Follow Merchant Center product-data, eligibility and reporting updates, with credited sources and practical retailer context.
Merchant Center updates can concern product data, account eligibility or visibility reporting. Use the dated stories to understand which surface is affected, then compare the requirements with your products and markets. Product visibility and paid campaign results should be assessed in their own context.
Latest source coverage in this collection: . Open a story to see its reporting and publication dates.
Google Merchant Center
Google documents an optional mileage_allowance field for German vehicle instalment listings, linking finance or lease mileage caps to advertised payment terms.
Google Merchant Center
Reported rewrites to seven Merchant Center policy pages emphasise account-level consequences, removing violations before bulk appeals and a standard fix path.
Google Merchant Center
Google Merchant Center now documents Merchant API uploads for product-review data, adding a programmatic route alongside established feed-delivery methods.
Google Ads
Google’s Merchant Centre integration hub is adding cart transfer to merchant sites and enhanced checkout-flow testing. The capabilities are rolling out gradually in the US; Australia and Canada are scheduled to follow early next year. Analytics is described as coming later.
Google Merchant Center
Emmanuel Flossie observed supplemental-feed controls when the primary Merchant Center source used Google's automatic import. He explicitly notes that the option may have existed for longer, so this is a workflow observation rather than a dated launch.
Google Merchant Center
Brodie Clark is credited with observing additional sections in Merchant Center's AI performance reporting. Barry Schwartz's 9 September coverage identifies Brodie's observation and screenshots; Google's current documentation explains the report's scope.
Google Merchant Center
Merchant Centre’s AI performance insights now cover Australia, Canada, India and New Zealand alongside the US, according to Google’s updated eligibility guidance.
Google Merchant Center
Google’s Business Agent setup now includes a route through the Google & YouTube app on Shopify, importing branding and support details for merchants to review before activation.
Google Ads
Google's Merchant Centre specification now states that the short_title attribute can be used in visual Performance Max formats such as YouTube and Discover, not only in Demand Gen. Google recommends placing the most important information first and aiming for fewer than 40 characters, with 65 characters as the practical maximum before truncation becomes likely.
Google Merchant Center
Google has changed lifestyle_image_link from a single-value field to a repeated field, allowing merchants to submit up to 5 lifestyle images for each product. These images are designed for browsable surfaces where showing the product in a natural setting can provide more context than the main packshot.
Google Merchant Center
SERP Alert observed a Shopping ad carousel placed directly within the body of a Google AI Mode response, with another sponsored unit appearing at the bottom of the answer. The sighting indicates a new presentation test rather than a confirmed universal rollout.
Google Merchant Center
Google is testing a mobile loading state labelled “Evaluating sponsored results”, accompanied by Google and Gemini branding and placeholder bars. Google told reporters that Gemini is not selecting or loading the ads and that the visual is only signalling status to the user.
Microsoft Advertising
Microsoft Advertising published guidance for preparing product discovery and checkout for AI assistants and purchasing agents. It emphasises complete, structured product feeds, Merchant Centre data quality, AI-native ad formats, Copilot Checkout, Brand Agents, and visibility measurement within AI experiences.
Google Merchant Center
A new Merchant Centre help page reference documents a native commerce attribute intended to support checkout experiences within Google surfaces. The documentation does not establish universal activation for all merchants or markets.
Google Merchant Center
Google has notified advertisers that images supplied via image_link below 500 × 500 pixels will be disapproved as of 31 January 2027, with 1,500 × 1,500 pixels recommended. Hana Kobzová surfaced the notice first, with Thomas Eccel sharing the deadline in the contributor feed.
Google Ads
Google Ads now lets advertisers add a business logo during setup for Performance Max and Shopping campaigns, using the Merchant Centre logo as a fallback when no separate asset is supplied. Arpan Banerjee was credited with first bringing the change to light.
Google Merchant Center
Google Merchant Centre agency accounts can be linked to up to 1,000 Merchant Centre accounts.
Google Merchant Center
Simone Parodi published the full Merchant Centre audit he runs for ecommerce clients, with real case studies, data breakdowns, and a title-audit structure.
Google Merchant Center
From 24 August, Merchant Centre performance reports separate YouTube affiliate results from organic traffic, revise the YouTube organic traffic definitions, expand product-level reporting for Google Ads, and add segmentation, aligning definitions across Merchant Centre, Google Ads, and YouTube. Historical data back to 1 July is also restated under the revised definitions.
Google Merchant Center
Merchant Centre analytics showed a dip in organic figures across multiple accounts from around 11 August, suggesting a reporting issue rather than a real change in performance.
Google Merchant Center
Google is testing a mobile Search format that lists participating advertisers' favicons and domains above sponsored results, with quick action buttons and a "Hide sponsored results" control beneath.
Google Merchant Center
Google Merchant Centre product listing ads show a new experimental annotation named Deal Ends. Time-limited urgency reaches Shopping surfaces natively.
Google Ads
Google introduces AI asset labels across Ads, Merchant Center and Ads Editor, including an AI label column in Asset Studio.
Google Merchant Center
The Ask Advisor chat, announced for Google Ads in May, is now appearing in Merchant Centre. Some accounts show an AI insights summary, a search box with suggested queries, and previous chats.
Google Merchant Center
Google has confirmed a fix for the Shopify product ID issue that threatened merchants with lost product history. This closes the caveat first raised in Week 25 alongside the server-to-server integration.
Google Merchant Center
A new "Has improvements" Tracking Status was spotted on a store visit conversion action during an account audit. Clicking it shows what is missing to enhance the conversion setup.
Google Ads
Google says its AI now matches Shopping ads to natural-language, long-tail searches, not just exact product terms. Ad copy is tailored using Merchant Center feed details, confirmed in updated PMax documentation.
Google Merchant Center
Google is changing how Manufacturer Centre handles manual updates, with brand product data surfacing in Merchant Centre. Practitioners will see how their products perform there instead.
Google Merchant Center
Google is expanding eligibility for Shopping ads and free listings to 14 additional countries. The change broadens where product inventory can be served across Google surfaces.
Google Merchant Center
Google has updated the way Merchant Centre handles cases where Googlebot cannot access your website. The changes affect diagnostics for sites with crawl or hosting issues.
