Getting started 8: Google Merchant Center

Chapter 8 of 15 of Getting Started with Trinity, by Brad Bussell, 2AData. Also on the web at www.2adata.com/getting-started.

Google Merchant Center

Google Merchant Center puts your products in Google's free product listings and, if you run ads, in Shopping ads. Trinity builds the feed; you give Google the address.

Set it up

1. Go to merchants.google.com and create an account with the same Google account as your Search Console. Enter your business details.

2. Verify and claim your website. If anyone on your Merchant Center account is already a verified owner of the site in Search Console, Google treats it as verified and you only have to claim it.

3. In your admin open Google Feed (left menu, under Data Feeds; the page is Google Merchant Feed), turn it on, save, and copy the Feed URL. See Google product feed and analytics.

4. In Merchant Center open Products, Add products, Add products from a file, then Enter a link to your file, paste the URL and continue. Google fetches it once a day by default and lets you change the schedule. Trinity rebuilds the feed every few hours.

5. Feed status: when it was last built and how many products are in it

6. The feed URL to paste into Merchant Center as a scheduled fetch

What Google will not show

Google does not allow firearms, ammunition, magazines, receivers, or any part or accessory that makes a weapon function better: sights, scopes, mounts, grips, stocks, triggers, barrels, chokes, reloading components. That is most of a gun store. Your feed is built to send only what Google accepts (holsters, cases, apparel, cleaning gear, range gear, knives that are allowed, and the like): about 180 categories sent whole, plus nearly 30 mixed categories such as hunting accessories and archery where each product is checked by its title. That keeps nearly all of what Google rejects out of the feed. See What Google Shopping will not show.

Expect some disapprovals anyway: a product with a missing image, a title Google reads as a weapon part. Merchant Center lists them. Send us the item and we take it out of the feed.

Previous: Google, Bing and the search engines. Next: GunBroker, Guns.com, eBay and Walmart.

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