Category mappings are an optional feature introduced in version 4.6.0 of the GooglebaseXML feed component for Joomla and Virtuemart, and are designed to provide an easy way to submit information about the Google category in your product feed.

The Google product category is one of the most important pieces of data that you must submit in your feed. It is a required attribute, and it is important to get right, because it tells Google about the type of product, and so gives it information about when to display it. The Google product taxonomy is available for download here.

The category mappings feature allows you to assign a Google category to each of your product categories. For example, suppose you have a product category called 'handbags', you can assign this to the Google category 'Clothing & Accessories > Handbags, Wallets & Cases > Handbags', so that any product that falls into this category will automatically be assigned that Google category.

Setting Up Your Category Mapping

 Setting it up is very straightforward. Go to Googlebasexml->category map, in your site admin. Create a record for each category that you want to map. There are a few points to be aware of.

1.  You don't have to have a mapping for every category, you can set up a catch-all default category to use in the feed configuration. If most of your products fall into the same Google category this is by far the easiest way to do things;
2.  You must supply the entire Google category tree, for example Clothing & Accessories > Jewellery > Watches NOT Watches;
3. Don't worry about encoding the '<' character, the feed will do this for you;
4. Don't include quotation marks in the category tree, for example Media > DVDs & Films NOT 'Media > DVDs & Films';
5. If your site is not multi-language, leave the language option blank;
6. If your site is multi-language, you will need to specify a mapping for each category for each language.