Google Merchant Center Free Ads

[BadBob]

I have had a Google business page for several years. It was free and allowed me to showcase my products and link to my shop. Recently, a button appeared that said "Edit In Merchant Center." I have been updating some listings to point to my Goimagine shop ad and clicked the button to see what it was. There were a bunch of new fields for the listing and free Google ads if your listings are approved. So, whenever I needed to update a listing, I used the Merchant Center to get it approved. While working on one today, I discovered that the Merchant Center was importing listings from my shops. As of now, 788 listings in my Merchant Center need attention. Only 17 have been approved. The numbers have been increasing all morning. I know it is getting listings from my Mosaic shop but I have gone deep enough yet to find out where it is getting them all from. Here are the column headings:

Total products 788

Provided by you 406

More found by Google 382

Not showing on Google 384

Edited products 1

 

Here is what Google Gemini says about the free ads:

Google Merchant Center lets you list your products for free on various Google platforms like Shopping tab, YouTube, Google Search, and even Google Images. This is a great way to increase your visibility without paying for ads. Here's a quick rundown:

• Eligibility: Anyone can use it, regardless of whether you run paid ads or not.
• How it works: You create a Merchant Center account and submit your product data feed. This feed includes details like product descriptions, prices, and images. Google then uses this information to display your products in relevant searches.
• Benefits: Increased visibility, potential for more sales, and it's completely free!

Here are some additional points to keep in mind:

• There are some requirements you need to meet to be eligible for free listings, like having clear return and shipping policies.
• Free listings might not show up in the same prime spots as paid ads.
• You can still run paid Shopping Ads alongside your free listings if you want even more exposure.

Overall, Google Merchant Center's free listings are a powerful tool to reach new customers and grow your business.

 

 

[kmmcrafts]

Have you used any of the free ads? I meant to reply but it's been crazy busy around here with broken mowers, tractors, washer and dryer, and most recently a death in the family that is leaving me with finishing their repairs of a broken car so I can get his wife back up and mobile again.. hopefully soon so maybe I can get back to woodwork stuff. 

Anyway, I'm always getting a email from google about free ads.. have for years gotten free $100 or sometimes $150 worth of ads every month if I remember correctly. Some folks that know way more than I have always said the google ads are a waste of money but I suppose if they are free only thing spent would be the time to set them up.. I also get free $100 in ads a month from Amazon.. Pretty dumb on Amazon's part to charge sellers for ads but that's how they roll I guess. 

Only paid ads I've ever done was FB ads and the Etsy ads.. Both got me views and sales but not super great return on the investment. Best results for me has always been spending time on groups and forums of certain themes.. ie a Jeep group and post a Jeep clock or ornament usually nets in several orders without paying for anything.. I never make it like a ad either as that can get you kicked out of groups and clubs etc.. Just post saying I made myself a Jeep clock or ornament and then people ask if I'd make some to sell or how much for one etc... sometimes people will ask if I can make something else instead of a Jeep they might ask if I can make a Mustang or?  if asked I will say I might make a few and for people to message me.. I get orders from post from several years ago every now and then too.  Due to trademarks questions I'm no longer selling the car stuff. Been told by many that the images fall under fair use and blah, blah, blah but until I actually get some "real legal" info I've backed off those things. I have white collar worker friends and family that work at the auto plants and tell me not to worry they'd handle something for me but in a lawsuit would they really, LOL Easy to say things when it's not you.. LOL

 Anyway, just curious if you've done the ads and if it's helped or not. I know the ads are only as good as how you set them up and the demographic you choose to show them too etc.. so my statement above about those that know better than me saying it's not worth it.. they maybe not really know how to do those ads.. I've just never felt the dire need for doing them in the past because I've always found better ways around doing them.. 

[BadBob]

If you have a Google business page to which you have been adding products, the Google Merchant Center will automatically import them. If you get your business verified along with your website, the merchant center will import your listings. The photo upload has some problems, so you might need to fix some of these and some other fields. It also updates automatically for the listings that Google imports; any changes you make will not be updated in the future. It costs nothing, and I'm sure they are low priority. If you run Google ads, you can manage them from the Merchant Center. You can have multiple businesses and websites.

Click here to set up a business page.
 

This is what you see if you search for my business, Odin's Toy Factory - Google Search

Does it work? At this point, I can't tell for sure. Unless the link has UTM tags, they show in analytics as being from Google. Most of my listings do not yet have UTM tags, so there is no way for me to know.

As part of my routine while posting to social media, I  update the Merchant Center For that listing. It takes me about five minutes, and it is free. I don't run any paid ads.

Paid ads have never worked for me. I tried all of the Etsy versions but nothing else. Facebook might do better, but they want me to pay $35 to advertise a listing that I sell for $4.50.

I have had a Google business page for years, so when the Merchant Center Came online, I was automatically added.
 

[BadBob]

I have all of my Goimagine listings approved in the Google Merchant Center. It's working; by that, I mean I am getting views and many impressions from there. It's hard to say how this will pan out in the long run since it hasn't been completed for a month yet, and things are extremely slow.

I have also updated to the advanced version to add multiple shops and my Etsy shop. I'm not sure this will work, but it has been verified and I am waiting to see if it will do an automatic import like it did for Goimagine.

[kmmcrafts]

I guess I was always in the understanding that the venues GI and Etsy pushed our products to Google shopping? I know for a fact that etsy does or at least did.. they also push advertising as I get charged for sales from that since I make over 10k a year on there and no way to opt out once you do the 10k.. 

This stuff is a big reason why I dumped my stand alone site years ago as it takes a lot of time and effort to do ALL the necessary things to be found in a google search.. paying a venue a small monthly / listing etc type fees was always well worth it to me to not have to deal with it anymore. Back then you almost needed a full time employee just to handle the website requirements to get into the shopping searches etc... Like I said... I left my site and went to venue based platforms because of a lot of this stuff. Maybe GI doesn't do this.. I know back in the day Artfire used to take care of this stuff for the sellers.. I would think GI would too because they don't make any money if people aren't getting their products seen.. whats to point of these venues to make a place to sell if they aren't working to help you get sales? Maybe I'm missing the point of this or misunderstanding it.  

[BadBob]

You can only use Google Merchant Center sites you own and get verified by Google. You can't use it for Etsy. I'm using it with Mosaic. It's free (for now), and Google imported many of the listings for me. It doesn't do a good job, so some must be tweaked.

I don't have anything like 10K in sales. I'm just a small fry trying to point everything I can at Goimagine.

[kmmcrafts]

On 7/10/2024 at 9:01 AM, BadBob said:

You can only use Google Merchant Center sites you own and get verified by Google. You can't use it for Etsy. I'm using it with Mosaic. It's free (for now), and Google imported many of the listings for me. It doesn't do a good job, so some must be tweaked.

I don't have anything like 10K in sales. I'm just a small fry trying to point everything I can at Goimagine.

I was just merely stating that you may be wasting your time doing this for etsy and GI.. as I thought I read you mentioning you pushed your etsy and GI items into this as well.. I can understand working toward your Mosaic site.. 

I personally am a bit skittish to put forth this kind of effort on a site linked to a Marketplace such as GI.. I've been there done that twice with Artfire, and Zibbet only to start getting good momentum and then the sites changed management or other reasons and started going down hill.. now both those sites are not even a thing anymore.. IF I'm putting that effort into it then I'm going to do that on my own site.

GI currently is heading in the right direction as did Artfire and Zibbet when they were still small.. even Etsy at one time was much like these smaller start-up places.. As those companies grew and got more busy they hired workers to do some of the things that the original founders did.. however the workers don't care it was just a job to them and not their business they built,  so their efforts wasn't the same.. I'm curious to see how GI actually pans out once they really start getting to this point.. I hope they are able to move through all the growth phases and continue to have great customer support and a awesome selling site for it's sellers and buyers alike.. 

 

 

[kmmcrafts]

 

On 7/10/2024 at 9:01 AM, BadBob said:

You can only use Google Merchant Center sites you own and get verified by Google. You can't use it for Etsy. I'm using it with Mosaic. It's free (for now), and Google imported many of the listings for me. It doesn't do a good job, so some must be tweaked.

I don't have anything like 10K in sales. I'm just a small fry trying to point everything I can at Goimagine.

I got to thinking this morning about the amount of time I used to spend on tweaking listing titles and keywords and tags etc for SEO... and what the benefit was to doing all the time and work verse just rolling with some heavy social media promoting and maybe paid ads.. I bring this up because I recently read a topic the other day that mentioned a lot about SEO and algorithms etc.. now this was all based on selling on a platform, and I think they was primarily speaking of Amazon and Etsy but most all platforms would be basically the same I believe.

They did a bit of testing and this falls into something that really got my Etsy shop to take off back in 2015-16 ish.. when I moved away from Artfire and Zibbet and started getting more involved on etsy. Anyway they did a few listings basically the same set up but one was SEO heavy while the other was just "okay" SEO at best and this one they spent $100 in ads to get the product out there and seen. A while later they looked at the ranking of each of the listings and of coarse the sales numbers etc. The advertised listing with okay SEO was on the first page of searches for various search terms had way more traffic and of coarse sales.. The algorithm that etsy pushes and most venues is going to be the listings that gets sales.. If a item isn't selling they aren't going to show it in searches because they get a portion of the sale so they're going to show the stuff that is selling. 

Back then etsy messaged me asking if I would be in a test group and then take some survey at the end of the test period.. I did it and at the end of the test they gave me $200 in free onsite ads to advertise my products. This advertising came right in at the fourth quarter with many holiday shoppers.. I advertised basically my whole shop.. back then it was mostly ornaments.. The ornaments that were popular back then are still my hottest sellers today.. I have some ornaments that hardly get any views that I've spent a lot of time trying to get the SEO perfect on etc.. Was looking at some items and thinking I'm just going to donate them to a charity etc.. because they aren't selling and have been on for several years. Then a light went off.. New listings get a boost in search.. I want to redo many of my photos anyway so I may put forth some effort to maybe make these a good seller.. spend some money advertising them. I know that every store is going to have the best seller and some that do nothing, that's just the nature of selling.. not everyone likes the same things.. This same stuff is what I've experienced on Amazon.. while I have never advertised anything on there.. but the first few items I sold there are still my best selling items 8 years later.. LOL

I know you worked with some of this SEO type stuff or with computers etc so you probably have fun pushing things out onto google and running test, tracking data etc.. Me... I'd much rather pay for some ads and spend my time working in the shop.. I know how to do "some pattern making" however I don't enjoy it.. so I pay for designs more than I make them myself.. I'd almost pay someone to run my shops and websites so I could be away from the computer part altogether honestly, LOL.. In a way that's what I have done... I did away with my stand alone site and started using ecommerce sites or platforms.. 

Anyway my point to some of this for anyone reading is, you don't have to always geek out on SEO to have a successful shop.. The better your SEO is in combination with sales ( conversions ) the more you'll rank.. but if you can find people to buy a product that is a newer listing and say get 10 sales in a day, week, or first month.. the higher visibility these platforms will push your product into the eyes of shoppers.. and shoppers that would have a history of maybe liking that type of product. 

I do sort of geek out on the data you share here.. I'm just not that guy that wants to do that work,  so thanks for sharing it.    

  

[BadBob]

I tried ads, and they didn't work for me. I advertised all my best sellers and some that have never sold using Etsy ads during the busy Christmas season, and it didn't work for either.

Today, 46% of my Goimagine sessions are from Google, so I figured, why not help them help me? It's free, and they imported most of the listings. The listings need a bit of tweaking since the import isn't perfect. Some fields (shipping weight) don't make it, and some of the photos need some help. Most of them take about 6 minutes to fix and I do them while listening to my daily news programs or waiting for something else to happen.

Social media works, but it takes much more time.

BTW Google is 23% of my Etsy views according to GA4.

 

[BadBob]

They do work.

The free listings' hits appear in GA4 as "Shopping Free Listings" in Traffic acquisition: Session source, Session Campaign.

Note you can't use this unless you own your domain and website. Mosaic qualifies.

[kmmcrafts]

48 minutes ago, BadBob said:

They do work.

The free listings' hits appear in GA4 as "Shopping Free Listings" in Traffic acquisition: Session source, Session Campaign.

Note you can't use this unless you own your domain and website. Mosaic qualifies.

Hmm, I might have to look into this in the future. Might have questions for you when / if I try this. It's been a real struggle to "work" online the last couple years because my son and wife work from home and we're of DSL that's not very good.. about the only option in my area other than starlink which I signed up for but it wasn't available in my area at the time. When it did come available I turned it down because my company I'm with ran new fiber optic lines and will be providing a much better service. According to them it was supposed to be ready to hook me up by late spring... and was only a few months from when starlink came available so I opted to wait.. However, still waiting, LOL..

If I try uploading photos while they are working it kicks them offline so I don't want to get them fired, LOL.. They've been working from home since the pandemic and it's been a real struggle to get anything done on any of the sites other than just fulfill orders. When they're out of work, I'm too tired to mess with it..  Wife works like 5 - 6am until sometimes 3-4pm and son doesn't get out until like 6pm when I'm ready to have dinner and chill for the night, lol. Back when the kids were in school and wife worked I had the internet all to myself and was able to get a lot done. I do use my phone internet do do some stuff but man what a pain in the back side to use the phone. Hopefully this fiber line will get going soon so I can get back to website duties.. I have boxes and boxes of new items to list, LOL.. meanwhile I just keep on doing what I can.

[BadBob]

The merchant center imports my listings from Mosaic. The only thing I have to do is fix the things that don't work. I've had many listings that the shipping info didn't import, and their image importing leaves much to be desired.

You could go ahead and set it up and just let the import do its thing.

 

[kmmcrafts]

I'm thinking this might be why my stats are way down since I moved my website from Shopify to GI Mosaic.. Something has been different since I moved to GI site.. I've always had decent views and sales from way back in the day when I was on Indiemade and then dropped them to do the Etsy Pattern for convenience and still had decent traffic.. I then moved to Shopify which was improvement from Pattern and now it's almost nonexistent for my Mosaic side of things.. I'm not getting much traffic to it. Those other sites mentioned do this stuff for you.. 

[BadBob]

Now that my Goimagine shop has accumulated enough data in Google Analytics, I was able to determine that more than 99% of my pageviews from Google came from Google Merchant Center free ads.