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.

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

Open Google Shopping settings

Navigate to Settings → Google Shopping.

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 is the 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 spam, or use Grant access on the Google Shopping settings page to have it resent (see Troubleshooting).

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, non-excluded physical product in your store 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 show up on Google.

The Google Shopping settings page shows a running count of Synced, Errors, and Excluded products so you can see sync health at a glance.

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

A category left unmapped still syncs fine; mapping is an optimization, not a requirement.

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 — the account exists and products are syncing, but something needs a second look, most often that access still needs to be granted to your Google account. Click Grant access to retry.
Error — something went wrong creating or maintaining the connection. Disconnect and reconnect to start fresh.

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. If it's genuinely missing, the settings page will show Status: Needs attention with a Grant access button — click it and re-enter your Google account email to have the invitation resent.

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.