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

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.

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.

Local Inventory

Use Local Inventory to sync available quantities from selected Shopify locations into Google Cloud and let shoppers filter search and collection results by what is available at their local store.

Category Enrichment

Use Category Enrichment when eligible stores need AI assistance assigning product categories before import.

Manual Collection Ordering

Enable Manual Collection Ordering to use Shopify's curated product order on collection pages. Merchants select between one and five Shopify collections whose product sorting is Manually. After the next successful full import, each selected collection page offers that order as the Featured sort option and uses it by default.

Featured is collection-only, a shopper's explicit sort selection still takes precedence, and reordering in Shopify becomes visible after the next successful full import.

See Collection Sort Order for setup steps, supported sort options, and when changes take effect, including how this setting works with Collection Default Sort Order in Layout Settings.

When Changes Take Effect

Changes to variant grouping, product description source, product exclusions, category enrichment, or manual collection ordering require a full import. The Data Settings pending indicator remains visible until a full import starts. Manual ordering becomes available after the full import succeeds for every market.

Removing local inventory locations does not require a full import. Settings that only affect storefront behavior do not require a catalog import.

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.