Add products automatically from your online shop

Having your products added automatically from your online shop to Merchant Center is a faster and easier way to get them discovered across Google. If you make any changes to your online shop (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:

1. Discovering products: We scan your website to find product pages.
2. Extracting information: We read the structured data on those pages to understand product details like title, price and availability.
3. 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 shop to Merchant Center. To do this, you'll need to:

• Use structured data to add detailed information about your products to your online shop.
• Allow Google to collect this information.
• Verify and claim your online shop'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:

1. Go to the 'Products' section.
2. Under the 'All products' tab, click Add products.
3. Select Add another product source from the drop-down menu.
4. Select Add products from [online shop] (with '[online shop]' being your shop's website URL).

Steps to find the automatically added products

1. In your Merchant Center, click the tools and settings icon and select Data sources.
2. At the bottom of the 'Data sources' tab, there will be a 'Found by Google' section that will provide details of products that have been added automatically to your Merchant Center.

Manage automatically added product data

There are two 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 in to 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 will see options to configure automated feed sections in a couple of areas of Merchant Center:

• The 'Data sources' tab allows you to edit countries, stop managing products, disable ads for products found by Google and hide all automatically found products.
• The '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 shop, 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:

1. Click the 3-dot menu icon in the 'Action' column.
2. Select Stop managing products.

You can also remove all automatically added products by deleting the relevant data source.

Please 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 'Found by Google' products 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 are still shown in their intended locations. If you wish to remove the products that are found by Google:

1. Click the 3-dot menu icon in the 'Action' column.
2. Select Exclude products from Ads campaigns.

Once excluded, any additional products found on your online shop will not be used in your ad campaigns.

If you want to adjust your CSS settings please navigate to the Comparison Shopping Services and adjust the website crawl feed feature. There is more information on Comparison Shopping Services here.

Frequently asked questions