How Does Google Merchant Center Interact With Google Ads

Starting out in eCommerce advertising may want to understand how Google Merchant Center Interacts with Google Ads.

First, let’s look at what Google Ads and Google Merchant Center are individually, then how they collaborate.

What Is Google Merchant Center?

Google Merchant Center is a tool that Google provides for free for online stores. Essentially, you give Google your product data so it can create a product feed. This lets you match the items you’re selling to what people are searching for.

When people on Google search for a product you have, your items may show up in Google Shopping ads.

This is the main tool that we use to connect with Google Shopping Ads. Google Merchant lets you manage all of your product information so your products can reach customers with the intent to purchase.

What is Google Ads?

In short, Google Ads is a platform for businesses to pay for each click they get on an ad shown on the Google Network.

These ads appear on Google Search, YouTube, Gmail, and any other websites in the Google Network.

Google Ads are important for reaching your target audience and those who intend to spend money on your product.

So, how does Google Ads know what you are selling?

What Is the Role of Google Merchant Center?

Google Merchant Center can help Google Ads know exactly what you’re selling.

Essentially, you can upload all of your product data to Google Merchant Center, then use the product feed to talk to your Google Ads account.

Once there’s a link active, Google Ads can use all of the details you’ve provided to Merchant Center to populate your Google Ads.

These details include a product photo, price, business brand/name, and hyperlinks for buying.

Including helpful details such as these can help with better Google Shopping Ad copies.

How Does Google Merchant Center Interact with Google Ads?

Using a hybrid setup of Google Merchant Center and running Google ads for an e-commerce store is important for your ads to show up properly to those who search for them.

Ensuring Google Merchant Center is properly feeding relevant data to Google Ads allows Google to use the data to target prospective buyers with the right products at the right time.

Google Merchant Center essentially just stores your e-commerce product catalog, and Google Ads uses that to put up live ads. Combining them allows you to most effectively reach customers.

This interaction can provide automation to a variety of ad placements and copies:

Google search, Images, and YouTube ads

Reaching users who are searching with the intent to buy what you’re selling
Using product categories, pricing, and availability to create ad targeting
Dynamic stock and price changes

This sort of automation makes it easy to manage both your stock online and your Google Ads.

The interaction of Google Merchant Center works with Performance Max Campaigns and Shopping Campaigns.

How Do You Connect Your Website Products to Google Merchant Center?

There are many 3rd party providers for managing your website’s Product Information Management; each one will connect to Google Merchant Center differently.

Let’s look at how to connect using some of the more popular PIMs.

Webflow

Connecting Webflow to Google Merchant Center is easy: all you have to do is use the e-Commerce settings to navigate to the integrations menu and enable “Google.” Doing this creates a URL that you will use in the Google Merchant Center. Go to the Google Merchant Center and paste that URL into the Feed section of your settings.

Reference: Webflow Help Center

WooCommerce – WordPress

In the WordPress Admin Dashboard, navigate to “WooCommerce”, then “settings”, then “product feed”. There, you can generate a URL to put into your Google Merchant Center feed.

Reference: How to Set Up Your Product Feed

Shopify

In your Shopify admin settings, go to “Channels,” “Add Sale Channels,” and select “Google.” Then log in to your Google Merchant Center to review product data. There are other third-party apps inside of Shopify, which allow for complex feed management.

Reference: Set up the Google & YouTube channel

Next, let’s go over step by step how to link your Google Ads Account and your Google Merchant Center.

How to Link Google Merchant Center to Google Ads

Now that we’ve linked your PIM to your Google Merchant Center, it’s important to ensure that the product is properly being input to Google Ads.

Before we start linking, let’s make sure to check for common errors:

Merchant Center and Google Ads accounts both need to use the same business email.
You should check your product feed for errors before attempting to link.
Enable shopping campaigns or Pmax in your Google Ads account after completing the link.

Now, here’s step by step how to link your accounts:

Find your Google Ads Account Customer ID.
1. This ID is found in the top right corner of your Google Ads account.
2. This will be used during step 3.
Sign in to Google Merchant Center.
Go to your Google Merchant Center dashboard.
Log in using the shared Business Gmail.
Click the “Settings” gear icon.
Navigate to “Access and services.”
Navigate to “Apps and services.”
Select “Google services” and “Add service.
There will be a pop-up where you can select the Google Ads account to link.
When you’re finished, click Link.

For troubleshooting, refer to Google Ads Help.

Final Thoughts

Any e-commerce website needs to use a combination of these tools to build a successful business. From a PIM service to connecting to Google Merchant Center, to connecting and running a Google Ads Campaign, each is vital to getting as much outreach and value from the tools at your disposal.

It isn’t always easy to work through all of these systems and juggle Google Ads; that’s why here at MPire Marketing, we can manage your Google Ads and all of the connections required, so you don’t have to stress.