A guide to setting up your Google Merchant Center account (2023)

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A guide to setting up your Google Merchant Center account

Behind every successful Google Shopping campaign is a great Google Merchant Center account. We know you would like to start changing your Google Shopping settings and are trying to learn how to do it yourself. However, even the most customized Product Listing Ad (PLA) will fail if you don't use Google Merchant Center effectively. Why? Well, your Google Merchant Center account is the gateway to linking your ecommerce site to Google Ads (formerly known as Google Ads). Availability, product types, descriptions... You need to get your Google Shopping ads in front of the right people, and it's easy to do by pulling data straight from your Google Merchant Center account. We prepare you!

Create a Merchant Center account

Select your email

To create a new Google Merchant Center account, you must first decide which email address you want to use. It is recommended (but not required) to use the same Google email address associated with your Google Ads account. This simplifies your Google experience. Just keep track of one email address for all your Google Shopping accounts.

Have you selected your preferred email address? Astonishing. To create your account, simply click on the big green "Sign In" button and link it to your Google account. After you create your Merchant Center account, you need to link it to your Google Ads account. Tap on the three dots to go to the drop down menu in the top right corner of the screen.

Select "Account Linking" from the drop-down menu and you will be suggested to link to the Google Ads account already linked to your email address.
If you use a different email address for Google Merchant Center, simply click the Link Accounts button at the bottom of the page and enter your Google Ads ID.

Skip the hard work and let us help you

when you use itShopping autopilot for your next ad, we will create a Google Ads account and a Google Merchant Center account for you. Just connect your Shopify store (or create one) to our Shopping Autopilot App (viaShopify App Store). Let's create an ad account and merchant center for you, import your online store's products into the account and make sure you're ready to create your first Google Shopping campaign.

Link your account to Google Merchant Hub

The next step is to connect your website to Google Merchant Hub. Essentially, this is to verify that you own the domain name you are trying to promote. To do this, go to the "Company Details" tab in the left column and click on "Website". Button.

From here you can link your accounts in one of four ways:
Download some HTML code and add it to a tag in your website design file. Check this with an HTML file that you upload to your website. (Google claims this is the most popular method) Authenticated via Google Analytics. Authenticated via Google Tag Manager

By the way, if you've already verified your website with Google Ads using this email account, you don't need to worry about this step.

Shipping and Tax Settings

Tax

Shipping and tax settings are the next things you set up in Merchant Center. Don't worry, the process is very simple.

For tax settings, click Taxes in the left navigation menu.
The good news is that you only need to set up rules for the countries where you charge sales tax (usually only the countries where you have a physical store).

Shipment

Depending on the complexity of your shipping rules, shipping setup may require more work. Google will not allow you to make any purchases until you add this information. Therefore, click on "Shipping" in the left navigation panel and complete the setup.

You'll need the location, weight, and price of the different shipping options you offer.

Tip: If you offer free shipping, be sure to select Flat Rate and enter $0.00 as the price. Otherwise, the "Free Shipping" promotional text will not appear in your Google Shopping ads.

connection feed

Congratulations, you are now ready to connect your feed to your Google Merchant Center! This can be done in a number of ways, but to set up your product feed, click the Products button in the left navigation menu, then click the Feed button.

Here are some of the most common ways people associate feeds with their Merchant Center accounts:

• Upload a TXT or CSV file with all correct Google product attributes
• Connect your feed through a data feed provider like Channable
• Use a feed for the URL to update it dynamically

Once you've connected your feed using any of the methods above, you'll be able to see if your products are pending, approved, or disapproved.

Handling Feed Issues
The initial approval process for new accounts can take up to 72 hours. If it takes more than 72 hours, please contact google support and tell them more than 72 hours has passed so they can manually forward it that day to help you.

If your product feed contains disapproved products, don't panic. In Merchant Center, go to the Diagnostics tab under your product. Here you will find all errors that Google has found in your feed. You can even download a CSV file of your rejected products.

If none of your products are approved, click the Account section on the Diagnostics page. If your account was denied for any reason, you can find out why by clicking the "More Info" link next to the error.

Advanced Merchant Center features

So you're all set, but what if you need to do something special with your feed, e.g. B. Upload multiple feeds or create promotions? Honestly, these situations are exactly why Google created Merchant Center instead of just allowing you to upload your product feed directly to Google Ads.

Multiple product feeds

If you need to combine multiple feeds to get all the data you need, Merchant Center can now handle it on the platform itself. You can add attributes to an existing feed by uploading a secondary feed.

After connecting the primary and secondary feeds, you need to customize the feed rules. Click on your main feed and go to the Rules tab.

Here you can specify which attributes should be extracted from each feed. A common example I use is to set all attributes to the default primary feed. However, if the attribute doesn't exist in the primary feed, use the attribute from the secondary feed.

Promotions

One of the (newest) features of Merchant Center is the Promotions section. In this section you can set up promotions that will appear in your Google Shopping ads. This can be a great bonus for budget conscious shoppers looking for great deals.

The easiest way to set up a promotion is as a site-wide promotion that can be used on any feed product. In this case, all you have to do is go to the "Promotions" tab and select "Offers" from the drop-down menu. Click on the blue "+" and fill in the required fields. These fields include:

• Action ID (this can be anything you want)
• Headline (this is the promotional text that will appear in your Google Shopping ad).
• Redemption code (optional but recommended)
• Select all products
• Select the date range you want the promotion to be active on the site