Google Merchant Center
Connect your store to Google Merchant Center to list your active products on Google Shopping for free.
Google Merchant Center is how your products get listed on Google Shopping and show up in Google search results with images and pricing. E2C Store connects your store to Merchant Center for you — no separate Google account setup, no product feed to build by hand.
Listing on Google Shopping's free listings is free. There's no cost to connect or to sync your products.
Only the store owner can connect, disconnect or change Google Shopping settings. Collaborators can view the page but can't change anything.
How the connection works
When you connect, E2C Store creates a brand new Merchant Center account for your store automatically, under E2C Store's own Google partner account. You don't need an existing Merchant Center account, and you don't go through Google's account setup yourself — E2C Store handles account creation, product syncing, and keeping your store's category taxonomy mapped correctly.
You'll still be given direct access to the created account (see Accepting your invitation below), so you can open it in Google's own Merchant Center interface any time and finish the parts of setup Google requires directly from you.
Connecting your store
Start the connection
Click Connect with a new Google Merchant Center account.
Enter your Google account email
You'll be asked for the Google account email you want to manage the Merchant Center account with. This account will get Admin access to the connected Merchant Center account — it can be a personal Gmail address or a Google Workspace account, whichever you'd rather use.
Google will email this address an invitation to the account. You need to accept it before you can see or manage the account yourself — see below.
Wait for setup to finish
E2C Store creates the account, sets up product syncing, verifies your store's web address with Google, and sends the access invitation. This takes a few seconds. Once it's done, the page shows Status: Connected.
Accepting your invitation
Right after connecting, check the inbox for the Google account email you entered — Google sends an invitation to manage the new Merchant Center account. You must accept it before that account can open or manage the account in Google's interface.
Until the invitation is accepted, the account is still connected and your products still sync — you just can't see it in Google's Merchant Center yet. If you don't see the email, check your spam folder. The settings page shows which address was given access ("Access granted to …").
Once accepted, sign in with that Google account at merchants.google.com any time to view the account directly.
Finishing Google's own setup
Google shows every new Merchant Center account a setup checklist (business information, shipping settings, tax details, and so on). E2C Store completes what it can on your behalf, but a few steps — the ones tied to your specific business details — are only something you can provide, directly in Google's own interface, after accepting your invitation.
Your products sync and can still appear on Google Shopping while that checklist is incomplete, but finishing it unlocks the full range of what Google Shopping can do for your listings, so it's worth doing once you're in.
What syncs automatically
Once connected, every active physical product that isn't excluded syncs to Google Shopping automatically, twice a day. A new product, or a change to an existing one, can take up to 12 hours to reach Google, and Google's own review can add more time before the listing appears in search results.
Never synced: digital products, services, events, and inactive products or products marked Missing Shipping.
The Google Shopping settings page shows a running count of Synced, Errors, and Excluded products, so you can check sync health at a glance.
What Google receives for each product
| Google field | Comes from |
|---|---|
| Title | Product name |
| Description | Short description, or the long description if the short one is empty |
| Link | The product's page on your store (its URL uses the product code) |
| Image | The product's main (first) image |
| Price | The product's price, in your store's primary currency |
| Availability | In stock if the product's quantity is above 0, otherwise out of stock |
| Condition | Brand New → new, Refurbished → refurbished, every Preowned option and Other → used |
| Brand, GTIN, MPN | From Additional Details, when filled in. If you leave both GTIN and MPN blank, Google is told the product has no barcode, which is normal for handmade items. |
| Google category | Your category mapping, if the product's category is mapped |
Google gets one listing per product, using the product's main price and stock. Variants aren't sent as separate items. If a product's price or stock varies by variant, it has no single main price or stock to send, so its Google listing can show the wrong price, be marked out of stock, or be rejected. Consider ticking Don't list this product on Google Shopping for those products.
Changes that remove or replace a listing
- Deactivating, deleting, excluding a product, or switching it to digital, removes it from Google on the next sync.
- Changing a product's code changes its URL and its ID on Google, so the next sync lists it as a new product and removes the old listing.
- Renaming your store or changing its web address updates the connected Merchant Center account automatically, and product links are corrected on the next sync.
Category mapping
Google sorts every listing into its own product taxonomy. By default, Google guesses the right category from each product's title and description, which works reasonably well — but you can map your own store categories to specific Google categories for more precise, more consistent placement.
For each store category, enter:
- Google category number — the numeric ID from Google's product taxonomy
- Category path — the human-readable path, e.g.
Apparel & Accessories > Clothing
Fill in both fields for a category, then click Save Changes. A category with only one field filled in isn't saved, and the message tells you which one to fix. To remove a mapping, clear both fields and save. The status next to each category shows Mapped or Not mapped.
A category left unmapped still syncs fine. Mapping is an optimization, not a requirement. The mapping section appears once your store is connected.
Excluding individual products
Some products aren't a good fit for Google Shopping — a made-to-order item, something region-restricted, or anything you'd rather keep off Google entirely. On any product's edit page, under Additional Details, check Don't list this product on Google Shopping to exclude just that one item from every future sync.
You can also set a product's GTIN and MPN in the same section. Neither is required, but Google Shopping uses them to match your listing to existing product data and can improve how your listing performs.
Understanding connection status
The Google Shopping settings page shows one of four states:
- Not connected — no Merchant Center account has been created yet.
- Connected — everything is working; products are syncing.
- Needs attention: one of two things.
- The account is connected and products are syncing, but E2C couldn't give your Google account access. Click Grant access and enter your Google account email to retry.
- The connection comes from an older, discontinued setup that can't be finished. Click Disconnect, then Connect with a new Google Merchant Center account.
- Error: the last sync or connection attempt failed, and the page shows Google's error message. If a later sync succeeds, the status goes back to Connected on its own. If the error remains, click Disconnect and try again.
Disconnecting
Disconnecting permanently deletes the Merchant Center account — its listings, performance history, and everything else in it. This can't be undone. Reconnecting later creates a brand new account from scratch, not a restore of the old one.
Click Disconnect on the Google Shopping settings page and confirm. Your products immediately stop syncing to Google Shopping.
Troubleshooting
I connected, but I can't see the Merchant Center account
You need to accept Google's invitation email first — see Accepting your invitation. Check spam if you don't see it, and check that it went to the address shown under "Access granted to" on the settings page. If granting access failed, the page shows Status: Needs attention with a Grant access button, so click it and enter your Google account email again. If the status is Connected but the invitation never arrived, contact support rather than disconnecting, because disconnecting deletes the account.
My products aren't showing up on Google Shopping yet
Syncing runs twice a day, and a new or changed product can take up to 12 hours to appear. Check the Synced / Errors / Excluded counts on the Google Shopping settings page — if a product shows under Errors, something about it (missing required data, an unsupported combination of fields) is blocking that specific listing.
Status shows "Needs attention"
Click Grant access and enter your Google account email again. The underlying Merchant Center account and product sync are unaffected — this only retries granting your account access.
Status shows "Error"
Read the error message on the page first. The status clears itself after the next successful sync. If it stays, click Disconnect and try again, which deletes the old account and creates a new one from scratch.
A product shows under Errors
Google rejected that product. Common causes are a missing image, a price of 0, or a description that breaks Google's policies. Fix the product and save. It's resent on the next sync. You can see Google's exact reason in Merchant Center once you've accepted your invitation.