Google has been clear that they will start taking actions against those who violate the terms, and specifically that, “Starting on September 22, 2011 we will be taking action against accounts with feeds targeting the United States, France, United Kingdom, Japan, and Germany that do not comply with the new specification and policy requirements.” But what does “taking action” mean?

Feeds will be pulled. More specifically, “products will be suspended from Google Product Search until the issues have been addressed. In case of repeated violations of our quality standards, your products will be suspended for at least one week after the second violation, and for at least one month after the third violation.”

Scared that your feed may accidentally violate the new rules? Luckily, a new segment of the Google Merchant Center allows you to check Google’s current evaluation of your feed and site to see if there are any problems.

via Google Makes Big Changes to Product Search Feeds – Search Engine Watch (#SEW).

You’ll need to log in now and verify and claim your domain to make sure your Google (Base / Froogle) Merchant feeds continue to work.

Verify and Claim Your Website URL in Merchant Center ~ Google Merchant Blog.

All of you with Google Base accounts to help push your products out to Google Shopping product search (which is free by the way!) will notice a new change to the interface and a name change to Google Merchant Center which I feel is a much better name!  If you have a Google Webmaster Tools account, you’ll notice that it looks VERY familiar!  This is a welcome change as the previous Google Base interface was very clunky and hard to find stuff.  The new site has a slick left column nav with easy controls to make it very easy to find everything you need for your feed(s) for your items or documents.  Check out the new site!