Raise your right hand if you regularly check the Google Search Console Shopping tab! And raise your left if you have a Merchant Center account! If you raised both arms, the rest of this article should interest you…
On September 11, Google posted a news item on its blog: « Link Search Console with Merchant Center to uncover growth opportunities ».
A particularly interesting announcement for e-commerce owners who no longer want to juggle between the two platforms… We explain everything!
What is Google Merchant Center?
Google Merchant Center is a valuable tool for any e-commerce business looking to maximize its visibility on the famous search engine. The platform allows online stores to list their products in Google’s shopping services, such as Google Shopping.
The platform offers many advantages for merchants: increased visibility in search results, targeted advertising on specific keywords, greater brand recognition compared to competitors, support for international expansion, analytics tools to understand consumer preferences, and more.
The difference between Merchant Center and Google Search Console
Google Merchant Center and Google Search Console are two distinct tools from the Mountain View company. Each platform has its own objectives and specific features.
While Merchant Center helps e-commerce businesses directly manage their product data for Google Shopping ads, Search Console is designed to monitor and analyze the SEO performance of any website—whether that performance comes from organic search, sponsored campaigns, or a combination of both.
It’s important to understand that Merchant Center is action-oriented! Directly linked to Google Ads, its role is to make your ads perform. Search Console lets you view the results of your actions and make informed decisions to optimize your search rankings.
Good news: the Search Console Shopping tab now incorporates Merchant Center!
Until now, merchants had to juggle between these two platforms to create their ads, publish their products, and measure the results… before adjusting their advertising to achieve better outcomes.
So on September 11, Google announced good news for all online store owners seeking greater productivity: Merchant Center now integrates Search Console!
Remember: last November, Search Console launched a new section to simplify product indexing within its analytics tool. Merchants could list their goods in the Shopping tab without having to submit a feed or reverify their website.
Now, the world’s most popular search engine is going even further to make product feed management easier—without having to switch between two tools!
First new feature: alert notifications
When products suddenly stop appearing in the Shopping tab (because of a small hiccup somewhere), merchants will receive notifications. No more unpleasant surprises!
Second improvement: personalized suggestions
The American company wants to provide more support to online merchants using Google Shopping. It will therefore suggest optimizations to increase clicks and improve your products’ ranking in the search engine. Pretty useful for boosting your return on investment!
Why is this integration into the Search Console Shopping tab an opportunity for online merchants?
Integrating Merchant Center into the Shopping section of Google Search Console offers a more holistic approach to managing and optimizing an e-commerce site within the search engine ecosystem. This rollout therefore presents several advantages for online merchants:
- Improved diagnostics The integration of the two tools can help e-merchants quickly identify problems related to their products or their site. For example, if a product is rejected in Merchant Center because of a URL issue, Search Console can provide detailed information about that URL.
- Better visibility By integrating these tools, online store owners can get a more complete picture of their products' performance. For example, they can more easily analyze the impact of ads on organic search rankings or on brand awareness.
- Easier SEO optimization Analyzing Search Console data, such as search queries, can help e-merchants optimize titles, descriptions, and other SEO elements of their product pages for better visibility in organic search results... and also in Google Shopping ads!
- A productivity boost Instead of switching between tools to analyze data and resolve issues, e-merchants benefit from a unified dashboard that simplifies the management process.
- Combined insights By having access to both organic and paid data, shop owners can make more informed marketing decisions by comparing, for example, product performance in Shopping ads and organic search.
How to enable Shopping features in Search Console?
To enable these new features in the Search Console Shopping tab, there’s just one small step: link your Search Console property to a Merchant Center account. Nothing complicated!
Any owner of the Search Console property with admin rights on the relevant Merchant Center account can do this. And once it’s done, all users of that property will be able to benefit from the new features.
Google will gradually roll out these new functions over the coming weeks… So one tip: take a look at the Ads section of the Search Console Shopping tab to see if you have access to this option.
Our tip for making the most of Search Console
Essential for all e-commerce sites, Search Console provides valuable data on the performance of your product listings. Knowing how to manage and interpret the elements of the Shopping tab ensures informed decisions to optimize your SEO and SEA strategies.
If you want to correctly configure Search Console’s Shopping data or get a thorough analysis of your search ranking, post a listing on our freelance platform, Codeur.com. Many SEO experts will respond to your request!
