When you add data about your products to Merchant Center a data source is created. You can use a single or multiple data sources to add your data. You can use the same or a variety of upload methods across your data sources.
You can view and manage all your data sources via the Data Source tab. The tab is available under the settings icon in the top right of Merchant Center or from the "View Data sources"link from "All products" tab. The upload method used for a particular data source will be shown in the "Source" column.
Learn more about how to upload your products to Merchant Center.
From the Data sources you can create, edit and remove a data source. You can also manually trigger a refresh of the products in a particular data source by pressing the “update” button.
If the same product is uploaded via different data sources, then the product will be considered part of the data source that was most recently updated.
Example
- Timestamp 1
- Products A and B are uploaded via the spreadsheet based data source X.
- As the most recent updates of products A and B are via data source A, both products are considered as part of data source X.
- Timestamp 2
- Product A is included in the upload of spreadsheet based data source, data source Y.
- As the most recent update of product A is via data source Y, product A is now considered part of data source Y.
- Timestamp 3
- Product A and Product B are removed from the data source X spreadsheet.
- Timestamp 4
- Data source X is refreshed.
- Product B is deleted from Merchant Center as it is no longer present in the latest upload of the owning data source, data source X.
- However, product A remains in Merchant Center as it is owned by data source Y.
Automatically added products
In Merchant Center Next there are two types of experience for adding products automatically from your online store, Experience 1 and Experience 2. Which experience you see in your Merchant Center will depend on a variety of factors (It is not possible to change which experience that is available in your Merchant Center).
Learn more about adding products automatically from your online store.
If your Merchant Center is eligible for Experience 1 of Automatically added products, then the Data Sources tab will be split into two sections, "Provided by you" and "Found by Google".
"Provided by you" lists data sources that you have created to upload product data to Merchant Center.
"Found by Google" provides details of additional items that Google has found on your online store.
If your Merchant Center is eligible for Experience 2 and is adding products automatically, the Data sources tab will show a data source with "website crawl" in the "Source" column.
Discrepancies in the number of products across different versions of Merchant Center
Merchant Center Classic vs. Merchant Center Next:
Merchant Center Classic counts products for different destinations and target countries separately, while Merchant Center Next unifies them.
Merchant Center Next and Shopping Content API:
Merchant Center Next and Shopping Content API (SCAPI) count products differently, which can cause confusion. Merchant Center Next counts each product only once, while SCAPI counts each product multiple times if it's sold in multiple countries. This difference will likely persist for a long time, so be aware of it when comparing product counts between the two platforms.