Google announced that all online retailers will have the capability to provide up-to-date product information to Merchant Center.
Product data feeds uploaded to Google Merchant Center will be displayed in search results. Furthermore, these search results will be updated in real-time!
Since all retailers will be given access to this process, that means that payment will not be required and therefore it won’t be necessary to have a Google Ads campaign.
You can upload a product data feed directly to Google as long as you have a Merchant Center account and sell products in the United States.
Image source: Google
In addition to this update, Google has come up with different ways to help retailers who markup their products for search results with structured data.
Google Search Console
There is a new report in Google Search Console for products marked up with the appropriate schema.org structured data.
- If there are any errors detected in the structured data a report will notify the site owners.
- Once an issue is resolved, the products report can be used to validate the fix, as well as request that the pages get recrawled.
If you’re not currently using Google Shopping, this is a great opportunity to get free traffic from organic results by leveraging your product feed!
Brian Roizen is the Cofounder and Chief Architect of Feedonomics, a full-service feed optimization platform that optimizes product data for hundreds of channels. He has been featured on numerous podcasts and eCommerce webinars, and regularly contributes to Search Engine Land and other industry-leading blogs. Brian graduated summa cum laude from UCLA with both a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering.
