Everything You Need to Know About Creating Feeds in Google Merchant Center: Step-By-Step Process

How do you feel about watching multiple products popping up whenever you search for something on Google?

What about Google Shopping? Have you used it to shop for products online? And what about using Google Lens to search for products?

Google along with being the biggest search engine in the world is also one of the most famous platforms used for shopping!

In Fact, a super large portion of buying decisions start with a Google search in some form or the other.

I am sure you have noticed and read about all this, which is why you have made the decision to create and optimize your Google Merchant Center.

What is Google Merchant Center?

Google manages all your shopping feeds, products, product details, and analytics on Google Merchant Center. It is one section of Google where you can list and manage all your products.

Just like other products of Google, Google Merchant Center is a wonderful platform with unmatched capabilities that can help you take your business to the next level.

Understanding the benefits of Google Merchant Center is beyond the scope of this blog, and we will cover it in another blog.

This blog is all about helping you set up your Google Merchant Center with a Step-by-Step Guide.

Without any further ado, let’s dig straight into it.

What are the steps to create your feed in Google Merchant Center?

You can easily follow all these steps:

1. Start with domain verification by adding your metadata to the website
2. Complete the mobile verification
3. Complete the email verification
4. Enter your business display name and address
5. Enter service contact details for your customers on the platform

What is the process of uploading the feed on Google Merchant Center?

1. Manual upload

The first way of uploading your products is manually uploading it.

Benefits:

When we upload the feed manually, you have a lot of control over it. What I mean is that you can customize the title, description, product category and additional attributes easily.

Drawbacks:

The biggest challenge is that the prices and the availability cannot be real time. Even after the product is sold the inventory is not updated and there are chances that you will even sell the products that are out-of-stock. 

When you sell out-of-stock products and don’t deliver, you will invite a lot of problems from Google. Also creating manual feed is a time taking process and we need to watch the feed very closely on a regular basis.

Related Article: Google Ads Account Suspended Due to Counterfeit Policy 2023? 5 Steps to Get Your Account Back

2. Scheduled fetch

The second method is called the Scheduled Fetch. In this method, you need to monitor the file name and time of scheduling the feed. 

You will have to create a xml or xls file of all the products linked to a particular url. Google will automatically fetch the product info from that url.

3. Website crawl

This is the easiest crawl method launched by Google recently. You need not have any technical knowledge of live excel sheets or any extension to crawl the products. 

Once you share the name of the website on the platform, Google will automatically fetch all the products from the website.

Demerits:

1. The complete fetching process is slow and time taking
2. The exact number of products can't be fetched automatically
3. The chances of getting your products disapproved are high
4. You cannot remove any particular product if you want to
5. If your website's robot.txt file blocks any product, Google will not be able to crawl that product

4. Content API

This is one of the most accurate and automatic methods of creating a feed, especially for Shopify and other open source platforms. You just need to install an app/extension and that will fetch all the product data for you.

You also have the option to remove some products from Google feed and the best part is that stock quantities and prices of the products will be updated automatically.

Demerits:

You do not get the option to optimize the product title and description as per Google’s suggested ways and best practices.

Conclusion

I hope the information above has solved all your concerns and queries. You can now easily choose the method that suits your needs and start with setting up your Google Merchant Center account.

Confused and looking for help in setting up your account? Or wondering how to optimize your listings for maximum conversions?

Looking for ways to increase sales from already listed products that are not performing well on organic and inorganic keyword searches?

Creation Infoways has been helping brands scale their conversions, even before Google launched the Merchant Center!

Our experienced team of marketers help eCom companies win on Google with time tested strategies and blueprints that can take your brand to the next level.

Want to know more? Contact us using the info on the website to know how we can help you.

Also Read:- Google Merchant Center Suspended? 6 Must-Know Steps to Get Your Account Back