Categorizing your products properly on each comparison shopping engine is one of the most important parts of your product listings. Sometimes having a product in the wrong category can get you many wasteful clicks and will cost you an arm and a leg at the same time. On the other hand, having your product in the correct categories will get you more relevant clicks with a higher chance of converting into a sale.
There are a couple of ways to ensure that your products are displayed in the correct categories.
Manually Tag Items
Most shopping cart systems allows for many product attributes. You can use this to create a hidden attributes for each product, and then set the value of each comparison shopping engine category name or ID number. You want to do this inside of your shopping cart system so that the data is saved and exported with your newly generated feeds.
This solution is ideal for small product catalogs where entering the information manually is easily done.
Map Categories
If you have many products and entering the category information one by one is not an option, try mapping your categories for theirs. You will basically create a list of all your categories and the corresponding CSE category. Every time you generate your feed files, have it look up the category name based on your mapping.
If All Else Fails
Alternatively you can just submit your category names and let the CSE do the mapping. Just keep in mind that this may have poor results.
If you utilize your own category names in your feeds, you will want to bid 0.00 on any items that somehow wind up in completely irrelevant categories. This will save you from unnecessary spend.
Bottom Line
Do it once and do it right.
