Improve your product matching with EANs

Maximize automatic product connections and competitor coverage

The quality of your product identifiers has a direct impact on how effectively our platform can match your products with competitors. Among all identifiers, EANs (European Article Numbers) are by far the most reliable and efficient way to generate automatic connections, increasing both the number of products matched and the number of competitors identified.

This guide explains:

• Why EANs are essential for maximizing your competitive intelligence.
• How to include them correctly in your product feed.
• What alternatives are available if your products don't have EANs.

Whether you're setting up your catalog for the first time or looking to improve your existing coverage, following these recommendations will help you unlock more automatic matches while reducing manual work.

1. Why add EANs to your product catalog?

The EAN (European Article Number) is the 13-digit barcode that uniquely identifies a product worldwide. It is the single most impactful identifier for maximizing automatic product matching and competitor coverage.

What our data shows:

• Customers with high EAN coverage (>80%) connect 2.7x more products than customers with low EAN coverage (<20%).
• They also generate 20% more competitor connections per connected product, increasing competitor visibility.
• Having EANs allows us to generate connections with Google Shopping and propagate those connections to websites not publishing EANs in case Google Shopping is followed. This method is currently used by 64% of our customers.

In summary: The more products in your catalog that include an EAN, the more competitors our platform can automatically identify, without any manual intervention.

2. How automatic EAN matching works

Automatic matching using EANs requires both your catalog and the competitor's website to publish the same EAN for the same product.

The matching process works as follows:

1. Your product feed includes a valid EAN.
2. Our crawler detects the same EAN on the competitor's website.
3. The platform automatically creates the product connection.

If the competitor does not publish EANs on their website, automatic EAN matching is not possible, even if your catalog contains complete EAN information.

What happens when competitors don't publish EANs?

Many retailers do not display EANs publicly. In these situations, our platform relies on alternative matching methods, including:

• Reference (MPN) matching: when both websites publish the same manufacturer reference.
• Smart Suggestions: which analyze product titles, brands, categories, images, and other attributes to suggest potential matches for your review.
• Manual connections: allowing you to link products directly whenever automatic matching is not possible.

3. How to add EANs to your product feed

Your EANs should be included in your product feed (XML, CSV, or JSON) hosted at an accessible URL.

• Supported field names: gtin, ean, upc
• Expected format: 13-digit numeric code (or 8 digits for EAN-8)
• One EAN per product for standard integrations.
• Multiple EANs separated by a  |  (pipe) for grouped products.

Examples

CSV

Raw format output:

"product_id";"title";"price";"gtin/ean/upc";"brand"
"12345";"Dyson V15 Vacuum Cleaner";"599.00";"5025155073018";"Dyson"

XML

<g:gtin>5025155073018</g:gtin>

Grouped products (multiple sizes/colors at the same price)

5025155073018|5025155073025|5025155073032

Where can you find your EANs?

• On the product packaging (barcode).
• In your ERP or inventory management system (GTIN, EAN, or Barcode field).
• From your supplier or manufacturer.
• Through GS1 if you are the product manufacturer.

4. What if you don't have EANs?

Not all industries rely on EANs to uniquely identify products. In sectors such as pharma, fashion, luxury, automotive parts, or industrial products, other identifiers can provide better automatic matching results.

The best approach is to use the most reliable identifier available for your industry.

a) Use the best product identifier for automatic connections

The platform supports automatic matching using different product identifiers.

If your competitors consistently publish Manufacturer REF, enabling automatic matching based on REF can significantly increase the number of automatic connections compared to relying only on EANs. You can ask our support team or your CSM to enable this setting for you.

b) Rely on Smart Suggestions

Without EANs, the platform cannot generate automatic matches through Google Shopping or direct EAN matching. However, our Smart Suggestions engine analyzes:

• Product title
• Brand
• Category
• Visual attributes

It then suggests potential product matches, which you can review and either approve or reject directly from the platform.

c) Optimize the rest of your product feed

The more complete and accurate your feed is, the better Smart Suggestions will perform. We recommend providing:

• title – Complete product title (brand + model + key characteristics)
• brand – Exact brand name
• product_type – Hierarchical product category (e.g. Shoes > Sneakers > Running)
• image_link – High-quality product image

d) Create manual connections

You can always create product connections manually within NetRivals by searching for the competitor product and linking it to your own.
If you have a large number of manual connections to make, our support team can handle the bulk upload for you free of charge. Simply send us a file containing:

• Your product codes (or EANs)
• The exact URLs of the competitor products you want to connect

See How to import connections in bulk? for more details.