Notes for owners · SEO, content and AI search
How to write a product catalogue that marketplaces and Google can read
Search boxes and filters read your catalogue before any buyer does. Fill titles, attributes and variants from one master sheet, the same way on every channel, and the right buyer's search will find the listing.
The GullySales team · Updated 17 Oct 2026 · 6 min read
On this page
You list the same hand-tufted rug on Amazon, Flipkart and your own store. It sells on one and sits on the other two. The product is identical, so the listing is the problem: a size field left blank, a colour typed as "Peacock" where the filter only knows "Blue", four colours entered as four unrelated products. Fill titles, attributes and variants from one master sheet, the same way on every channel, and the search box and filter panel can match your product to the buyer already looking for it.
Who reads your catalogue before a buyer does?
Software does. A marketplace's search, its filter panel and Google's shopping results all read your listing as a set of fields, not as a page. A buyer taps "Wool", "5 x 8 ft" and "Blue", and sees only listings whose fields hold exactly those values. Your careful description often goes unread. If the size field is empty, the rug is invisible to everyone who filtered by size.
Then the person arrives, reads the first line of the title on a small screen and decides whether to tap. The title has to carry the facts they filtered on, in their words.
Build one master sheet before you touch a seller panel
What you need is a single spreadsheet that holds every fact about every product, and one house rule: nobody types a value straight into a seller panel. Each channel's upload file is filled from the sheet. When the sheet is wrong, it is wrong everywhere, and it gets corrected once.
| Column | What goes in it | The rule |
|---|---|---|
| SKU | Your code for this exact item | One code per size and colour, never reused |
| Parent ID | The code shared by every variant of one design | See the variant rule below |
| Product type | The buyer's word: "living room rug", "steel tiffin box" | Not your trade's word |
| Deciding attribute | The one fact the buyer chooses on | Goes into every title |
| Material | Fabric, metal, plastic grade | Only what your supplier's bill or a test supports |
| Colour, filter value | The value from the channel's colour list | Picked from your own fixed list, mapped per channel |
| Colour, display name | "Peacock", "Rust", "Bottle green" | Free text, shown to the buyer |
| Size as sold | "5 x 8 ft", "King", "500 ml", "Pack of 3" | Matches the channel's size list; measured from your product, not copied from the supplier |
| In the box | Everything the buyer receives | Anti-slip pad, lids, cables, the manual |
| GTIN or barcode | The number printed on the pack, if the product has one | Leave blank for handmade or private-label goods; never invent one |
| HSN code | As classified by your CA | Needed for GST invoices; never guessed |
| Title, one column per channel | Your site and each marketplace | Built from the columns above, never typed fresh |
A title formula that holds on every channel
Brand, product type, deciding attribute, size or pack, then variant. For the rug: "[Brand] Hand-tufted Wool Rug for Living Room, 5 x 8 ft (152 x 244 cm), Geometric, Peacock".
The deciding attribute changes with the product, and choosing it is most of the work. For a mixer grinder it is the wattage and the number of jars. For a phone cover it is the exact phone model. A pressure cooker buyer chooses on capacity and whether the base works on induction. Scroll through the questions buyers send you; whatever they ask most belongs in the title.
Cut "best", "premium quality" and "hot sale". They push the size off a title the phone screen cuts short.
On your own site, give Google a fuller title and a description in your own words. Pasting the marketplace description there puts you in competition with your own text on a far bigger website.
When to group variants, and when to split them
Group sizes, colours or pack counts under one parent when a buyer would compare them side by side and nothing else changes. Split them into separate products when the material, the design or the contents of the box change, because a review of one would mislead the buyer of the other.
Sellers get this wrong both ways. Four colours listed as four products scatter the reviews. A wool rug and a cheaper viscose version under one parent collect complaints about "the pile" that apply to only one, and the next buyer cannot tell which.
In the feed you send to Google, give every variant its own SKU, price and photograph, then tie them together with the feed's group ID. A blue rug shown in a red photograph is a return waiting to happen.
For example: a tufted rug unit in Bhadohi
Imagine a family unit in Bhadohi (an invented case, with invented figures) selling hand-tufted wool rugs on two marketplaces and a Shopify store. Three people list products, each from memory. One design is "Peacock" on the store, "Teal" on one marketplace and "Multicolour" on the other. The second marketplace asks for size in centimetres. The team had only ever sold in feet, so they left it blank. Every colour is its own listing.
The rugs are good. On the second marketplace they vanish when a buyer filters by size, and on both they vanish when the filter is "Blue".
None of it needed a new photographer. The team built the master sheet and a colour map: display name "Peacock", filter value "Blue" everywhere. They measured every finished rug in both units instead of converting the feet on the order slip. Each design's colours went under one parent. Every channel's file is now uploaded from the sheet, so the next correction happens once. It was not clean at first: about 40 of the 300 listings (invented figures) were rejected on the second marketplace for a unit mismatch and had to be fixed by hand.
When the catalogue is not your problem
Seller dashboards on the larger marketplaces show how often each listing was seen and clicked. A listing that is seen and clicked but not bought has a price, photograph, review or delivery problem. If it is barely seen, start with the catalogue. With ten products on one marketplace, skip the full sheet: fix the titles, fill every filter field and stop.
What to do this afternoon
Pick the products that sell on one channel and stall on another. Open each one on every channel where you list it, side by side, and write down every value that differs: colour names, sizes, what is in the box, the order of words in the title. That list is the first draft of your master sheet. How buyers search in each product category is covered in the e-commerce sales and marketing section, and e-commerce and marketplace marketing is the service that sits around it. If you want help building the sheet, tell us what you need.
