Onboarding guide

Create a feed

To upload your product data in Google Merchant Center, you'll first need to create a feed to which you can submit your data. This step is required for any new feed and, once a feed is registered, you can update the existing feed without having to register it again.

Create a primary feed

A primary feed is the central data source that Merchant Center uses to access and display your product data. Learn more about feeds

Use primary feeds to add or remove product data, set language and country targeting, and set feed rules for your product data. Primary feeds are the only feed type that can add or remove products.

Note: If you are submitting separate primary feeds for online and local ads and/or listings, make sure that you aren't submitting the same products in both feeds.

Google recommends submitting all of your products in a single primary feed. If you need to exclude products, use the excluded_destination [excluded_destination] attribute.

Instructions

Google Ads Help: Simplify product feed management

To see subtitles in your language, turn on YouTube captions. Click the Settings icon at the bottom of the video player, select 'Subtitles', and then specify your language.

Go to the 'Feeds' section under 'Products' in Merchant Center. Click the plus button

in the primary feed section. Then, follow the prompts and enter these pieces of information:

Create a feed | Country of sale [icon] Country of sale: The country of sale is the main country in which products from this feed are sold. Product data in this feed must meet the requirements for the country that you submit, including the feed specifications and policies. You can add additional countries for Shopping ads when you select destinations during the feed creation process.

Create a Feed | Language [icon] Language: The language in which your product data is written. Learn more about using the right language and currency

Create a feed | Destination [icon] Destination: Choose one or many feed destinations in Merchant Center to allow you to determine which Google features can use the items in your data feed. Learn more about multiple destinations

Create a feed | Primary feed name [icon] Primary feed name: Enter a descriptive name that helps you identify the primary feed. The feed name doesn't need to match the name of the file that you're submitting.

You can change the feed name later by editing your primary feed settings.

Create a feed | Input method [Icon] Input method: Select the one that fits your needs best:

Google Sheets: You can upload your data using a generated Google Sheets template, or with an existing Google Sheet with your product data. Learn more about Google Sheets

Scheduled fetch: Google can fetch your feed directly from your server.

Upload: Upload files directly to Merchant Center via SFTP, FTP, Google Cloud Storage or manually.

Website crawl: If there are no feeds currently in your account and you have the appropriate structured data on your website, Google can crawl your website to retrieve your product data. Learn more about how to use automated feeds to build your product data

Create a feed | File name [Icon] File name: Depending on what input method you select, you may be prompted to enter the name of the file that you'll be submitting. This name should exactly match the name of the file that you created and include a valid extension.

After you have provided the information and clicked Continue, you can view and manage your newly created primary feed in the 'Feeds' section of your Merchant Center account.

To manually fetch or upload a feed, click on the 3-dot icon in the 'Processing' tab of your feed and select your upload preference from the drop-down.

Add an additional country of sale (advanced)

Adding an additional country of sale lets you use the same primary feed to show your product data to multiple countries, carrying over the same feed rules and updates for all countries. You can also apply different feed rules or Shopping campaigns to countries that share the same primary feed.

Note: We recommend that you use the 'Add multiple countries' feature to show your products in additional countries. This option will keep you from duplicating your product data and creating new feed rules and campaigns. Adding an additional country of sale should only be used if you need to apply different feed rules to countries within the same feed.

To add an additional country of sale, click on the 3-dot icon in the settings tab of the page for your feed and follow the prompts as you would if creating a primary feed.

Create a supplemental feed

Supplemental feeds provide data that supplements product data in one or more primary feeds. They can't add or remove products, or be used as a standalone feed. Learn more about feeds

To use a supplemental feed, connect it to an existing primary feed through the id [id] attribute. Supplemental feeds will only update your product data when the supplemental feed contains IDs that already exist in a primary feed.

Feed rules and supplemental feeds can be defined for multi-client accounts and can be applied to all or some of the associated sub-accounts. If you have selected to override rules and supplemental feed data from sub-accounts, then the supplemental feed (added at the sub-account level) cannot be linked with any primary feeds. Learn more about setting up supplemental feeds for multi-client accounts

Note: Make sure that your id [id] attributes for supplemental feeds match exactly with the id attributes for primary feeds as they are case sensitive.

Legacy online inventory update feeds
If you want to use a separate feed for pricing and availability updates, you can do this by creating a supplemental feed and using the 'Take latest' rule to update your primary feed.

Instructions

How it works

When creating a supplemental feed, you'll change your selection to indicate that you'd like to join your feeds with the id [id] attribute.

For example:

Primary feed:

id [id]	title [title]	price [price]	brand [brand]
1	shirt	34	Brand A
2	shoes	55	Brand B
3	hiking boots	100	Brand C
4	trousers	75	Brand A

Supplemental feed that uses the id [id] attribute to match to the primary feed:

id [id]	custom_label [custom_label]
1	SALE
4	SALE

Resulting feed:

id [id]	title [title]	price [price]	brand [brand]	custom_label [custom_label]
1	shirt	34	Brand A	SALE
2	shoes	55	Brand B
3	hiking boots	100	Brand C
4	trousers	75	Brand A	SALE

A supplemental feed is a secondary data source used to provide additional attributes, both required and optional, that may be missing from your primary feed. Supplemental feeds cannot be used as a main data source. Common use cases for supplemental feeds include, but are not limited to:

Add or override custom labels for campaign management.
Add or override promotion IDs for retail promotions.
Override titles.
Exclude specific products (via the excluded_destination [excluded_destination] attribute).
Add missing GTINs.
Add local inventory product data for local inventory ads.
Add or override country-specific attributes for a primary feed with multiple countries of sale.

Each supplemental feed must have an id [id] attribute column, along with at least one additional column with the data that you would like to connect to a primary feed.

To create a supplemental feed, go to the Feeds section under the Products page in Merchant Center. At the top of the supplemental feeds table, click on Add a supplemental feed to create a new supplemental feed. Follow the prompts and provide the following pieces of information about your data:

Supplemental feed name: Enter a descriptive name that helps you to identify the supplemental feed. The supplemental feed name doesn't need to match the name of the file that you're submitting.
- You can change the feed name later by editing your primary feed settings.
Input method: Select the one that best fits your needs:
- Google Sheets: You can upload your data using a generated Google Sheets template, or with an existing Google Sheet with your product data. Learn more about Google Sheets
- Scheduled fetch: Google can fetch your feed directly from your server.
- Upload: Upload files directly to Merchant Center via SFTP, FTP, Google Cloud Storage or manually.
File name: Depending on which input method you select, you may be prompted to enter the name of the file that you'll be submitting. This name should exactly match the name of the file that you created and include a valid extension.
Linking to primary feed: Select any primary feed and country of sale/language combination to which the supplemental feed belongs.
Fetch schedule: Set a scheduled fetch for your product data. This lets Merchant Center get fresh feeds without you needing to manually upload your data.

To manually upload or fetch a feed, click on the 3-dot icon in the 'Processing' tab of your feed and select your upload preference from the drop-down.

Once your supplemental feed has been created and linked to a primary feed, Merchant Center will automatically create a rule, which you can find in the 'Feed rules' section of Merchant Center. The rule will connect the product data from the two feeds based on the id value provided and will connect attribute data from the supplemental feed.

Regional product inventory feeds

Regional inventory feeds are a type of supplemental feed that can be used to override your existing product data in the primary feed in order to show regional pricing or availability for a selection of products in your predefined regions. Regional inventory feeds cannot add or remove products, or be used as standalone feeds; instead, they're used to override existing product data.

Regional inventory feeds support the following attributes:

[required] id [id] (offer ID)
[required] region_id [region_id] (region id)
[optional] price [price]
[optional] sale_price [sale_price]
[optional] sale_price_effective_date [sale_price_effective_date]
[optional] availability [availability]

Regional inventory feeds are available in the United States and are available for beta signup in Australia, France, Russia and Brazil. Learn more about regional availability and pricing