Your Google Merchant Center account is the hub that connects your e-commerce site to Google Ads. Inventory, product categories, descriptions… everything Google Shopping needs to get your ads to the right people is taken directly from your Google Merchant Center account.
In fact, managing your Google Merchant Center account is just as important as managing your keywords and text ads in Ads.
Ok, Merchant Center Account created, Feed loaded. What will happen now?
To promote your products through Shopping Ads, you need to link your seller account to your Google Ads account.
The linking process needs to be initiated in your GMC account. There are 2 steps involved:
Step 1: Merchant Center Interface
Settings > Linked Accounts > Request a link from your Google Ads account to the Google Ads account > Select the correct Customer ID > Click 'Link'.
Step 2: Accept Link Request from Google Ads Interface
Go to Tools Icon > Setup > Linked Accounts > Google Merchant Center > Details > 'Confirm'.
Once your Merchant Center account is created, you will want to link it to your Ads account. Go to the drop-down menu in the upper right corner of the page by clicking the three dots.
Select 'Account Linking' from the drop-down menu. You will then be shown a suggestion to link the Ads account already linked to your email.
If you're using a separate email address for Google Merchant Center, simply click 'Link Account' at the bottom of the page and enter your Ads ID.
The next step will be to verify your website in Google Merchant Center. This is to verify that you are the owner of the website you are trying to advertise. Go to the 'Business Information' tab in the left column and select 'Website'.
Here you can link your account in one of three ways:
- Via an HTML file you upload to your site (Google claims this is the most popular method)
- Verify with Google Analytics
- with Google Tag Manager
How to Select the Country of Sale in Merchant Center?
In the process of adding your products to your Merchant Center account manually or via a data Feed, you will be asked to select your target country.
Step 1: Go to Products, then Feeds.
Step 2: Click on the name of your Product Feed.
Step 3: Go to settings.
Step 4: Click on the 3 vertically aligned dots in the upper right corner to reveal the option to add more countries.
What Happens If My Google Merchant Center Account Is Suspended?
To ensure that every user has the best possible experience, Google employees regularly review your Google Merchant Center account. If, for whatever reason, some of your products violate the Google Shopping policy, you'll be emailed a warning and given a week to fix the issues. During this one-week warning period, your ads will continue to run as usual.
If you fix all violations by the end of the warning period, you're fine. However, it's not the end of the world if you fail to clear the violations or miss the deadline. Reactivating your Google Merchant Center account is a fairly simple process.
First things first: Fix any issues that caused your account suspension, you won't be able to advertise on Google Shopping until the issue is resolved. After the process is complete, manually request a review from the Google team. If they review your account and find no issues, you're back in business. If you're still in breach, you'll have one more opportunity to request a review before you enter the cooldown period – a one-week period during which your ads are inactive and the 'Request Review' button is disabled.