What Is Google Merchant Center? Features + Tips

In brick-and-mortar grocery stores, brands pay extra for prime placements, like eye-level shelves or aisle end-caps. The logic is simple: If you want to sell products, it helps to be where shoppers are already looking. For ecommerce businesses, the prime real estate is Google.

Google platforms attract a staggering number of users. According to 2025 Statista data, Google handles more than 79% of daily desktop search traffic, while Gmail commands 75% of the American email market. And that’s not even counting YouTube’s 122 million daily active users.

Google Merchant Center is a centralized hub for managing your product ads on Google. You can use it to promote products across multiple Google platforms, helping improve your brand awareness and increase sales.

Here’s more on the relationship between Google Merchant Center and Google Shopping, Google Merchant Center’s features, and how to upload items to your product feed.

What is Google Merchant Center?

Google Merchant Center is a free tool that lets ecommerce and brick-and-mortar store owners create and manage their product listings and enable shoppable features across various Google platforms.

The Merchant Center provides the information Google uses to create featured product snippets—with images, pricing, and availability—that appear in Google search, maps, images, shopping, and ads. It also sends your information to YouTube so you can create ads there as well.

Google requires a valid Gmail account and an active business website to access Google Merchant Center. Creating an account is free, but you must pay to run ad campaigns.

How to add products to Google Merchant Center

1. Link your online store
2. Sync your ecommerce platform
3. Add products from an ecommerce website
4. Upload product files (optional)

You can choose from multiple Google product uploading methods depending on where you sell (online, in store, or both) and your inventory techniques. Here’s how to get started:

1. Link your online store

First, create a Google Merchant account by linking your online store. You do not need to have a physical retail location to connect your ecommerce store to the platform.

2. Sync your ecommerce platform

Google Merchant Center integrates with third-party ecommerce platforms like Shopify. To connect your accounts, install the Google & YouTube app in your Shopify dashboard (or the equivalent integration in your ecommerce platform), then follow the prompts to link your Merchant Center account. After connecting accounts, you can continue to manage product listings within your ecommerce platform; Google syncs information and applies updates to your product feed every 24 to 48 hours.

3. Add products from an ecommerce website

You can let Google pull products straight from your ecommerce website by enabling automatic product detection in the Merchant Center. To make this work, your product pages need structured data markup (using ecommerce schema markups) so Google can read key details like price, availability, and descriptions. Once your site is verified and connected in the Merchant Center, Google can crawl those pages and automatically add items to your product feed.

After setup, Google will automatically add products to your feed. This method can save time if you regularly introduce new products. You’ll find full requirements and step-by-step setup instructions in Google’s help guide.

4. Upload product files (optional)

There are a few ways to add products manually:

• Multiple products at once. To add multiple products at once, upload a tab-delimited spreadsheet or .xml file. When you log into the Merchant Center, there’s a Products section in the left-hand menu where you can choose Feeds and then add a new primary feed. That’s where you’ll select “Upload” as your input method, name your feed, and then upload your file. It’s efficient if you already manage your inventory in a spreadsheet.
• Individual products. Select manual upload to add individual items to your product feed. With this method, you input product information directly into Google Merchant, one product at a time. This process may be inefficient for creating large product feeds, but it can be a convenient way to supplement your other uploading efforts. If one or more products failed during your initial upload, manual updates may be an easy way to add them to your feed.
• Google Sheets templates. To use this method, click the “Use a Google Sheets template” option under the data sources menu, then follow the prompts and fill in the blanks for each product. You can use a single Google Sheet for ongoing inventory maintenance. After the initial setup, Google Merchant automatically updates and syncs any new products added to the document.

Note that manually updated files must follow Google’s product data specifications; missing info or inconsistent formatting can lead to delayed approval.

Core features of Google Merchant Center

• Google Shopping ads
• Free listings
• Local Inventory ads
• Performance Max campaigns
• Dynamic remarketing for retail

After uploading products to Merchant Center, you can initiate and track performance for several different types of placements and ads. Here’s an overview:

Google Shopping ads

Google Shopping ads appear in the designated Google Shopping tab, on search engine results pages (SERPs), and in the shopping tab on YouTube. Google uses information stored in your Merchant Center account to determine ad placement, automatically displaying listings to relevant users based on keywords in the product description.

For example, suppose you’re an ecommerce company that sells shoes. When a user searches for “black running shoes men,” Google could automatically show your ad because it matches keywords in your product title and description, without you needing to manually target that specific search phrase.

Free listings

Free listings, similar to organic search results, are featured product snippets that appear in search results and on the Google Shopping tab when users input a relevant query. Google’s bots crawl product details stored in your Google Merchant Center account and surface results when the item description aligns with customer searches.

Local inventory ads

Local inventory ads are served to consumers located near your physical store location. They appear when a user conducts a product-related search query. Brick-and-mortar stores can use local inventory ads to promote their products online. These ads often display a message like “in store, 5 mi” or “pick up today.” Basic local inventory ads are free, but you can also pay for promoted placements.

Performance Max campaigns

Performance Max campaigns serve ads across all Google touchpoints, including YouTube, Search, Maps, Images, Gmail, and display. This tool uses Google’s AI technology to customize ad placement and keyword bidding strategy based on owner-determined campaign goals. Launching a Performance Max campaign requires syncing your Google Ads account and Google Merchant Center account.

Dynamic remarketing for retail

With dynamic remarketing for retail, you can target specific users with product ads based on their past browsing behavior. This add-on is available to online retailers with linked Google Ads and Google Merchant accounts.

What is a Google Merchant Center product feed?

Your product feed is your primary product database. Google’s site crawlers use this data feed to understand what you’re selling. It helps determine relevance and placement by matching details from your product feed to user search queries. Google also uses product feed information to populate featured snippets, displaying the product title, price, and image from your feed.

Users upload merchandise data to create feeds. Following Google’s product specification guidelines ensures your listings are accurate and reach the right consumers. Each item must include a unique ID, name, description, landing page URL, and image link.

What are Google Merchant Promotions?

The Promotions feature lets you display special offers across Google by making a single update in the Merchant Center. If you apply a 10% discount, for example, Google Shopping Ads and Free Listings both reflect the new price and a description of this discount. This feature is available as an add-on if you meet the following criteria:

• Product offers must be available in Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, Spain, the UK, or the US.
• You may not be affiliated with an ecommerce marketplace or platform where multiple independent retailers sell products.
• You must maintain an active Merchant Center account with a claimed, live URL and at least one active product.