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ALAN KENT: Google Merchant Center
is a great way to share data about your e-commerce business
with Google.
Hi.
My name is Alan Kent, and I'm a Developer Advocate at Google.
In this episode, I'm going to share six tips
on how to get the most out of Merchant
Center for your presence in search results.
The most common use for Merchant Center
is to upload product data via structured feeds.
Because feeds are designed to be read by computers,
data is extracted more reliably than Googlebot
crawling your site and extracting data
from web page markup.
If you're familiar with structured data,
you may be wondering whether to embed structured data in web
pages or provide a feed to Merchant Center.
Google's recommendation is to do both.
Google may cross-check feed data against your website.
So product-structured data and web pages
is still recommended, even if you also
provide Merchant Center feeds.
If you have physical stores, you can also
share inventory location data with Google.
This can then be used by Google when answering
queries for products near me.
Note that there are other e-commerce-related non-product
feeds.
For example, if your business creates goods,
you can provide authoritative product data
via Manufacturer Center.
Finally, please note that Merchant Center product
data feeds are also used by experiences other than search,
such as Google Ads.
In this episode, I focus on the relationship between Merchant
Center and search results.
Let's dive into six tips for using
Merchant Center to improve your presence in search results.
The Googlebot web crawler attempts
to locate all products on your site
by following links between pages.
Googlebot, however, may miss pages in some circumstances.
For example, you may have some products only reachable
from on-site search results.
Google typically does not enter search terms
into your on-site search box to discover new pages.
If you have a product page and you are not sure
if it is indexed, you can use the URL Inspection tool.
This will report what Google search knows about your page.
You can also use site: URL as a search term
to search for that specific URL.
In a previous episode, I described
creating a sitemap file to list the important pages
to index on your site.
The site map file is used by the Googlebot crawler
to find pages on your site without relying solely
on links between pages.
But there is another way.
Creating a Merchant Center product feed
will help Google discover all the product
pages on your website.
These product page URLs are shared with the Googlebot
crawler to potentially use as starting points
for crawls of additional pages.
It is, however, important to note
that this and some other Merchant Center features
are not available in all countries.
Please refer to the Merchant Center help center
for up-to-date lists of countries features
are available in.
The second tip is to check the accuracy of product pricing
data used by Google.
If Google incorrectly extracts pricing data from your product
pages, it may show your original price
instead of your discounted price in search results.
To check if Google is extracting price data accurately,
quickly test a sample of results.
You can search for a product page
and check the price displayed if rich results are displayed.
Search using site: URL for your product page to return the web
page as a search result. To accurately provide
product information, such as list price, discounts,
and net price, it is recommended to add structured data
to your web pages and provide Merchant
Center with structured feeds of your product data.
This will help Google correctly interpret
pricing shown on product pages.
Tip number three is to minimize inconsistencies
in pricing and availability data between your website
and Google's understanding of your site due to timing lags.
For example, Google crawls web pages on your site
according to its own schedule.
Changes on your site may not be noticed
until the next Googlebot crawl.
On the other hand, Merchant Center
feeds can be updated on a more consistent schedule,
such as once a day or even once an hour.
These delays can result in Merchant Center and search
indexes lagging behind site changes,
such as when a product goes out of stock.
I described how to check Google's understanding
of your pricing data in the previous tip using a site:
URL query.
In addition, Merchant Center may identify
products that have different pricing
data according to your website due to delays in processing.
This can negatively impact your products in search results
until the discrepancy is resolved.
Merchant Center also allows you to download all pricing data
in bulk if you want to do a more exhaustive reconciliation
of pricing data in Merchant Center against your website.
To reduce lag, you can request Merchant Center to process
your feeds more frequently.
This can reduce the time lag between the product data
changing on your website and Google being aware of it.
Another approach is to enable automated item
updates in Merchant Center.
This causes Merchant Center to automatically
update collected pricing and stock level
data based on web page contents when
discrepancies are detected.
This is based on the assumption that your website
is updated real time when pricing
or availability changes.
Tip number four is to check your products are
getting rich results treatment in search results.
Rich results are displayed at Google's discretion,
but rely on Google having rich product data.
To check if your product pages are receiving
rich results presentation treatment,
you can use a site: URL query to search for a specific web page.
If not found, the page may not be indexed.
You can also use the Google search URL Inspection
tool to verify if Google is indexing your product page.
To get the special rich products presentation format,
it is recommended to provide both structured data
in your product pages and a product
feed to Merchant Center.
This will help ensure that Google correctly
understands how to extract product data from your product
pages needed for rich text product results.
Also, check for error messages in Google Search Console
and Merchant Center.
Tip number five is to ensure, if you have physical stores,
that your products are being found when users add phrases
such as near me to the queries.
To test if locality data is being processed correctly,
you may need to be physically near one
of your physical stores and then search for your product
with near me or similar added.
Register your physical store locations
in your Google business profile, and then
provide a local inventory feed to Merchant Center.
The local inventory feed includes product identifiers
and store codes so Google knows where your inventory is
physically located.
You might also like to check out Pointy from Google.
Pointy is a device that connects to your in-store point of sale
system and automatically informs Google of inventory
data from your physical store.
The final tip is related to the Shopping tab.
You may find your products are available in search results,
but not appearing.
To see if your products are present,
the easiest way is to go to the Shopping tab
and search for them.
To be eligible for the Shopping tab,
provide product data feeds via Merchant Center,
and opt into Surfaces Across Google.
Structured data and product pages
alone is not sufficient to be included in the Shopping tab
search results.
This is the final episode in the current series
on improving the presence of your ecommerce website
in search results.
If you have topics you would like
seen included in a future series, please leave a comment.
If you have found this series useful
and you would like to see more similar content,
make sure to Like and Subscribe.
Google Search Central publishes new content every week.
Until next time, take care.
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