If you sell online you may need to be aware of a small but important change that Google have made recently.

Whilst there are companies better placed to assist you with your Google rankings, we recently saw Google’s announcement that EAN numbers were now a mandatory requirement for a product to be listed in Google Shopping.

Wikipedia goes into lots of detail about EAN numbers, but simply its the standard number that appears below a barcode. It used to stand for European Article Number, but has been renamed to International Article Number and is also sometimes known as a Universal Product Code or UPC.

Originally Google had these EAN numbers as an optional piece of information within a shop listing, but they recently added this into their help pages:

“Note: As of 3 May 2011, unique product identifiers are required for all products submitted to the United States, United Kingdom, France and Germany, except for custom-made goods. We encourage you to provide unique product identifiers whenever possible.” Visit the Google Merchant Center Help for further reading.

Usually of course what begins with Google follows through to other services. We've also found that one of our clients who runs an Ebay store has seen his listings fall from Google (and within Ebay) to be replaced by sellers who include their EAN number.

To help you get started you can look up EAN numbers on the UPC Database (a really useful site). Alternatively, of course we can help and whilst we're at it, it may also be timely to revisit your site for other Google updates! Call Eddie on 01476 576 839 or email thrive@hattrickmedia.co.uk.