What retailers can expect from the new Merchant Center (2024)

Merchant Center gives retailers a home base to manage how their products show up across Google: It’s a one-stop shop for listing your products, creating new product imagery, measuring performance and planning ahead.

Last year we introduced the new Merchant Center, an even more helpful and intuitive hub for retailers. And these updates are making an impact: Of the existing online merchants who moved over to the new Merchant Center, we’ve seen a significant increase in retention and engagement.1 And retailers have also successfully added more products, with 25% more omnichannel merchants adding product offers in the new experience.1

If you haven’t already moved over to the new Merchant Center, you’ll be upgraded by September. So you’ll have plenty of time to get acclimated and start benefiting from the updates before the holiday shopping season. We’ve brought over key features, including ones like supplemental data sources and rules that help brands work at scale. Here’s more of what you can expect.

Let Product Studio take the pressure off creating content

Product Studio — available in the new Merchant Center — is a go-to tool for AI-powered content creation, helping you create more marketing content with fewer resources. You can generate tailored product assets, and soon you’ll be able to animate a still image or tweak an existing product image to match your brand’s unique visual style. You can also easily take care of simple tasks, like removing backgrounds or increasing image resolution. Eighty percent of merchants who use Product Studio see it as an efficiency-builder,2 and one in three generated product images are being published or downloaded.3

Review business insights in one place

It’s hard to make business decisions without a big-picture view, so we’ve made our retail data and analytics tools even easier to use. The new analytics tab puts all your insights in one place — from pricing reports, which help you get data-driven pricing insights, to competitive visibility tools that help you better understand your position among your competitive set.

You can also dig into retail-specific Search trends right in Merchant Center. This can help you jump on popular retail trends (like, say, ballet flats or golf shirts) and even compare those trends to your popular products report. The majority of surveyed Merchant Center users express high satisfaction with its insights and reporting tools,4 giving merchants another critical tool for creating retail strategies.

Easily navigate the platform

It’s more intuitive to navigate the new Merchant Center, starting from the moment you log in. In fact, we’ve seen a significant increase in the setup success rate for new merchants.4 We’ve made improvements like simplifying how we verify your brand's website, and allowing you to pre-populate your product information to save time during setup. You’ll also see suggestions on the homepage with simple ways to optimize your presence on Google.

It’s easier to manage your products and control how they appear on Google, too. See the status of your products at a glance, search for specific products and easily control where products appear. If you’re a more advanced user, you can customize Merchant Center for your own business with feature add-ons, like those for loyalty programs.

Get started with the new Merchant Center

Once you’re upgraded, here are a few quick tips for getting started in the new experience:

• Start with the overview page to see key info at a glance. Then, navigate through products (don’t skip the “needs attention” tab!), analytics and ad campaigns.
• Click the products tab in the left navigation to start experimenting with generative AI imagery tools in Product Studio.
• Advanced features like supplemental feeds and rules are now available as add-ons, which you can access in settings.

These updates make it much easier to use Merchant Center, taking time-consuming tasks off your plate so you can focus on growth. If you haven’t been upgraded to the new Merchant Center yet, look out for an email inviting you to get started soon.