huge amount of information about it. If you hover over the title it will also give you a small information pop up bubble, for quick reading.

So lets go through the parts bit by bit now.

• Name - This sounds obvious, but i am asked all the time what this is, its the product title from Virtuemart, if you want to change this, open the product in VM and change it there.
  
  
• Published - If you wish, you can "unpublish" this product from the feed, this will NOT unpublish it from your shop, it will only prevent it from being added to the feed.
  
  
• Expiration date - This is for items which can perish, such as foods, medicines, some paints etc. Just click on the calendar link and it will allow you to add the date in the correct format that Google expects.
  
  
• Price Type - Don't Use, Negotiable or Starting are the only options here, if you only accept the price given, don't use this, if you are willing to haggle, this is for you.
  
  
• Size - Google will accept 10 sizes added here, you can click on the + sign and add 10 entries. There is huge amounts of info here.
  
  
• Shipping - this allows you to add in detailed shipping per product, the parameters which we will cover in a moment gives you an overall setting for all products, but this setting allows you to override that if needed.
  
  
• Tax - This allows you to add specific tax settings to this one product.
  
  
• GTIN - Global Trade Identification Numbers, this is one of the MPN, ISBN or UPC codes. Even if you add the details into the MPN, UPC or ISBN fields, it will be merged and mapped to the GTIN attribute in Google anyway, but i have left the other fields so you can see where you got the info from later on. You MUST have one of the GTIN, MPN, ISBN, or UPC codes per product or the feed will fail. Do NOT try to make home grown codes as you will be banned. The code is NOT a random set of numbers, it is very clever. For example "8 85909 28338 5" is the bar code for a software on my desk here. The number 5 is not random, it is part of an algorithm, if the other numbers in the code were different, it would not be a number 5 at the end. So they can tell if it is "home grown" or genuine, and the last number must be correct. There is more information here at Google
  http://www.google.com/support/merchants/bin/answer.py?hlrm=en&answer=160161
  
  
• Author - Who wrote the book, if your not selling media, then ignore this.
  
  Edition - is this is a "special edition", "paper back" etc?
  
  
• Colour/Color - Google allows you to add multiple colours to the product, so instead of having 3 hats "A red hat", "A blue Hat", "A Green Hat", you have one hat with 3 colours added. If Google detect your sending up the same products in different colours it will ban them for "Duplicate Content". The correct way is to have multiple colours and sizes added.
  
  
• Year - The year the product was made.
  
  
• Featured Product - normally the system will detect if you have the product set as Featured/Special in VirtueMart, but if you would like to over ride this you can and tell the plug-in that it is featured.
  
  
• Review Count/Average - These settings will collect the review info from Virtuemart. So if you have the review system turned on, and people have reviewed your product it will tell Google what the average score was and how many times it has been voted on.
  
  
• Product Type - This is asking if you would like to show which category the product is in.
  
  
• Genre - What Genre is the music? Rock and roll, punk etc or in films it would be Comedy, Horror etc.
  
  
• Excluded Destination - This allows you to tell Google not to include this product in certain search results.
  
  
• Custom Fields - This will probably never be used, but i have provided you with the ability incase something new pops up. Click here for more info on how this works.

Most of those are common sense and in the component the titles link to this website with huge amounts of info. You can select Attributes from the above menu and choose any content your not sure about for more detailed info.

There is also a parameters area to customise and change the way the component and plug-in works this is where we do it.

The Parameters above are

• FTP - I would advice all users to NOT use FTP, and to use Scheduled upload which is shown in the video tutorials, unless you have hundreds of thousands of products. The FTP function works perfectly, but this puts your server under more strain, also sometimes some hosting companies block the PHP FTP function which makes it crash. The scheduled option removes all those possibilities.
  
  
• Select Products Child/Parent - Personally i would just leave this on "Both", we had a few clients ask for it as an option, i personally cant see any benefit from it, but its there if you would like to use it.
  
  
• Check Stock - This gives you the options of how you would like the stock to be shown to Google. I would select "Show everything in stock", and then show the default always in stock of 1 or 10 or some number. If your shop uses the stock control system, then select "Show correct stock info", as if Google visit your site and find that it is out of stock on your site, and your feed is showing as in stock, your feed will be banned.
  
  
• Shipping - None, it wont show shipping info and will use your settings in your Google Merchant Account, one cost, taken from the cost below it, as VirtueMart exports what Virtuemart would charge.
  
  
• Tax - As shipping, you can specify per item, none or as Virtuemart.
  
  
• Sale Price - is the item on sale? This will show all items in your shop for sale and can be over ridden in the per product page.
  
  
• Add custom product link parameter - This allows you to add ?source="froogle" to the end of the url, so your stats system can see which links came from this feed and calculate how much money you have made exactly from this extension.
  
  
• Title Merge System - This allows you to build the Product Titles in a different way for search reasons. So if you have
  Colour = white
  Title = iPhone
  Manufacturer = Apple
  You could have "Manufacturer - Colour - Title" so the product title will build "Apple white iPhone".
  
  
• Currency Fields - This is a great part of the system, very cool. Add in the currencies here that you would like to export, for example I live in the UK so i would like to export US Dollars (USD), so i would enter USD into the top box. This will then generate a new feed as well as my existing feed "all_products_usd.xml" so this can be uploaded to Google as a new target country. All the prices will be correctly recalculated for that currency and an extra tag will be added to the URL to force the website to flick to that currency for just that visitor and show the item in USD. This opens up a huge new market for you, and even continents. The only problem, is that the feed must be in the correct language, so if i chose JPY (Japan), then the product description MUST be in Japanese. If it is not, Google will fail you. At present because Virtuemart is not built correctly, multi- language systems such as Joomfish doesn't work correctly. But the new rebuilt Virtuemart 2.X will allow this to work, as it is correctly built, so future versions of this feed will allow us to pull in different language versions of the product and merge it with the correct currency price and you will be able to sell to all countries that Google supports.

As you can see, most of the options are not needed, as they have been asked for sometimes strange reasons and unneeded reasons, but i have added them anyway. But most people can leave the system very standard and it will work very well. Personally the settings I use for most of my clients are

FTP - Off

Select Product - Both

Shipping - None (use merchant centre settings)

Tax - None (Use merchant centre settings)

Online Only - Choose if you sell in a normal shop then yes

Custom product Parameter - Yes

Title Field System - No

Currency Fields - My shop is default to GBP, so i add in USD, and AUS as my shop is not in any other language but English.