Google Merchant Centre Tips and Tricks
Google Merchant Centre is a critical platform for e-commerce businesses looking to expand their reach and increase sales. If you're planning to run Google Shopping Ads, setting up a Merchant Centre account is non-negotiable. It acts as your gateway to upload product data, create listings, and manage your online inventory directly through Google.
But let’s be clear—setting up an account isn’t where the work ends. To truly drive measurable outcomes, optimisation is key. Effective use of Google Merchant Centre can significantly impact your product visibility, improve rankings, and convert more clicks into sales.
In this post, we break down actionable strategies to enhance your Merchant Centre performance. These expert tips will help you fine-tune your product listings, increase visibility, and attract the right customers. With these optimisations, your business can deliver better results while staying ahead in an increasingly competitive digital environment.
Why Google Merchant Centre
Is Essential
for E-Commerce Success
Before we get into optimisation strategies, let’s take a moment to establish why Google Merchant Centre is such an important tool for e-commerce businesses.
Google dominates the search landscape, with over 8.5 billion searches taking place daily. By leveraging Shopping Ads through Google Merchant Centre, you’re positioning your products directly in front of users who are actively searching with intent to purchase. This isn’t just about visibility—it’s about targeting the right customers at the right time.
Optimising your Google Merchant Centre product listings delivers measurable advantages:
Increased Product Visibility: Well-optimised product data ensures your listings are more likely to appear in relevant search results, attracting the right potential buyers.
Improved Click-Through Rates (CTR): When your product details align with what users are actively searching for, you’re more likely to see a noticeable boost in CTR.
Higher Conversion Rates: Shopping Ads consistently outperform text ads, delivering a 30% higher conversion rate on average.
Now that the importance of Google Merchant Centre is clear, let’s move forward with actionable strategies to help you optimise your product listings effectively.
Create Accurate
and Specific
Product Titles
Product titles directly influence your visibility and engagement. To maximise the effectiveness of your Google Merchant Centre listings, ensure your titles are clear, detailed, and keyword-driven. Focus on describing your products in a way that aligns with user search behaviour. Include key details such as brand name, product type, material, size, and colour to make your listing stand out and meet search intent.
For example, instead of using a broad title like "Trendy Dress," opt for a precise and descriptive title: "Women's Floral Print Summer Dress - Brand XYZ - Size Medium - 100% Cotton." This approach not only improves relevance and visibility in search results but sets the foundation for stronger click-through and conversion rates.
Fine-Tune
Your Product
Descriptions
Product descriptions are a crucial component in optimising your Google Merchant Centre listings. Clear and specific descriptions that outline key details—features, benefits, and unique selling points—set your products apart and reinforce their value to the customer. Prioritise unique copy that incorporates relevant keywords seamlessly, avoiding keyword stuffing to maintain clarity and professionalism.
Take optimisation further with structured data markup. By providing search engines with additional context about your products, structured data not only helps with rankings but ensures greater visibility across search results. Accurate, well-designed product descriptions paired with structured data help to improve search performance and engagement.
Leverage High-Quality
Images for
Maximum Impact
Product imagery plays a key role in influencing customer decisions, particularly in e-commerce. High-quality images that clearly showcase your product from multiple angles provide customers with the information and confidence they need to make purchase decisions. Ensure your images are properly sized—preferably in a square format—for optimal performance on Google Shopping.
To further enhance visibility, optimise image file names and alt text tags with relevant keywords. Properly executed image SEO not only improves visibility in search results but can also help your products appear in Google Image search, driving additional traffic to your listings. However, avoid keyword stuffing in alt text tags —it reduces performance and can compromise accessibility. Instead, prioritise clarity and relevance. For example, an alt text for a product like a red dress could read: “red dress with long sleeves and a floral pattern.”
If you need an in-depth breakdown of alt text best practices, resources like Yoast’s guide on structured alt text provide valuable insights. Emphasise quality, precision, and optimisation to ensure your visuals align seamlessly with your e-commerce goals.
For more information on product images, take a look at our blog The Power of Product Images in Google Shopping.
Prioritise Mobile
Optimisation
In 2024, mobile commerce accounted for nearly 57% of global e-commerce and 55% of UK e-commerce. In 2025, the global figure is expected to rise to ≈ 59% and remain at ≈ 55% for the UK. These statistics reinforce the importance of optimising your Google Merchant Centre listings for mobile users. If your product pages aren’t mobile-friendly, you risk losing a significant share of potential customers.
To optimise effectively, focus on fast-loading pages, responsive design, straightforward navigation, and clear, accessible product information. Each of these elements ensures a seamless user experience and keeps mobile users engaged with your listings.
Additionally, leverage Google’s promotion assets feature, specifically designed to capture the attention of mobile shoppers. This tool can help boost visibility and drive higher conversions by delivering targeted promotional content in a mobile-optimised format. Investing in mobile optimisation isn’t a choice; it’s a necessity for staying competitive.
For more information check out our blog Optimising SEO for Mobile-First Indexing.
Monitor Performance
and Optimise
Continuously
Consistent performance tracking is essential to ensuring the success of your Google Merchant Centre listings. Regularly analyse key metrics such as impressions, clicks, click-through rates, and conversions to understand how your products are performing. Identify any underperforming listings and take actionable steps to refine areas like titles, descriptions, or images for improved outcomes.
Utilise Google Merchant Centre’s reporting and diagnostics tools to pinpoint errors and warnings that may affect your visibility or overall account health. Address these issues quickly to prevent disruptions, improve listing performance, and prevent your account being suspended. Adopt a proactive approach to monitoring and adjusting to make sure your efforts deliver consistently stronger results in an ever-changing e-commerce landscape.
Maximising Your Results with Google Merchant Centre
Google Merchant Centre provides businesses with a powerful platform to showcase products and connect with potential customers. Implementing the strategies outlined in this post will help you optimise your listings and enhance product visibility, driving measurable improvements across your campaigns.
Success requires more than just set-and-forget tactics—consistent analysis and refinement are essential to stay ahead of e-commerce shifts and maintain a competitive edge. Keep in mind that Google Merchant Centre isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. Experimentation and tailoring your strategies to suit specific products and audience segments are critical for achieving optimal results.
With a disciplined approach and commitment to continuous improvement, you can fully leverage the potential of Google Merchant Centre and convert visibility into tangible sales outcomes.
