Google announced that all merchants will be migrated (or as Google put it “upgrading”) from the old Google Merchant Center to Google Merchant Center Next by September (next month). We knew this was coming, we covered the upgrade emails back in July but here is the official announcement.
Google wrote last night, “Merchant Center Next: Upgrading all retailers by September.”
Google said, “We’re excited to announce the full rollout of Merchant Center Next, replacing the classic Merchant Center experience. By September, all retailers will be upgraded to Merchant Center Next, which includes new insights reports, generative AI imagery tools and a more intuitive interface.” Google goes on to explain, “Last year, we introduced Merchant Center Next, our simplified platform for businesses to manage how their products show up on Google. Merchant Center Next is easier to use, lets you control how your products appear across Google, and gives you valuable insights about your business, products, and market.”
As a reminder, Google announced that Google Merchant Center Next, the updated version of Google Merchant Center it announced at Google Marketing Live in 2023, was now coming to all merchants in July. Google has already begun notifying merchants and advertisers of this via email and will continue to do so over the month.
Here is what Google posted as being new:
- Let Product Studio take the pressure off creating content: Product Studio is a go-to tool for AI-powered content creation, helping you create more marketing content with fewer resources. Learn more about Product Studio.
- Review business insights in one place: We’ve made our retail data and analytics tools even easier to use. The new analytics tab includes pricing reports which help you get data-driven pricing insights, competitive visibility tools that help you better understand your position among your competitive set, and retail-specific Search trends that you can compare to your popular products report to help your retail strategies.
- Easily navigate the platform: Merchant Center Next is more intuitive to navigate and user-friendly. We’ve made improvements like simplifying how we verify your brand’s website, and allowing you to pre-populate your product information to save time during setup. You’ll also view suggestions on the homepage with simple ways to optimize your presence on Google. If you’re an advanced user, you can customize the Merchant Center Next with feature add-ons, such as those for loyalty programs.
Here is a table of the changes that Google posted:
Forum discussion at X.