Google Merchant Centre Next: Automatic Enrollment from July 16, 2024

Google Merchant Centre (GMC) is a product management platform that helps retailers upload and manage their products for use across Google Shopping and Ads services. 

GMC makes it easy, for example, to quickly diagnose any issues affecting product performance in ads or free listings and enables users to set up feed rules that control how products appear. 

Automatic enrollment – what we know so far

Google announced in 2023 that they would be rolling out a simplified version of their classic Merchant Centre. They’ve recently announced that this will be rolled out across GMC accounts from the 16th of July this year. 

Many businesses have already moved over to the new version whilst others have decided to remain with the classic version of the platform for as long as possible, as GMC Next does have some restrictions…

The benefits of Google Merchant Centre Next

It’s clear that GMC Next intends to make it easier to advertise products and requires less technical knowledge, however, a few key features are missing that we’ll come back to shortly. Here are the main benefits of the new platform: 

AI-powered tools within Product Studio

Bundled in with the platform, retailers will have the opportunity to use the Product Studio which can help you to refine, enhance and create images using AI. 

You’ll be able to make quick image changes that will automatically sync across various placements. It’s worth noting that it’s currently only available using English or Japanese prompts. 

Automatic product detection & upload

You’ll still be able to upload products via a data feed as normal, however, retailers can also now make use of automatic product uploads where products are found via crawling your online store or synced via a 3rd party service such as Shopify. 

Direct editing of products

Google Merchant Centre Next makes it easier than before to quickly amend and edit any product in your catalogue and change how it appears in Google, without resubmitting your feed. 

Simplified user interface

One of the most notable things about GMC Next is the change in the user interface, which is intended to be much sleeker, simpler and easier to use, requiring far less technical knowledge to operate.

Users can also benefit from a consolidated view of their reporting giving clear performance insights into product performance. Explore your best-selling products, shopper engagement and competitor search results. 

Features that are yet to appear on the new platform

For the majority of marketers, the main concern is that Google has not included the ability to set feed rules and supplemental feeds. If feed rules were to suddenly disappear, it could essentially break or change how thousands of products appear across the internet.

Most of us have feed rules in place to prevent out-of-stock products from being served as a listing, and removing such rules would negatively impact retailers and Google alike. 

Google has said that they would be incorporating these features – but we have yet to see this in any account so consider it pending. 

What retailers need to do next

Google will be automatically transitioning all GMC accounts over to the new platform from the 16th of July 2024. We don’t yet know whether you’ll be able to go back to the classic platform after this – and if you can, you will likely be stuck on classic until it is finally retired.

If you’ve got any feed rules or supplemental feeds in place, we’d advise taking note of all these to check that when you’re on the new platform, it hasn’t caused any product errors or affected the way they have displayed. 

For those who have to use supplemental feeds or feed rules, we suspect many will choose to stay on the classic version for as long as possible until these features are introduced to GMC next. 

What we’re doing next

As the classic version of the MC retains crucial features such as feed rules and easier ways to navigate item issues, we’re sticking with it until GMC next at least matches in terms of functionality. 

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