What is the Google Merchant Center?
Google Merchant Center is a new service that makes it easy to upload and manage product listings that you want to appear in Google Product Search, AdWords, and other Google properties.
Previously, you may have used Google Base to upload and manage product listings. Google Base is still available for other types of structured content, but Google Merchant Center provides a better experience optimized specifically for merchants. Merchant Center is where we will continue to add features and improve tools for uploading and managing product listings.
What does the Google Merchant Center do?
Google Merchant Center is for those who want to ship products and sell them through Google. It used to be called Google Base. Google Merchant Center is where you upload feeds, check item status, and get insights into how your listings are performing. Your products uploaded to Google Merchant Center fuel other people’s searches for the products they want to buy. For example, suppose someone wants to buy some dog toys. Starting at the Google home page and clicking “Buy”, you’ll see a page like the one in the first screenshot. After typing “dog toys” in the search box and pressing enter, they will be taken to a listings page.
Google Base still exists, but Google Merchant Center is optimized for product listings, and that’s where Google will focus on adding features and improving the tools needed to upload and manage product listings. If you’ve already used Google Base to list products, your existing data sources, FTP settings, and other items will still be there. Your account will have already been transferred to Google Merchant Center and you will be signed in with the same account you used in Google Base. For most users, the transfer will be seamless. However, there is a small fraction of users who have uploaded product listings and other items to Google Base. They will need to sign in to Google Base to create a new FTP configuration in order to upload non-product feeds to Google Base.
Google Merchant Center has a new dashboard page that contains an overview of your product listings, feeds, and performance charts, making them more accessible than ever before. If you sell items through the Google Merchant Center, Google Checkout is the secure web application that allows you to process orders, including tasks such as charging credit cards, specifying carriers and tracking numbers, canceling or refunding orders, reviewing payment statements, and update Google Checkout. settings.
To process orders in Google Merchant Center, sign in, review the order, and charge the buyer’s credit card. Google will then authorize 100% of the order amount. You must load the order within seven calendar days to guarantee the funds. Once the order is loaded, it automatically starts the payment process. You must ship the order within a specific time period that you agreed to when you confirmed an order for it to be eligible for the Google Checkout Payment Guarantee. You will notify the buyer that their order has been shipped. There are ways to automate order processing using the Google Checkout API.
If you sell services or goods that do not need to be physically shipped, you should mark the order as “shipped” to send the buyer a confirmation email. Some transactions related to digital goods may not be covered by Google Checkout’s payment guarantee policy.
In order processing, Google uses automated fraud risk models to alert you to potential fraudulent transactions. If a fraudulent transaction is detected, it is canceled immediately. To protect you and other Google merchants, active orders from the same fraudulent credit card will be canceled. Google Merchant also uses industry sources, such as fraud blacklists around the world, to prevent fraudulent shoppers from using Google Checkout in the first place. For example, if Google detects suspicious activity related to one of your orders, Google will mark the order as “customer review in progress” and run fraud tests on the order to keep the risk as low as possible. Google generally completes its reviews in four to six hours.
You, as a Google merchant, can review credit verification information on each order you receive. Simply log in to Google Checkout, click on the order you are interested in in your “orders” box. At that time, the buyer’s credit verification information appears below the buyer’s shipping information, including whether the transaction is covered by Payment Guarantee, Address Verification System verification, Card Verification Value or CVV, and Account Age shows how long the buyer has been qualified. to buy through Google Checkout. If you are concerned about an order, you have the option to cancel it to avoid the risk of a fraudulent transaction.
Fees for Google Merchants vary based on the dollar amount of monthly sales and reset on the 5th of each month. For monthly sales less than $3,000, the fee is 2.9% + 30 cents per transaction. For sales between $3,000 and $9,999.99, the fee is 2.5% + 30 cents per transaction. For $10,000 to $99,999.99 per month, the fee is 2.2% + 30 cents per transaction, and for sales over $100,000 per month, the fees are 1.9% + 30 cents per transaction. Orders that are shipped to buyers in a country other than the Merchant’s country will also incur an additional 1% processing fee.
If you plan to sell apps on the Android phone market, your transaction fee is 30% of the app price. In other words, if you sell your app for $10.00, your transaction fee will be $3.00 and your payment will be $7.00.
Google Merchant Center is an answer for those who want to sell products through Google product searches. This can be a real sales boost for those who have online stores at places like Etsy. Google Merchant Center is now separate from Google Base, with the goal of making online product searches more fruitful and online sales easier for merchants and buyers.