eCommerce news, October 2026: warranty in your feed, Shopify changes and Google's universal cart

The week of October 12-18 brought a few changes that are less visible than a big announcement, but can directly affect an online store before Black Friday: a new attribute in your Google feed, a technical Shopify update that changes how shipping rates appear, and Google's first concrete step toward shopping with a shared cart. Below we go through them one by one, with what you need to do for each, plus a checklist for your store. Warranty comes to your Google feed Since October 16, Merchant Center accepts a warranty attribute for any product. Until now it was only available for vehicle ads, in one country. The attribute has two fields, length and unit (months or years), and the format is simple: "3:year" for a three-year warranty. The attribute is optional. It makes sense when you offer a commercial warranty above the legal minimum, such as three years on appliances or five years on furniture. Watch out for one legal detail: in the EU, the two-year legal guarantee of conformity is the customer's right, not your perk. Presenting it as a special offer can be treated as a misleading commercial practice. Only send your real commercial warranty in the feed. Google hasn't promised better results for products with a warranty. Still, the more complete your feed, the better your products look in Shopping and in AI answers. I wrote about common feed mistakes in the article on the Google Merchant Center feed . Shopify API 2026-10: what changes for shipping and stock Version 2026-10 of the Shopify API became stable on October 1. You won't see it in your admin, but your shipping, stock and order apps will feel it as they move to the new version: Carrier rates no longer appear automatically. A newly connected carrier service no longer adds its rates to the general shipping profile. Unless you set them up manually in a shipping profile, they won't show at checkout. Stock errors are handled differently. An error used by stock-sync apps has been removed from several operations. An…