Shopify Advanced Settings
The Advanced Settings page controls how products are imported into Google Cloud after merchants have mapped the main attributes and filters.
Exclude Products
Exclude Products by Tag
Use Shopify tags when a merchant needs to hide a primary product and all of its variants from:
- Search results
- Collection pages
- Recommendations
This is useful for items such as warranties, service plans, gift wrap, shipping-only products, or other non-merchandise catalog entries.
Exclude Products by Metafield
Use metafield exclusions when the rule needs to apply at the variant level instead of the primary product level.
The current Retail Cloud Connect Shopify App supports:
- Product Variant metafields only
- Boolean metafields only
- True or False values selected per metafield
Tag exclusions remove the primary product and all of its variants. Metafield exclusions are better when only specific variants should be hidden.
Expand Products by Product Option
Enable Expand Product Variants when variants such as different colors or sizes should appear as separate products in Google Cloud and on storefront results.
Common use cases include:
- Showing each colorway as its own product card
- Giving size or width variants their own search result
- Improving visibility for high-value variants that should not be hidden inside a parent product
After enabling the setting, choose the Shopify product option that should be used to split variants, such as Color or Size.
The import creates one primary record per distinct sanitized option value and appends it to the product ID.
Changing this setting alters the imported catalog structure and may require AI models to retrain.
Product Description Data Source
Set Product Description Data Source to a product metafield if that metafield holds more complete descriptive copy than the default product description field.
This setting is helpful when:
- Merchandising teams maintain curated or SEO-tuned copy in a metafield
- Product descriptions are short or inconsistent
- Merchants want AI Commerce Search to rank and understand products using curated text
If the selected metafield yields text, Retail Cloud Connect uses it as the imported description; otherwise it uses the standard Shopify description. This setting replaces Use SEO Descriptions, and existing choices are not migrated. To keep using Shopify SEO descriptions, copy them into a product metafield and select it. See Product Description Source for details.
Category Enrichment
Use Category Enrichment when eligible stores need AI assistance assigning product categories before import.
When Changes Take Effect
Changes to variant grouping, product description source, product exclusions, or category enrichment mark the catalog as requiring a full import. The Data Settings status and automatic schema-sync task use the same classification, so the pending indicator remains visible until a full import starts.
Local inventory removals use their dedicated partial schema-import flow instead of this full-import status. Other Advanced Settings that only affect storefront behavior do not mark catalog data as stale.
For the main import and attribute mapping workflow, see Catalog Import. Advanced and enterprise merchants can also use Google Cloud for project details, service account access, and document search settings.