Important! Not all products from AliExpress comply with Google Merchant requirements. Sometimes, AliExpress Suppliers provide their products with attributes, descriptions, images, etc., which go against Google standards. You can check Google rules for Products attributes here.
Google Merchant Center is a platform where you can upload your product data to Google and make it available for Shopping ads and other Google services. Being one of the greatest marketing solutions, Google Shopping campaigns attract potential buyers to your website and boost your conversions.
With the Google Merchant add-on, you can generate your product feed and upload your webstore to Google.
1. Account Creation
First of all, you should have an account in Google Merchant Center.
If you have Google Merchant account, skip this step.
1. Go to Google Merchant Center and click Start Now.
2. Enter your website address:
3. Click Continue:
4. Accept Terms and Conditions, enter business name (name of the account) and choose country (not your target country):
5. The account is created. Click Get started:
2. Site Verification
Also you will need to verify and claim your website in Google Merchant Center.
Verify your website URL by uploading the HTML file generated by Google to your website.
Click the Business Info tab > Details > Your online store > Confirm online store:
Make sure your website address is correct:
Select "Add an HTML tag or file" and "Upload an HTML":
Download the file by clicking the file name in step 1.
To upload the file, go to your cPanel → File Manager:
Choose 'public_html':
Click Upload at the top of the page and upload the HTML file:
Go back to your Google Merchant account and click Verify website:
Also, click Claim website.
Do not delete the HTML file you have uploaded to your cPanel to stay verified.
Important! To prevent your Google Merchant account suspension, you need to check that there are at least two of the following types of contact information on your site: physical business address, phone number, or email.
The contact information should be added to your website footer. To add it, go to Customization → Footer → Contact details on your website.
3. Google Merchant Plugin Installation
Find Plugins on the dashboard and click Add New.
Upload the zip file with your plugin and install it.
When the plugin is installed successfully, activate it.
You can see the Google Merchant Plugin on the left of your dashboard. Don't forget to activate its license key. Go to Google Merchant → License Key. Paste your Google Merchant license key and click Activate.
4. Categories
The product categories' names in your store may differ from what can be easily found in Google. You should do this step to make categories in your webstore associated with categories in Google.
Go to Google Merchant → Categories. If you already installed Facebook Business and worked with it, you would see here mapped categories (in this case, go to the next step). If not, follow this instruction:
1. Click Add new. As you can see, the first line is the name of category on your site, the second one is category in Google. Choose the category from your site firstly.
2. To complete Google category properly, use Google Taxonomy list. Google Taxonomy list of categories is the list of categories that is used by Google for all shopping campaigns.
Find your category by search (ctrl+f). Choose the best one for the category on your site. For example, the category of your site is called 'Tea', but you mean 'tea pots', you can find it like this:
But if the category of your site includes, for example, watches, earrings and necklaces, you can use the category that joins them. So, just choose Apparel & Accessories > Jewelry:
It is not necessary to go deep into subcategories of Taxonomy list if it does not suit the category on your website.
3. When all is done, it should look like this:
Check your product attributes in the Attributes tab
Google product category attributes indicate the category of your item based on the Google product requirements. Categorizing your products helps ensure that your ad is shown with the right search results. Google has a wide range of product data attributes. There are six of them, crucial to correct feed generation, available in the add-on.
Fields in the Values column (i.e. product attributes used on your website) are populated automatically.
However, you might need to add some values manually if your product attributes come in a language that is different from English (for example, couleur, colore, Farbe, etc.). Click on the pencil icon to edit your product attributes. Use the Reset to defaults button to get back to the original values provided by the add-on.
ATTENTION! Your products must have at least one attribute. Required attributes may vary from category to category, please check Google product feed specification to learn more.
Product feed generation
1. Go to Product feed → Enable the toggle switch → click Save.
2. Select a category/categories and currency that will be shown in Google Shopping. Click Save.
3. Now you can generate the feed. Wait till it is done.
Labels feature (optional)
Also, you can use the Labels feature on order to label your products according to your special requirements related to more specific Google Ads setup.
Custom labels, custom_label_0 through custom_label_4, allow you to create specific filters to use in your Shopping campaigns. Use these filters for reporting and bidding on groups of products. The information you include in this attribute won’t be shown to users.
For example, you could label a group of products as seasonal, clearance, or selling rate.
For more information about this attribute, please visit this page.
Go to Labels:
Click Add new:
Choose Category (if you want to apply your labels to several or all your Categories) or Product (if you want to apply it only to your several Products, even from different Categories). Click Save.
Bundles feature (optional)
You can use this feature, in case you have some bundle products on your website (a single product which consists of several separate products in fact).
Use the is_bundle attribute to indicate that you’ve created a bundle: a main product that you’ve grouped with other, different products, sold together as one package for a single price.
This attribute lets Google show your product in the right situations by distinguishing your product from manufacturer-created bundles, multipacks, and other products without accessories.
For more information about this attribute, please visit this page.
You can mark such products as bundle products in your Product Feed. Go to Bundles:
Enable the feature and click Add new:
Set a custom name for your bundle products list, choose its type (you can add either separate products, or products categories), add products or categories and click Save:
You can also exclude particular Products from your Feed by clicking the Show exceptions panel button:
There is a search bar on the top of this panel. You can search your Products by:
Product id
Product title
To exclude a Product, you need just to disable it by clicking the toggle and generate your Feed again. You can also put the excluded Product back, by enabling it by the same toggle and generating your Feed once again.
Creating Product feed in Google Merchant Center
1. Go to your Google Merchant account → Products → All products → Add Products.
2. Choose Add products from a file.
3. For File URL, come back to Product feed on your site in the dashboard. Copy URL and paste it in Google Merchant Center. Click Create feed.
4. Add the link to your file. Before clicking Continue, check Shipping & taxes settings.
6. As soon as it is done you can go to All products.
Please note that Google Merchant Center requires up to 3 days to review the products after their first uploading and update Diagnostics page.
In case you have 'Global feeds issue' after uploading the product feed, you can return to your Dashboard → Settings → Permalinks → Save Changes and try to upload your product data again.
Shipping & returns
You must manage Shipping and returns in case it is required for your target country. You can check it here.
Also, the USA as a target country requires setting up the sales taxes:
Google Merchant Catalog Update
After you make any amendments to your products (such as deleting products, adding new ones or price changing), you need to update your Product Feed both in Google Merchant add-on and Google Merchant account.
First, go to Google Merchant add-on → Product feed.
Then click Generate XML and wait till ‘done!’
After that, you can either wait for an auto-update (in case an update schedule is set up), or to fetch your Feed manually in your Google Merchant account:
Go to the Products tab → View data sources.
Then choose your product feed. Click Update.
To learn more, please check this Ads guide.
To learn how to launch your Google Ads campaign, please check this guide.
Having troubles with your data feed? Check the list of common issues and how to resolve them here.
You can always order the Setup Service for this add-on here:
/services/add-ons-setup/