Over the years Google has introduced functionalities that allow you to automatically use your product data across multiple countries, provided you also set up shipping and target your campaigns to these countries for Shopping ads. Recently, we expanded this functionality with additional insights on your product data eligibility and performance across countries.
This month, we’re making some additional changes, which will give you more precise control and clearer diagnostics of the countries where your products are eligible to show.
Use "Additional countries" instead of Merchant Center "shipping settings"
In the past, there were two ways for products to become available in multiple countries. You could specify countries through shipping settings (either by creating an account-level shipping service or by applying the shipping attribute to individual products), or you could specify countries in your product feed (either as the target country, or by using the "additional countries" feature).
With our new changes, you control global product availability in a single place: the feed. Apply the shipping attribute to products directly in the feed or specify countries by using the "additional countries" feature. This applies to both Shopping ads and free listings.
In order to make this change, we are pre-selecting countries in your feed to configure as "additional countries" starting the week of September 28, 2020. For most merchants, this doesn’t change the availability of your products across countries. It simply gives you an alternative way to choose where your products are available.
Up until October 8, 2020, we will use Merchant Center shipping settings to determine additional countries for your product data. After this time, further country selection changes can and will be configured on the feed or product level. Your product-level shipping attributes will continue to apply.
Note: If there are certain products within a feed that are available in specific countries due to the use of shipping labels, weight-based shipping settings, or other similar features, we will only pre-select countries that apply to all products in a feed. Please review your "additional countries" or product-level shipping to ensure products remain available in your desired countries.
Show status of exported products in Diagnostics
Since we’re expanding "additional countries" to also apply to free listings, you may see changes on your Diagnostics page starting in mid-September.
In the past, Diagnostics only displayed the status of your products in the primary target country. To help you diagnose issues with products across countries, Diagnostics now shows the status of your products once for each country you target for both Shopping ads and for free listings. Your products continue to show in countries where you ship and have active Shopping ads campaigns.