Update: May 2022
Google is now providing direct integration between a Business Profile and WooCommerce & Shopify sites.
https://onlineownership.com/connect-your-google-business-profile-via-woocommerce/
In order to display your businesses products via Google Shopping Products or Products: Search items at this store, featured in your knowledge panel or Google Business Page, a business needs to complete five steps via Google local ads inventory.
- Register your Interest
- Configure your Accounts ( Google My Business, Adwords )
- Create, Register and Submit Feeds ( Merchant Center )
- Complete Inventory Verification
- Enable Local in your Shopping Campaign ( Adwords )
Register your Interest
Google local ads inventory is currently only supported in the following countries: US, UK, France, Germany, Japan and Australia.
Configure your Accounts
Products displayed in the Google Business Page are extracted via a shopping feed from your website via your Google merchant center, managed through Adwords.
Google Business Page
This means that your Google Business Page needs to be verified. If you have multiple locations, 10 or more then use the bulk management upload, these again will need to be verified firstly.
Pro Tip: Use the same Google account for all, this will save you the hassle of adding permissions across multiple accounts.
You will need to add a unique identifier or Shop Code either in your bulk management upload or via your Google My Business Dashboard
Google Merchant Center
Google Merchant Center is a tool that helps you to upload your shop and product data to Google and make it available to Google Shopping.
Your product information lives in Merchant Center. Follow these steps to set up your account:
- Create a Merchant Center account to house your local products and local product inventory feeds, if you don’t already have one.
- Set up your Merchant Center account and verify that your website meets all requirements.
With some e-commerce platforms, you can link your Merchant Center account to your e-commerce platform store account and automatically import your product data for use in Google Shopping. Updated information from your store will continuously update in Google Merchant Center without any additional work. Check whether your e-commerce site allows this, if not your developer will need to create and register a Data Feed via the Google shopping API.
Create Adwords Account
If you do not have an Adwords account, you will need to create one and link it to your Merchant Center, hopefully you used my pro tip about using 1 account.
- Create an AdWords account, if you don’t already have one.
- Link your AdWords account to Merchant Center to run Shopping campaigns.
Send your Logo
Send the local ads inventory team your Logo which will be used in the Shopping page when users click on the Products: Search items at this store link in your Google business page.
Send 2 vector images in .ai, .svg or .eps format. One image should fit within a square field and the other should fit within a 2:1 rectangular field. Both images must contain your business name.
Create, Register and Submit Feeds
Here you will need to:
- Create a local products feed
- Create a local product inventory feed
- Register and submit local feeds.
Create Local Product Feed
This page details the recommended way to create a local products feed for local inventory ads. For complete details on the feed itself, see the local products feed specification.
The local products feed is a list of all of the products that you sell in your shops with attributes that describe the products. Some attributes are required for all items, some are required for certain types of items and others are just recommended.
Create a Local Product Inventory Feed
The local products inventory feed is a list of the products you sell in each store. Some attributes are required for all items, some are required for certain types of items, and others are recommended.
Register and Submit Local Feeds
You must register a feed the first time that you submit it to Merchant Center. This action creates a place in the account where Merchant Center knows to place the file. You only need to complete this registration process once per feed. Follow the steps to register your feed.
After you’ve registered your feed, you can upload your data to Merchant Center. We recommend creating a schedule for your upload so that your data is sent to Merchant Center automatically. Learn more about available upload methods.
Complete Inventory Verification
The Google inventory verification process helps ensure that your online product information matches what’s available in your shop.
- Confirm shop locations. Google will send a team into agreed shops to check the actual in-store inventory against the data provided in your feeds.
- Provide a time window. Your Google team works with you to schedule visits within a preferred time window. Make sure that you provide complete contact information for each shop manager.
- Loop in local shop managers. Communicating the inventory verification checks with the shop managers helps both the Google team and your shop teams.
Enable Local in your Shopping Campaign
Log into your AdWords account:
- Navigate to the Settings tab and click the name of the Shopping campaign that you want to use for local inventory ads. Create a Shopping campaign, if you don’t already have one.
- Navigate to Settings > Shopping settings (advanced), tick the Enable local inventory ads box and click Save.
See the official Google local ad inventory implementation