Automatic Improvements Function In Google Merchant Center

Introduction

Google Merchant Center is a tool that helps retailers and brands manage their product data on Google. It’s also a source of earnings for us as well. We aim to help you improve your feed and products with automatic recommendations that are based on your current product data (also known as “feed optimization”). You can access “Automatic Improvements” settings from your GMC account by clicking on settings and choosing Automatic Improvements from the drop down menu. Automatic Improvements gives you options to automatically update: condition, price, availability, and images.

Condition automatic improvements

Condition improvements are based on the product price and condition. The Condition improvements help you to ensure that your product data is accurate, but sometimes it can be inaccurate because of a lack of information. These function is super helpful when your data feed does not contain the condition of the products and you do not want to go in manually and update each product condition yourself. If the product condition in your data feed and your landing page do not match, your products will get flagged and eventually can lead to account suspension.

Price automatic improvements

If you’ve set the price of a product to be dynamic or if your product prices change frequently, you can use Automatic Improvements function to ensure your prices match those in your feed.

• Google will inspect your product page and update the price in your feed automatically if they differ.
• It helps ensure you are compliant with Google’s policies and will prevent your account from getting suspended or flagged.
• Helps show your customers true updated price, which may lead to better conversion results and overall better experience for your customers.
• The screenshot below is an example of a message that Google produces within diagnostics section to let you know prices have been updated:

Availability automatic improvements

Availability automatic improvements are available for products that are listed as Out of Stock. They advise you to list the product as In Stock, and make it available to be sold on Google Shopping.

If you opt-in to make these changes automatically, they will be made within 24 hours of the next day that your product goes out of stock (e.g., if a product’s availability status changes from In Stock to Out Of Stock on a Thursday evening at 8pm PST, then any Availability Automatic Improvements will occur Friday night at 8pm PST).

Automatic Image Improvements

This feature is available in Google Merchant Center, but not in Google Ads or Google Shopping. Images are automatically improved by Google to ensure your images meet Google’s standards. They will even remove promotional text from your images, but not always. If the image is not eligible for improvements, Google will flag your product and you will need to manually change or improve the quality to be eligible to show for Free Listings or any other programs available in GMC.

Conclusion

We hope this article helped you understand more about automatic improvements and how they can help your products be more discoverable on Google Shopping. There are many factors that go into improving your feed, so we recommend talking to an expert who can help you optimize it for best results.