Updating Existing Content
Product Sync will try to match existing content items in your Content Library against the content items declared in your Google product feed file by comparing their URLs.
Content items in your content library with the same URL will be replaced with content from the Google Product Feed. Any content items created by Google Product Sync will be synchronized automatically, as long as the content remains in your Google product feed.
|
Present in your Content Library |
Present in Google Product Feed |
Will be managed by Product Sync |
Red Shirt |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yellow Sneakers |
Yes |
No |
No |
Leather Jacket |
No |
Yes |
Yes |
Pink Heels |
No |
No |
No |
Expired Content
Product Sync will automatically expire content (by setting its
expire_date
field), when it detects it is no longer present in the feed file. Expired content will still be accessible in your content library, and remain there until you permanently delete via the
API. To restore expired content, simply add it back in to your feed file.
Content Spider
Updates to your existing content are either done through Sailthru's content API or using the content spider. Once you start using Product Sync, the content or Javascript spider will stop operating on items that are handled by Product Sync. Considering the example mentioned above, the spider will continue to work on products "Yellow Sneakers" and "Pink Heels" as those items are not managed by Product Sync.
Content API
We don't recommend that you use the content API to update content managed by Google Product Sync as it may cause some data inconsistencies. You can update your existing content as long as it is not included in your Google product feed file.
For example, if you wanted to update the price of a product from $10 to $20, you might submit an API request to update the price. However, if the price for that product is still $10 in the Google product feed, then Product Sync may overwrite your API change and set the price back to $10.
Tags
Content tags power our recommendation algorithms, so it's important to handle them correctly.
When Product Sync updates existing content, it will append its generated tags to any existing tags. This means you won't lose any tags on your existing content when you start using Product Sync.
Here are some examples of how existing tags will be combined with tags generated by Product Sync:
Products |
Tags on existing content |
Tags generated by Product Sync |
Combined tags |
Red Shirt |
red, shirt |
clothing |
clothing, red, shirt |
Yellow Sneakers |
|
yellow, shoes |
yellow, shoes |