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Most Commonly Asked Questions: Shopping

Most Commonly Asked Questions: Shopping

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What is a data source?

A data source (also known as a product catalog, product feed or data feed) is a file with a list of your products and their corresponding attributes structured in a specific way. This file is processed daily to dynamically create Pins from your products. Read more about how a data source works and maintaining a data source in this Help Center article under Data Source Overview

 

How should I add my data source?

Please follow the step by step instructions listed in this Help Center article.

 

What should my feed look like? 

Please see samples in the Help Center under Catalogs data source format requirements. There are three supported formats. 

 

Google Drive and Google docs are not supported. Where can I host my feed? 

We understand that this is a pertinent question. We are evaluating opportunities on how to improve this, however, we cannot support Google Drive and Google docs to host your feed. Please see the Prepare your data source Help Center section for more information.

 

I uploaded my feed, but it says that the required fields are missing, but I see them there. What's wrong? 

The required fields listed in our Help Center under Required fields must be 100% identical. Make sure to check that all letters are lowercase, underscores should be where they are and there are no extra spaces in your column headers. 

 

My feed says 'Under Review' or 'Rejected'. How can I appeal for my catalog?

You can do this by following instructions listed in our Help Center under Appeal unapproved data sources

 

My feed is now Completed, but what does the error message mean?

We have a handy table in our Help Center under section Troubleshoot data source error messages where you can find the error code along with the message, type and next steps on how to fix it. 

 

What does technical difficulty error mean?

This needs additional investigation by our team. Please file a ticket if you haven’t already done so. 

 

How do I create Product Groups? 

Please see our Help Center article that walks you through how to create product groups.

 

Why are the filters from the Product Groups greyed out in the UI?

Make sure you create product groups using filters that will always be in your data source. For example, if you create a product group using the brand filter, make sure the brand field of your data source is in use. If the filters you apply to a product group are not sent in the data source, that product group will have a product count of zero. View this Help Center article for more information

Comments
FriedaCreates

I've seen tutorials on creating downloadable links to data sources that 'live' in google docs. Is this an effective workaround?  Thank you, Frieda 

PinterestGabby

Hi @FriedaCreates! Apologies for the late follow-up here. That is not a supported workaround. Let us know if you have any other questions.

thehalcyonhive

Just wanted to pop a reply in here since this question tends to come up a lot and want to make sure everyone has the most up to date info.  Pinterest no longer allows data sources to be hosted on Google drive (or any other free cloud storage websites). 

Instead, you can download your catalog spreadsheet as a .csv and upload it to your websites media library.  Then grab the link from there as the data source URL.   (Disclaimer: This may not work for every website, but I do know it works for ShowIt, Wordpress, and Squarespace.  

TIP: If you have a large catalog of products and/or have frequent updates to your products (prices, stock levels, etc.) I would recommend going with another shopping integration.