Google Merchant Center is a tool that allows sellers to list their items in Google Shopping’s free and paid listings, as well as paid listings on Maps, YouTube, and Search. You can access Google Merchant Center by signing up for an account here.
How Does Google Merchant Center Work with Your Website’s Product Information Management (PIM) System?
A Product Information Management (PIM) system is a database of all your product information. This can be hundreds of attributes like size, color, brand, GTIN/UPC, availability, and more.
Even though Google Merchant Center performs many of the functions of a PIM, it is not technically a PIM because PIMs don’t typically edit data in bulk through global rules. However, GMC can be used with PIM software to edit and manage product data. In simple terms, data is sent, ideally daily, to GMC and that data is mapped to fields that Google can use to organize products for listings on Google Shopping.
What Is a Product Feed?
Sometimes referred to as a data feed, a product feed is your product information organized in a format that different marketing channels can understand. This typically looks like a spreadsheet. Each marketing platform has different requirements for the information that needs to be included in your product feed.
How Much Does Google Merchant Center Cost?
Using Google Merchant Center to list your products on Google Shopping organically is free, but you can use paid products like Performance Max and Standard Shopping campaigns in Google Ads to promote your products to get more impressions and sales.
How Does Google Merchant Center Interact with Google Ads?
Google Ads will pull product data directly from Merchant Center. If you want to create a Performance Max campaign, which can run on Google’s Search, Shopping, Display, Gmail, and YouTube inventory, you can do so without a product feed (we don’t suggest this for eCommerce businesses, of course). However, Standard Shopping campaigns require a primary product feed in Merchant Center.
How Do You Connect Your Website Products to Google Merchant Center?
Instructions for connecting your website’s PIM to Google Merchant Center will vary from provider to provider, but below we’ve listed basic instructions and links for some of the most common connections.
Shopify
Under your admin settings, select “Channels,” “Add Sale Channels,” then select “Google.” Connect to Google Merchant Center by logging in and reviewing your product data. There are third-party apps within Shopify’s ecosystem that allow for more complex feed management like local feeds that display in-store information and tools that allow you to format feeds for other channels. However, you can learn the basics here.
Webflow
Webflow makes it easy to connect to Google Merchant Center without the use of third-party connections. All Webflow users need to do is enable the “Google” in the integrations menu in their eCommerce settings. This will create a live URL that you can enter in the Feed section of Google Merchant Center. View full instructions here.
Wordpress - Woo Commerce
If you’re a WooCommerce customer, you can create a product feed for Google Merchant Center under Wpadmin>WooCommerce>Settings>Product Feed. This will generate URLs for active feeds you can use for your site. Learn more here.
Manual Feed (not recommended)
If there is no other option, Google allows you to use a Google sheet URL or static spreadsheet upload as a feed. This only makes sense for organizations that are not selling products that have changing attributes like availability (think digital products and services) and a very small number of SKUs (under 100). Trying to manage a large product feed manually, or worse, multiple feeds for various channels, is often a recipe for disaster when used as a long-term solution. Instead, we recommend using a third-party tool to manage and format your product data.
Custom Applications and Third-party Tools
If you’re doing any of the steps above and are not happy with the functionality or format of your feed, you may need to consider using additional software to better format your feed.
When to Use Third-Party Tools to Connect to Google Merchant Center
Even the most custom tools don’t always have the full functionality needed to help some eCommerce businesses achieve their potential. But knowing when to bring in a third-party feed management tool like Channable, DataFeedWatch, or Feedonomics can be difficult for companies. Here are some circumstances where getting some extra help makes sense:
- You have a custom website with products and information that make mapping attributes in Google Merchant Center difficult.
- You need to create columns in your product feed
- While Goole Merchant Center now allows for basic rule setup, you cannot use it to create columns with custom or calculated fields. You’ll need a third-party tool for that as of right now.
- You want In-Store pick up options
- Many eCommerce CMS and PIM tools do not allow the segmentation of a local feed versus Google’s primary eCommerce feed. This is needed to show users local inventory you have in stock in their area.
Each will have different pricing based on the number of SKUs, different UI’s, and therefore there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to choosing the best one for your business. Take a look at reviews from businesses similar to yours to get a better understanding of which tool is best.
What Creative Assets Do I Need to List Products in Google Merchant Center?
When setting up your feed, you just need at least one image per product, which is listed as a URL in the feed. If your online store is in good condition, you likely already have several images per product. Before posting your feed, check that any product variations that might live in the same URL are pulling in the correct image link. Discrepancies like this (along with quantity and price mismatches) can lead to item disapprovals or even account suspensions.
When creating ad campaigns on platforms like Google and Meta, you’ll need additional creative assets, but you can also use your pre-existing product images for that.
In Merchant Center Next, Google’s newest version of Merchant Center, you can even use AI to change your product images’ backgrounds, which you can then push to your feed or download for other uses.
How to Optimize Google Merchant Center
The key to making sure that Google Merchant Center is vigilantly checking that your feed is up to date and mapping data properly. Beyond this, there are many ways to optimize product structures for paid ads within Google Ads, but here are the main features we see new GMC users neglect are promotions, automatic improvements, and ensuring product data is consistently updated.
Promotions
You can add sales to your free and paid product listings in the “Promotions” or “Marketing.” This is different from the “Promotions” extension in Google Ads, which only shows alongside Search results, not Shopping listings. (NB: Keep in mind that Performance Max shows on shopping- so it’s important input sales in both Google Ads and Merchant Center)
Automatic Improvements
Sellers can enable Automatic Improvements Merchant Center that keeps things like prices, availability levels, and item conditions updated for you by crawling your site for accurate information. GMC can also make “image improvements,” which do things like removing overlays to provide a cleaner user experience. You can view which images were edited and their originals under Diagnostics.
Ensure Product Data is Up to Date
Sync errors can occur. Regularly check your feed to make sure it is updating according to the schedule you set (ideally on a daily basis) and that the information in the feed is accurate. Keep an eye on major changes to your active approved product volume- large drop-offs can be indications that data isn’t properly being updated as well.
The team at Concept has years of experience maximizing ROAS and profits for eCommerce businesses in fashion, entertainment, B2B commercial supplies, and recreational goods. We’d love the opportunity to talk with you about how we can help your eCommerce business reach new heights.