Having your products added automatically from your online store to Merchant Center is a faster and easier way to get them discovered across Google. If you make any changes to your online store, such as changing your product prices or removing a product, these changes are also automatically reflected on Google.
This article explains how to automatically submit and manage your product data in Merchant Center.
On this page
- How it works
- Automatically add your products
- Manage automatically added product data
- CSS guidance
- FAQs
How it works
Google automatically finds and adds your products to Merchant Center by:
- Discovering products: We scan your website to find product pages.
- Extracting information: We read the structured data on those pages to understand product details like title, price, and availability.
- Submitting to Merchant Center: We format that information and deliver it to your Merchant Center account, ready for use in Shopping ads and other marketing methods.
Enabling automatic product submission
Google can automatically add any new products that are added to your online store to Merchant Center. To do this, you’ll need to:
- Use structured data to add detailed information about your products to your online store.
- Allow Google to collect this information.
- Verify and claim your online store’s website by linking it to your Merchant Center account.
To avoid duplicate entries, products that are already included in other data sources won’t be added to Merchant Center. Learn more about managing your data.
Creating your automatic data source
To create a data source in your Merchant Center:
- Go to the “Products” section.
- Under the “All products” tab, click Add Products.
- If you already have products in your Merchant Center, a drop down menu will appear. Select Add another product source.
- Select the Add products from [online store] card, with "[online store]" being your store's website URL.
Note: If you don’t have the option to select the Add products from [online store] card when creating a data source in your Merchant Center account, make sure:
- Your structured data markup is correctly implemented for all required attributes. Learn more about how to Set up structured data for Merchant Center.
- Your account is not suspended.
- Your site has the correct robots.txt settings, and Googlebot is not blocked. Learn more about fixing issues with robots.txt.
Steps to find the automatically added products
- In your Merchant Center, click the Settings & tools icon
.
- Select Data sources.
- Under the “Product sources” tab, the “Found by Google” section provides details of products that have been added automatically to your Merchant Center.
Manage automatically added product data
There are 2 options for displaying your products on Google:
- Automatically through organic search: Google uses structured data on your website to show basic product information in search results. This happens automatically, even if you don't have a Google Merchant Center account.
- Enhanced visibility through automated feeds: By opting into automated feeds in Merchant Center, you can gain more control over your product information and how it appears on Google Shopping and other surfaces. This includes richer product details, Shopping Ads, and more.
Automated feeds
Opting in: Allows Google to automatically add and manage products from your website to your Merchant Center account, providing enhanced visibility and control over your product data across Google surfaces.
Opting out: Stops Google from automatically adding products. However, basic product information might still appear in organic Google Search results based on your website's structured data, but with fewer management options.
You'll find options to configure automated feed sections in a couple of areas of Merchant Center:
- "Data sources” tab: Allows you to edit countries, stop managing products, disable ads for products found by Google, and hide all automatically found products.
- “Products” tab: Allows active AFE merchants to enable ads, non-active merchants to activate AFE when enrolled, and for the exclusion of individual products.
Controlling "Found by Google" products
There are a variety of controls in the “Found by Google” data source.
Hide all automatically found products
If you opt out of automatic feeds in Merchant Center, Google will no longer automatically add products to your product feed. This may reduce traffic to your online store, but links to your products will still appear on Google Search and other surfaces where crawled data appears today. If you no longer want the products on your site to appear on Google Search and these other surfaces, you can add a 'noindex' tag to the product pages. Learn more about showing products on Google.
Stop managing products
If your Merchant Center account is using Shopping Ads, you can include or exclude automatically added products in Shopping Ads. To do this:
- Click the 3 dot menu icon
in the “Action” column.
- Select Stop managing products.
in the “Action” column.You can also remove all automatically added products by deleting the relevant data source.
Note that Google may still show basic product information from organic search results even when a merchant selects "Stop managing products". If you don’t want the products on your site to appear on any Google Search, you can add a "noindex" tag to the product page.
To add products back into your Merchant Center account, click the Start managing these products button that’s available when the Found by Google data source is inactive.
Manage how products “Found by Google” are used in Ads
If you enable ads for “Found by Google” products, your Google Ads campaigns may include additional products found now or in the future and in additional locations. Review your Google Ads campaigns’ product and location settings to check that products still show in their intended locations.
If you wish to remove the products that are found by Google:
- Click the 3 dot menu icon
- Select Exclude products from Ads campaigns.
After the exclusion setting is selected, any additional products found on your online store will not be used in your ad campaigns.
If you are a Comparison Shopping Service, please refer to How to start showing products on behalf of your merchants.
Frequently asked questions
How do I opt-in and opt out of products added automatically from my online store to Merchant Center?
There are a variety of methods you can use to control where your products surface across Google.
Control your product visibility through:
- Merchant Center: Navigate to the "Data Sources" or "Products" tabs to adjust settings related to automatic product submission and Shopping Ads participation.
- CSS Dashboard: Contact your Comparison Shopping Service provider to modify default settings for automatic product submission.
How does eligibility work?
Eligibility for automatic product submission depends on Google's ability to crawl and extract product data from your website effectively.
Will any of my products get disapproved?
How do I exclude certain products added by Google?
- In your Merchant Center account, click the Products tab in the left hand panel.
- Hover over the product you would like to exclude.
- From here, a box that says “This product is showing on Google” will appear.
- Uncheck “Show on Google”.
If you want to control product visibility in your Google Ads campaigns you can use the listing groups feature in Performance Max campaigns, and Product Groups in Shopping campaigns.
Will I be able to add products to multiple data sources?
To avoid duplicate entries, products that are already included in other data sources won’t be added to Merchant Center.
How frequently is my product data being crawled and processed by Google?
Google checks your website at least once every 24 hours for new products and reflects the new products or updates on Merchant Center.