9. Free visitors for your shop: show your products on Google Shopping and Pinterest

Status: on 2026-10-10 the whole flow below was run on a real shop with real accounts: the product data file (470 entries) was submitted to Google Merchant Center and to Pinterest, and both read it successfully (Google: "all recognised", "your product file: no problems found"; Pinterest: "validation complete", "data source submitted"). Not known yet (UNVERIFIED): whether Google and Pinterest finally approve the products and when they appear in search, what the e-mail from Pinterest says, and warnings about prices that differ from the shop. A section "After the review" will be added when that is known. Google and Pinterest change their screens from time to time: if a name below differs a little, look for the closest one.

Why this is worth an hour

Google Shopping and Pinterest are two places where people look for things to buy. Your products can be listed there without paying GetDropFlow or the two services for the listing, and without uploading products by hand: you do the setup once, then they read your file again by themselves, every day. (Paid advertising on both is a separate, optional thing; this guide does not need it.)
No promise: being in the file does not mean the products will be shown, and it does not mean sales. Both services check every product first, this takes days, and what they show and to whom is their decision.

What GetDropFlow does, and what only you can do

GetDropFlow makes the file from the products it imported (one entry for each colour and size, with price, stock, picture and shipping price), keeps it up to date, and gives you its address. The file has no cost price and nothing about your supplier.
Only you can send the address to Google and to Pinterest, with your own accounts. The two services require this; a plugin cannot do it for you, and GetDropFlow never logs in to them or asks for your passwords there.

Before you start

Your products are published and enabled in the shop (article 3) and have pictures.
Your shop opens with https:// for everybody, and Magento's cron runs (article 8): the file is prepared in the background.
A Google Merchant Center account (free) and a Pinterest business account that you own. Pinterest first needs you to claim your website (prove it is yours) before it takes an address as a data source. Do this once in the Pinterest settings.
Know where you sell: below we used United States, English, US dollar because that shop sells there. Use the country, language and currency of your own shop.

Step 1 — Switch the file on in GetDropFlow

Open GetDropFlow → Settings and the Product data file box. The note at the top of the box repeats the two things you have to do.

Set Product data file to On.
Brand (empty = the brand AliExpress shows for each product; if it shows none, the store name) — what you type here is used for every product that has no brand of its own. Leave it empty to use the brand AliExpress shows for each product; a product without a brand gets the store name (Stores → Configuration → General → Store Information → Store Name), and without that the domain of your shop.
Google product category — it starts as Apparel & Accessories > Clothing > Dresses. Change it if you sell something else.
Gender and Age group — they start as Female and Adult. These values are the same for every product of your shop. Check them before you submit.
Press Save product data file settings.

After saving, Address of the product data file appears. Press Copy the address. It looks like this (yours is longer; the real one is only in your admin):

https://your-store-domain/dropshipkit/feed/google?token=(copy it from the admin)

The address has a secret key in it. Do not publish it (not in a chat, a forum or a screenshot): anyone who has it can read your product data.

Step 2 — Google Merchant Center

In Merchant Center click Settings (the gear), then Data sources, and add a product source.
Choose Add products from a file ("add products via file"), then Enter a link to your file.
Fill in: country: United States (your sales country), language: English (your shop's language). Marketing methods: leave the default. Give the source any name you like.
Schedule: every day, 00:00 (the time is your choice; once a day is enough).
Paste the address into the link field. Authentication (user name / password): leave empty: the address already holds the key. Google accepts the address with ?token= in it.
Press Save (create). Google reads the file; after a short while the source shows how many products it recognised. In our run: all of the 470 entries recognised, "your product file: no problems found".

Do not change anything in the file settings of the source other than the above. The file alone is not everything Google needs: shipping, returns and the other requirements of Merchant Center still have to be set up in your account. Help page: https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/14991445 (read on 2026-10-09).

Step 3 — Pinterest

Log in to your Pinterest business account on a computer. If the account has several business profiles, first switch to the one that belongs to your shop, and only then create the catalogue. (The catalogue belongs to the profile you are in when you create it.)
Click the menu icon at the top left, then, under Manage business, Catalogs (Catalogs and product groups) → Data sources.
Press Add data source and open the Provide URL link tab.
Fill in:
- Name: anything you like.
- Feed URL: the address from Step 1.
- File format: choose XML. The default is CSV; with CSV Pinterest cannot read the file.
- Country/region: United States. Language: English (US). These two cannot be changed afterwards: choose the ones of your shop.
- Default currency: USD (your shop's currency). Default availability: In stock.
- Scheduled ingestions: on, every 24 hours.
- Feed login details (user name / password): leave empty. The address already holds the key.
Press Test your data source first. When the test passes you see "validation complete". Then press Upload. Pinterest shows "data source submitted" and says it will e-mail you within 24 to 48 hours whether the products meet its policies.

Help page: https://help.pinterest.com/business/article/data-source-ingestion (read on 2026-10-09). The first data source of an account has to be added by the account owner. If Pinterest says the website is not claimed, claim it first (see "Before you start").

After the review

Not written yet. Whether Google and Pinterest approve the products, when they appear, what the e-mail from Pinterest says and what to do about warnings such as "price differs from the website" is not known yet (UNVERIFIED). This section will be added when the first results are in. Until then, do not assume that a submitted file means approved products.

Reference

The three parts below explain what is in the file. You do not need them to submit it.

Brand of products that are already published

The brand is read from AliExpress when a product is imported. For products that are already published, use GetDropFlow → Settings → Seller brand of published products → Refresh brands from AliExpress. It asks AliExpress for the brand of each published product and saves only the brand: prices, stock, pictures, texts and categories are not touched. A product for which AliExpress shows no brand (or a word like "None" or "Other") goes back to the store name in the file. A brand that is on your brand blacklist (Risk rules) is not saved; the product is listed under the button so you can decide. A product that AliExpress cannot give (taken down, no answer) keeps its brand and is listed too.

A big shop is done in several presses (about 20 products each; the button then says Continue the brand refresh). Saving a brand by hand in the product form is possible, but the next refresh replaces it with what AliExpress shows. Products imported later keep the brand they got at the import; the automatic price and stock refresh never changes a brand.

Shipping in the file

Every entry has a shipping price (g:shipping: country, service, price). The system writes it by itself: it is the same price your shop shows at the checkout (what AliExpress asks plus your own markup; the markup itself is never in the file). Free shipping from AliExpress is written as 0.00. So do not enter fixed shipping rates in Merchant Center for these products: two different numbers would be reported as a mismatch (which of the two Google uses, and whether Merchant Center needs anything else for shipping, is UNVERIFIED).

Countries for the shipping price in the data file (in the box, below Age group): the countries the file gives a price for. It starts with US only; write several codes separated by commas, for example US, DE. It only affects the file, not where your shop sells to.
A product for which no shipping price can be found (nothing saved and AliExpress did not answer in time, or it cannot be sent there) is left out of the file for now, never written as free. The count is in Logs as FEED_SHIPPING_UNQUOTED. Prices that were asked for are kept for 6 hours, so the next fetch of the file fills the gaps; a file with gaps is rebuilt after one minute instead of ten.
Asking AliExpress takes time: one question per product and country, and the whole file takes at most about 20 seconds for it.
The file is prepared in the background. The same scheduled job that refreshes prices and stock (every few minutes, needs Magento's cron) also builds the data file when there is no fresh one, so the shipping prices are already in the cache when Google or Pinterest fetch it. Each run asks AliExpress for as many products as the 20 seconds allow, with a pause between questions, and the next run continues with the ones still missing: with many products it takes several runs (a few tens of minutes) until the file is complete. It only works while the product data file is On. A file that is not complete says so in a comment at its top (GetDropFlow: N item(s) are not in this file yet ...) and in Logs; nothing is missing silently.

What goes into the file

Only products that GetDropFlow imported, that are enabled and visible, have a stock record and a picture. Everything else is left out; Logs tells you when products were left out or have a gap (for example a colour or a size is missing).
The title of each entry is the product name followed by the colour and size, for example Leopard Midi Dress - Black / M (at most 150 characters; a long name is cut, never the colour and size). The name is the one of the product your customers open (the parent), not the long AliExpress title of one colour; if the name itself still has the supplier's piled-up words, change it in the product.
Google category: each entry gets the Google category that belongs to the store category the product is in (the deepest category; its parent is tried next). Set the lines in Google category by store category, one per line, written Store category = Google category. At the start: Dresses = Apparel & Accessories > Clothing > Dresses, Knitwear = Apparel & Accessories > Clothing > Shirts & Tops (Google's list has no separate line for cardigans) and Sets & Separates = Apparel & Accessories > Clothing. A product with no store category, or in one that is not listed, gets the single Google product category above the list. Write the names exactly as in Google's product category list; the page checks only the shape of the lines, not whether Google knows the name.
Description: the supplier's English text is used. A paragraph with Chinese characters is left out; when nothing is left, or only the title again, the entry gets a neutral sentence: the product name, the colour and size, and "The shipping cost is shown at the checkout."
Shipping service: always Standard shipping; the supplier's shipping codes never appear.
The picture of the colour is used; a product without one uses the main picture of the product.
The price has two decimals and your store's currency. When a product has a struck-through price (compared at price), the file gives it as the price and your selling price as the sale price.
The file is built again at most every 10 minutes.
A link for each colour and size. The link of an entry opens the product page on that colour and size (…?dk_v=<number> after the product address), so that the price Google and Pinterest see on the page is the price of that entry. Only products with more than one colour or size get it. Not yet seen on a real store (UNVERIFIED).

If something does not work

Pinterest cannot read the file / shows no products. The File format must be XML, not the default CSV. Edit the data source and change it.
Pinterest does not accept the address. Claim your website first, and check that you are in the right business profile (an account can have several).
The address shows "not found". The file is Off, or the key in the address is not the current one.
Keep the address private. It holds a key. If it has leaked, press Make a new key: that gives a new address and the old one stops working at once. Then put the new address into Google Merchant Center and into Pinterest (edit the link of each source), or both stop reading.
The number of entries is not the number of products. There is one entry for each colour and size (470 entries can be far fewer products). When you add, remove or disable products, or their price or stock changes, the file follows within minutes (it is built again at most every 10 minutes) and Google and Pinterest take the new state at their next read, at most a day later.
Why the review takes days. Both services look at every product before they show it. Pinterest says 24 to 48 hours for its e-mail. Nothing needs doing in the meantime.
The file is empty or has gaps. A file that is not complete says so in a comment at its top and in Logs. A file with no product at all although the shop has products is kept for one minute only, so the next read tries again.
Logs shows "The product data file was built, and some products were left out or have a gap." Open it to see the codes: NO_IMAGE (no picture), MISSING_COLOR, MISSING_SIZE, BAD_PRICE, and FEED_SHIPPING_UNQUOTED (a number: how many entries are left out for now because no shipping price could be found yet; see "Shipping in the file").