Google announced they have updated their Google Shopping feed specifications and the product taxonomy in order to “create a richer experience for customers” that are searching for your products online and to “simplify the process of providing information in your feed” to Google.

The new specifications will begin being enforced on September 15, 2015. So make sure to get ready well before that date. The shipping enforcement, however, will begin February 1, 2016.

Here is what has been updated:

Google Shopping Feed Specification

Units & Quantity attributes are now available for the US
We tightened guiding principles around the ID Attribute and GTINs
We disentangled Apparel and Variants attributes and expanded the requirements to Brazil. This revamped section is called: ‘Detailed Product Attributes and Item Groupings’
We are releasing stable numeric Google Product Category IDs that can also be provided as values for the Google Product Category attribute
We expanded the Shipping requirements to Switzerland, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, and Japan to enable total price displays to users in these countries

Google Shopping Product Taxonomy

We simplified many Google Product Taxonomy paths by rolling up a number of categories to their parent nodes
Most of the categories under Activewear are now included with their non-active counterparts, for example, ‘Active Skirts’ will now be found under ‘Skirts’
We added more categories to the verticals ‘Food, Beverages & Tobacco’ and ‘Mature’
Some verticals have undergone significant rework, and you may wish to revisit your provided Google Product Categories

Here is a list of all the changes for the feed specs.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.