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Google Merchant Center

Google Merchant Center is Google’s free tool for uploading and managing product data, so your products can appear across Google Search, YouTube and more.

Also known as
  • Merchant Center
  • Merchant Centre
  • GMC

Product data engineer

What it means

Google Merchant Center is the account where a shop tells Google what it sells. Google calls it “a free-of-charge tool”: you upload and manage your product data there, so that your products can appear “across Google Search, Maps, YouTube and more”.1

Products arrive through a data source, Google’s current name for a product feed. That can be a file, a Google Sheets template, a connection to your ecommerce platform, or products read from your online shop.2 Google reviews each product and gives it one of five statuses: Under review, Processing, Approved, Limited or Not approved.3

Problems are listed product by product on the Needs attention tab, which you can filter and download as a CSV.4 From the same data, free listings need no extra step once a product has passed review, while Shopping ads also need an ad campaign.5

Think of it like this

It works like the goods entrance at a shopping centre. Your products go in through one door, each is checked against the centre’s rules, and only those that pass go out on display.

For example

A shop uploads a file of 250 power tools. The Needs attention tab lists 30 of them under one issue, Invalid value [gtin], because a spreadsheet had turned their barcodes into 5.01235E+12. The fix is the real barcodes from the supplier’s original file, uploaded again.6

Why it matters

Merchant Center decides whether Google can show your products at all: a product that is Not approved “can’t be shown on Google”.3 When the cause is the data, it is a value you sent, such as a barcode, a price or a stock status. Correct it in your catalogue, not only in Merchant Center, and it stays fixed when the next file goes up.

Not to be confused with

Merchant Center and Google Ads are separate. Merchant Center holds your product data; Shopping ads are managed in Google Ads, which reads that data.7

Sources

  1. Google Merchant Center Help. Get started with Merchant Center.
  2. Google Merchant Center Help. Data source (previously known as ‘Feeds’).
  3. Google Merchant Center Help. Check product visibility and status in Merchant Center.
  4. Google Merchant Center Help. Issues in Merchant Center.
  5. Google Merchant Center Help. What are marketing methods?.
  6. Google Merchant Center Help. How to fix: Invalid value [gtin].
  7. Google Ads Help. About Shopping ads.

Now try it onyour own file

Nothing goes live without your sign-offEvery value keeps its sourceYour data is never shared

Send us one supplier spreadsheet exactly as it arrived. We will show you the same products before and after, with a source on every value we add.

One email with the upload link. Nothing else lands in your inbox.