Google organized a webinar called “Transitioning to Merchant Center Next“, where the following information was shared:
- Google Merchant Center Next will be available to everyone before this year’s holiday season with most accounts transitioning during the summer, starting in July.
- A new dedicated tab, “Countries,” within the “Your business” section, serves as an overview, showing status and actions across all countries.
- “Add-ons” will be used for managing more complex and sophisticated features that were previously utilized by a fraction of users, such as Google Customer Reviews, Google Product Reviews, Local Inventory Ads, Loyalty programs, etc.
- Google confirmed that “Feed rules” will be renamed to “Attribute rules“, and existing rules will be transferred to GMC Next automatically. As a reminder, the official help page on “Attribute rules” was spotted in June.
- “Supplemental feeds” are renamed to “Supplemental sources” and will also be automatically transferred to GMC Next.
- Both “Attribute rules” and “Supplemental sources” should be available starting in July.
- The “Diagnostics” section is renamed to “Needs attention” and will contain a graph showing product status evolution, similar to what advertisers are accustomed to in the classic GMC.
- Ad campaign management in Merchant Center is live globally without needing to access Google Ads (this was spotted already earlier this month).
You can watch the recording here: