Ring in the holidays with new Merchant Center tools

High quality product information is the foundation for connecting retailers with the most qualified customers on Google Shopping. Luckily, getting your product data in shape has never been easier with new Merchant Center tools. The new feeds experience and Opportunities are here just in time for you to win this holiday season.

Add or override product data with supplemental feeds

Previously, your product data could only be submitted in one primary feed. Now, supplemental feeds give you the flexibility of submitting and modifying your product data from multiple sources. You can use them to add or override attributes and values in your primary feed. For example:

• Add holiday custom labels or promotion ids to products in your primary feed through a supplemental feed
• Replace attribute values in your primary feed with new values from your supplemental feed

Take your products global with a single multi-country feed

With Shopping available in 37 countries, don’t miss the opportunity to bring your products to new global customers. Simply add new countries with the same language to your primary feed and your prices will automatically show in the correct currency of the user. You can also reach new countries with different languages by applying Feed Rules to pull language-dependent values from a supplemental feed, like title and description. Now’s the time to add international expansion to your holiday plans.

Farfetch, a luxury fashion retailer, was able to quickly and easily extend their global footprint:

"The new feed management features in Merchant Center are an amazing solution. With the ability to create multi-country feeds, we easily launched Shopping campaigns in 6 more markets across 2 continents that now represent 29% of our traffic coming from Search in those countries. Our expansion would have been slower and more costly without this feature." - Martin Zirfas, Performance Marketing Executive

Modify your product data from the Content API with Feed Rules

The power of Feed Rules is now available for product data provided through the Content API. This means that you can easily make product updates without having to change your feed directly. For example, you can:

• Apply custom labels based on other values
• Complete shipping values based on product weight values
• Append strong brand values to the beginning of product title values

Look out for additional updates as more functionality is added to Feed Rules.

Drive more clicks with Opportunities

Get a better idea of the potential results and effort needed to improve your product data or campaigns in the Opportunities tab. A card will appear if there’s enough information to surface an opportunity. From minor adjustments to important feed fixes, each card pulls in dynamic information to help you prioritize your resources and drive more clicks to your account. Initial cards will show on a limited basis and focus on improving your product data quality. But, this is only the beginning -- expect more opportunity types in the future. Check the Opportunities tab regularly as it's constantly working in the background to spot opportunities for you. And, make it a goal to address any high-value opportunities before heading into the holidays.

Keep your entire team informed of your Merchant Center account

The days of setting one primary contact and one technical contact are over. You can add multiple team members as either Admin or Standard users to your Merchant Center account. Each user can manage their own email preferences to opt into important news and notifications, including feed alerts, tips and best practices, and beta opportunities. You can also specify email-only users, who will receive communications but can’t log into your account. Before the holiday season, keep your team in the loop by adding them to your Merchant Center account.

Ready to get started?

Learn more about the new feeds experience and Opportunities on Merchant Center Help Center. Or, log in to Merchant Center to explore the new features.

Posted by Raphael Leiteritz, Director of Product Management, Google Shopping