[Google Shopping API] API returning empty results

[NateSkiles]

Due to a layout change on the Google Shopping page, the Google Shopping API is regularly returning empty results for searches using gl=us.

Testing with other country parameters seems to be unaffected at this time:

Playground | Insepct | Intercom

[JustZakary]

https://blog.google/products/shopping/google-tools-summer-sales-2024/

It appears Google announced these updates a couple weeks ago and is now phasing them into production.

[chrisrosner]

Is this something that customers can or should mitigate themselves?

[chrisrosner]

https://blog.google/products/shopping/google-tools-summer-sales-2024/

It appears Google announced these updates a couple weeks ago and is now phasing them into production.

@JustZakary I didn't see any mention of the 'gl' parameter in that release, am I missing it?

[schaferyan]

Is this something that customers can or should mitigate themselves?

@chrisrosner we are working to develop a fix for this. In the meantime, customers may be able to avoid this issue by using a gl parameter other than us.

@JustZakary I didn't see any mention of the 'gl' parameter in that release, am I missing it?

The issue is most likely not about the gl parameter directly. My guess is that these updates have only ben released in the US so far. Indicating a county other than US using the gl parameter may help to avoid the new layout and therefore avoid the errors.

[NateSkiles]

Another user reached out regarding this issue:

Intercom

[hilmanski]

Another customers reached out to us.

Customer 1 | Customer 2 | Customer 3

[hilmanski]

Another customer reached out regarding this issue.

Front

[marm123]

Another user reported it:

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[marm123]

Two more users reached out about this:

Intercom | Intercom

[martin-serpapi]

Another user reported this:

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[martin-serpapi]

Another user reported this:

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[aciddjus]

Thank you, everyone, for your patience and understanding. We apologize for the inconvenience and are working as fast as possible to update our parsers to support the new gl=us layout.

In the meantime, we have released a patch that will return an alternative mobile layout when the gl=us parameter is used.

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Playground

[i8ramin]

Thank you for the quick patch. It looks like these are mobile results, and so the image thumbnails are coming back very very small (ie, https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/shopping?q=tbn:ANd9GcTt88PN2g55XA97H1tRDx8PaRzIUq-Rgn0xJJv8y4l8jwRFWN_b_vOmj6LtIaHe0XsHu5wnYom_HenTl-B4UsbFoJO8fBdHrot_ltwuzw&usqp=CAE) ... do anyone know if there is a way to modify the thumbnails to get the larger size?

[alexbarron]

Thanks for the patch. We're seeing some queries return shopping_results where some results include the full data set and others are missing things like product_id, rating, reviews, etc.

Playground

Intercom

[schaferyan]

Another customer with this issue:

Intercom

[jeremytmack]

Are there any updates or ETA on this situation? We have a platform thats been down and we cannot leverage the mobile solution you currently have in place due to the low-fidelity images.

[kagermanov27]

We have deployed a fix for this. The results for desktop are now present:

Before:

After:

We are not closing the issue to see if the solution applies to all the queries. We would be grateful if you let us know.

[InfiniteCodeMonkeys]

Working as expected for us, but will keep testing throughout the day.

[bbwilson]

My testing shows this is working correctly. Thanks,

[marm123]

One of our customers reported a strange issue where no results are returned for some searches, but looking at the page layout, it seems that the issue might potentially be with Google itself? @tanys123 @kagermanov27 do you think these are relevant to this thread or should this be a separate issue or not issue at all on our side?

Inspect 1 | Inspect 2 | Inspect 3 | Inspect 4 | Inspect 5 | Inspect 6

[kagermanov27]

One of our customers reported a strange issue where no results are returned for some searches, but looking at the page layout, it seems that the issue might potentially be with Google itself? @tanys123 @kagermanov27 do you think these are relevant to this thread or should this be a separate issue or not issue at all on our side?

We have deployed another fix for this. New server errors are now passed in favor of searches with results.