Are you combining your own products and creating a bundle for your ecommerce store? If so, then you need to use the “Is_Bundle” and tell Google what is in the bundle for your shopping feed.

Today’s topic is a cool attribute in your Google Shopping feed: Is_Bundle. It signifies to Google that you are grouping a set of products together to create your own bundle to sell at a set price. The Is_Bundle attribute is how you distinguish your items from a manufacturer-created bundle, multipack, or other products without accessories.

Before we really get into the thick of it, we’ve done a lot of discussion on optimizing shopping feeds. If you need more or other information regarding it, I’m linking it below. Peruse at your leisure, and hopefully you find it useful.

Custom Labels
Product Title
Product Images

You can also look a using a Supplemental Feed to help optimize your shopping feed if you are not using a shopping feed management platform.

Now on with the show! A product title should contain the following:

Bundle Guidelines

An example of a bundle is a doll with a set of clothes that don’t normally come with purchase of said doll. You combined them, and sell on your site as a singular product. This example would need to use the is_bundle attribute. All the following shopping feed attributes should describe the base item (doll) of your bundle:

  • google product category
  • item group id
  • product type
  • unique product identifiers (brand, GTIN and MPN)
  • adult
  • variant attributes

All other attributes that are not listed above should describe your bundle and not your base item (doll).

You may be asking, why would you not use the is_bundle for a manufacturer-defined bundle or even a multipack? The big reason is that a manufacturer-defined bundle & multipack will already have a unique product identifiers (brand, GTIN and MPN) for that specific bundle/multipack. All the other attributes in the feed will be based on the unique product identifiers.

What’s the difference, then, between a bundle and multipack? Bundles are several different items that you combine into a new SKU, whereas multipacks are multiple items of the same kind packed together (i.e. selling 4 red race cars together).

Bundle Examples

1. Group toys with accessories such as a doll with clothes.

Product: Android doll with sequin outfits
Title: 18” Android Doll + Matching Sequin Shirt and Pants
is_bundle: yes

2. Group video game console with three video games, the video game console is the main item.

Product: PlayStation 4 with 3 Video Games
Title: Sony PlayStation 4 + Uncharted 1, 2 & 3
is_bundle: yes

Increase Your Average Order Value with Bundles

A struggle that most ecommerce stores face is trying increasing the average order value (AOV) each year. A lot of stores sell a few items (~20%) that make up the majority of their revenue.

This could be because you sell a main item and accessories that are not as popular, or your sell tons of items and people don’t spend a lot of time just poking around your store. Either way, bundles are a great way to help solve both of these problems.

Sell Main Item & Accessories

What you would do is take your main item and package that with a few of your popular accessories for a higher price. The higher price will be a few dollars cheaper then if someone bought each item individually but it’s still at a higher price then if someone only bought your main item.

Sell Tons of Items

Bundles are great when you sell a ton of product and not everyone is going to spend time looking around your store. If you know what your top selling products are, you can combine each popular item with accessories to help push up your average order value (AOV).

Now when someone is on your site looking at your main item, you should show them this bundle as another option. You could also show them the bundle during the checkout process for an upsell.

This works for either situation above and any other example where a bundle might make sense. You can even show the savings on your bundle to help sway people who love to save money. Now, you can’t use a bundle in every country but the countries below are where you need to use Is_Bundle if you do create your own.

Countries That Use Is_Bundle

Required if you’ve created a bundle containing a main product and you’re targeting any of the following countries:

  • Australia
  • Brazil
  • Czechia
  • France
  • Germany
  • Italy
  • Japan
  • Netherlands
  • Spain
  • Switzerland
  • United Kingdom
  • United States

Bundle Shopping Feed Format

If you are going to setup your shopping feed yourself, then you need to take the following format into account. You want Google to be able to read and understand your shopping feed. Just a reminder, you don’t submit is_bundle for a manufacturer-defined bundle.

Type: Boolean 
Supported Values: yes, true, no, false
(Text and XML feeds)

Supported Values: true, false
(Content API feeds)
Repeated Field: No

Bundle Best Practice

  • Describe the entire bundle. For example, submit content for image_link, title, and description that take into account the entire bundle.
  • Submit the correct condition. For example, if any item in the bundle is used, then submit the condition as used.
  • Use the is_bundle attribute to let us know that the product includes customization like engraving or other personalization.

Bundles are not always used in an ecommerce store to increase your average order value (AOV) but they should be. The higher your AOV, the more you can spend on acquiring new customers and move them from purchase to retention. Don’t underestimate the power of a bundle!