The WooCommerce GTIN Mess Explained
The world of commerce runs on identifiers — numbers and codes that make each product unique in digital catalogues. For many, a GTIN (Global Trade Item Number) is essential, especially for selling on platforms like Google Shopping or scanning products at physical checkout. In the WooCommerce ecosystem, the road to adopting a GTIN has been long and surprisingly bumpy.
After over a decade, WooCommerce finally introduced a native GTIN field, which seemed promising to me at the time. However, this seemingly straightforward feature has opened up more questions than it answered, leaving Woo sellers struggling to fully leverage this field. Here’s why.
WooCommerce’s GTIN Field: A Late Arrival
WooCommerce’s decision to introduce a dedicated GTIN field was long-awaited by users and developers – it was a pleasant surprise for me after using custom fields for over a decade. Until now, most shops I worked for had to rely on custom fields or third-party plugins to store GTINs (separate from SKUs). This native support should have, in theory, streamlined product data, improved SEO, and simplified integration with marketplaces.
However, this introduction revealed significant gaps. None of WooCommerce’s official plugins — like Google Product Feed, Facebook for WooCommerce, or other product import/export plugins — actually recognise this GTIN field. Woo’s product export doesn’t even support it. This oversight means shop owners are still forced to create workarounds, manually copying GTIN data into fields that can be read by other tools.
Why Google Needs a Crawlable GTIN
For businesses relying on Google Shopping as a sales channel, GTINs are more than just optional fields; they’re critical. Google uses GTINs to identify products accurately in its search index, allowing the platform to match identical products from multiple sellers and compare prices.
Google’s product feed specifications require GTINs to be included in a way they can easily crawl, such as in an exportable feed or directly on product pages. Without this, a shop’s product visibility suffers, leading to lower rankings and missed sales. Unfortunately, WooCommerce’s current GTIN implementation doesn’t meet these requirements.
A Workaround: Custom Fields and Plugins
For now, WooCommerce shop owners who need a GTIN in their product feeds are back to where they started—relying on custom fields or third-party plugins to get the job done. Many plugins designed for Google Product Feed generation still rely on custom GTIN fields, and without an update to these plugins, WooCommerce’s native GTIN support remains largely, and suspiciously, symbolic.
Developers and store owners are also turning to code customisations, creating ways to map WooCommerce’s GTIN field to Google’s feed requirements. This approach requires technical know-how, making it less than ideal for the average store owner.
What Needs to Change
For WooCommerce’s GTIN field to live up to its potential, support needs to be extended across WooCommerce’s official extensions. Specifically:
- Google Product Feed: WooCommerce’s Google Product Feed plugin should automatically recognize and use the native GTIN field. This integration would allow for seamless compliance with Google’s requirements.
- Product Feeds and Exports: Any product export features should make the GTIN field available for mapping to ensure GTINs are crawled by Google and other search engines.
- Third-Party Plugins: Given the high usage of WooCommerce’s API by third-party plugins, WooCommerce should ensure that its GTIN field is exposed in a way that allows for straightforward integration by external developers.
What’s Next for WooCommerce Users?
Until WooCommerce bring their tools up to speed, store owners can continue to use custom fields and plugins as a stopgap. But if WooCommerce wants to remain in its position trusted position as a serious eCommerce platform for the long haul, updating these tools to natively support GTINs should be high on the agenda and future feature rollouts should be delayed until the basics have been covered.
For now, the GTIN debacle serves as a reminder that even small changes can have far-reaching impacts. And while the GTIN field’s release was a step forward, true support across WooCommerce’s ecosystem is needed to make this field a real asset for WooCommerce store owners.
How do I Import GTINs using WooCommerce’s default import
The UPC is metadata that WooCommerce does not include in imports or exports. Simply create a sheet with Meta: _global_unique_id as a column and import using Woo’s default import tool. If you already have a list of products/SKUs, you can use VLOOKUP in sheets/Excel to match the UPCs.
How about Google for WooCommerce?
To ensure you can map your GTIN/ISBN to Google for WooCommerce, add the following snippet to your theme’s functions.php file:
add_filter('woocommerce_gla_attribute_mapping_sources_custom_attributes',
function( $values ) {
return array_merge( $values, ['_global_unique_id']);
}
);If you need a hand, feel free to reach out!
