Google Merchant Center is where your product feed lives, but most advertisers treat it as a simple upload destination. They miss the analytics goldmine hiding inside: feed health diagnostics, price competitiveness data, and product-level insights that can transform Shopping campaign performance.
This guide covers everything Merchant Center offers for analytics, where it falls short, and how to combine it with Google Ads data for complete product performance visibility. Whether you're troubleshooting disapprovals or optimizing pricing strategy, you'll learn to extract maximum value from your Merchant Center data.
What Analytics Does Google Merchant Center Actually Provide?
Before diving into how to use Merchant Center analytics, let's clarify what's actually available. Google Merchant Center provides four main categories of insights:
| Report Type | What It Shows | Where to Find It |
|---|---|---|
| Product Diagnostics | Feed health, approval status, issues | Products > Diagnostics |
| Price Competitiveness | Your prices vs. competitor benchmarks | Growth > Price competitiveness |
| Best Sellers | Top products in your category | Growth > Best sellers |
| Click Potential | Estimated impact of feed improvements | Growth > Click potential |
Important Limitation
Merchant Center does NOT show performance metrics like clicks, conversions, revenue, or ROAS. That data lives exclusively in Google Ads—whether you're using standard Shopping campaigns or Performance Max. For complete product analytics, you need both platforms.
Feed Health Analytics: The Foundation of Shopping Success
Your product feed's health directly impacts Shopping campaign performance. Disapproved products can't show ads—if your products aren't getting impressions, feed issues are often the culprit. Products with warnings may have limited visibility. The Diagnostics section is your command center for feed quality.
Understanding Product Status Categories
Every product in your feed falls into one of these categories:
- Approved: Product is eligible to show in Shopping results. This is your goal state.
- Approved with warnings: Product can show but has issues that may limit performance or lead to future disapproval.
- Pending: Product is being reviewed. New products typically take 24-72 hours.
- Disapproved: Product cannot show in Shopping results due to policy violations or data quality issues.
According to Google's Merchant Center documentation, even small feed quality issues can reduce impression share. Aim for 95%+ approval rate for optimal performance.
Common Feed Issues and How to Fix Them
The Diagnostics dashboard groups issues by severity and type. For a complete guide to resolving these issues, see our article on fixing common feed errors. Here are the most common problems:
| Issue | Impact | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Missing GTIN | Limited visibility, lower quality score | Add valid GTIN/UPC/EAN from manufacturer |
| Price mismatch | Disapproval or suspension | Sync feed prices with landing page |
| Availability mismatch | Disapproval | Update feed when stock changes |
| Missing required attributes | Disapproval | Add brand, condition, or category-specific attributes |
| Image quality issues | Reduced CTR, potential disapproval | Use high-res images, no watermarks or promotional overlays |
| Policy violations | Disapproval or account suspension | Review Google's Shopping policies for your category |
Pro Tip
Set up email alerts in Merchant Center settings for critical issues. A disapproval spike on a Friday night can cost a weekend of revenue before you notice on Monday.
Key Feed Health Metrics to Track
Beyond individual issues, track these aggregate metrics over time:
- Approval Rate: (Approved Products / Total Products) x 100. Track weekly.
- Issue Trend: Are issues increasing or decreasing? A rising trend indicates systematic feed problems.
- Time to Resolution: How quickly do you fix disapprovals? Faster resolution means less lost revenue.
- Products Pending: High pending counts may indicate crawl or processing issues.
Price Competitiveness Analytics: Your Competitive Intelligence
The Price Competitiveness report is one of Merchant Center's most valuable but underutilized features. It shows how your prices compare to other retailers selling the same or similar products.
Understanding Price Competitiveness Data
For each product, Merchant Center provides:
- Your Price: The price in your product feed
- Benchmark Price: The aggregated price from competitors selling the same product (based on GTIN matching) or similar products
- Price Difference: The percentage gap between your price and benchmark
- Competitiveness Status: High, Low, or Average relative to market
This data updates regularly as Google crawls competitor sites, giving you near real-time market intelligence without manual price monitoring.
How Pricing Affects Shopping Performance
Price competitiveness directly impacts Shopping ad performance. Products priced significantly above competitors typically see:
- Lower click-through rates (shoppers compare prices before clicking)
- Lower conversion rates (even if they click, they may buy elsewhere)
- Reduced impression share (Google's algorithm factors price into ad ranking)
| Price Position | Typical Impact | Recommended Action |
|---|---|---|
| >15% above benchmark | Significantly lower CTR and conversions | Lower price or reduce ad spend on this product |
| 5-15% above benchmark | Moderately reduced performance | Monitor closely; consider price adjustment |
| Within 5% of benchmark | Competitive position | Maintain; focus on other optimizations |
| 5-15% below benchmark | Potential margin opportunity | Consider price increase to improve margin |
| >15% below benchmark | Strong conversion potential, thin margins | Raise price unless loss-leader strategy |
How to Use Price Competitiveness Data
Price competitiveness alone doesn't tell you which products to reprice. You need to combine it with performance data:
- High-revenue products priced above benchmark: Priority for price reduction—you're leaving money on the table.
- High-converting products priced below benchmark: Candidates for price increase—demand is proven.
- Low-performing products priced competitively: Price isn't the problem—investigate other factors.
- Products with no benchmark: Unique items where you have pricing power.
Key Insight
Price competitiveness data in Merchant Center doesn't include your conversion performance. Tools like SKU Analyzer combine price competitiveness with actual ROAS and conversion data, letting you see which overpriced products are still converting (keep the price) versus which are underperforming (adjust the price).
Best Sellers and Market Insights
The Best Sellers report shows top-performing products in your Google Product Category, both from your own catalog and across all advertisers. This provides market intelligence for inventory and pricing decisions.
Analyzing Your Best Sellers
Your best sellers section ranks your products by relative demand. Use this to:
- Identify inventory priorities: Ensure top sellers stay in stock
- Guide ad spend: Allocate budget toward proven winners
- Spot trends: Watch for rising products before they peak
- Detect seasonality: Compare rankings across time periods
Using Market Best Sellers
The market-wide best sellers show what's trending across all advertisers in your category. This is valuable for:
- Gap analysis: Top market products you don't carry
- Competitive research: What your competitors are selling successfully
- New product ideas: Expanding your catalog based on market demand
- Pricing research: How top sellers are priced in the market
Note
Best Sellers data is based on Shopping ad performance, not overall market sales. A product might be a "best seller" in Google Shopping but not the top seller in its category overall.
Click Potential: Estimating the Value of Feed Improvements
The Click Potential feature estimates how many additional clicks you could receive by fixing feed issues. While the numbers are estimates, they help prioritize which improvements to tackle first.
How to Interpret Click Potential
Click Potential shows:
- Current clicks: Your baseline performance
- Potential clicks: Estimated clicks if all issues are resolved
- Click opportunity: The difference (what you're leaving on the table)
- Issues to fix: Specific improvements ranked by estimated impact
Common high-impact improvements include:
- Adding missing GTINs to products
- Improving product titles with relevant keywords
- Adding high-quality additional images
- Fixing price and availability mismatches
- Adding missing product attributes (color, size, material) - consult the product data specification for the full list of attributes
Combining Merchant Center with Google Ads Data
Merchant Center analytics tell you about your products and competitive position. Google Ads tells you about performance. The magic happens when you combine both.
The Data Gap Problem
Out of the box, getting a unified view requires:
- Exporting product data from Merchant Center
- Exporting performance data from Google Ads
- Matching products by ID (which doesn't always align perfectly)
- Manual spreadsheet analysis
- Repeating this process regularly
This fragmented approach means most advertisers either:
- Ignore Merchant Center insights entirely
- Make decisions based on incomplete data
- Spend hours on manual data combination
The Case for Unified Analytics
Unified product analytics combines:
| From Merchant Center | From Google Ads | Insight Enabled |
|---|---|---|
| Product attributes (brand, category, labels) | Performance metrics (cost, clicks, conversions) | Segment performance by any product attribute |
| Price competitiveness | ROAS and conversion rate | Find overpriced products that still convert (or don't) |
| Custom labels (0-4) | Revenue and cost data | Analyze performance by your business segments |
| Product availability | Impression share | Correlate stock levels with visibility |
Tools like SKU Analyzer connect to both Google Ads and Merchant Center APIs to provide this unified view automatically. You can filter performance by brand, analyze price competitiveness alongside ROAS, and segment by custom labels—all without spreadsheet exports.
Building a Merchant Center Analytics Workflow
Consistent analytics habits turn data into results. Here's a recommended workflow:
Daily Checks (5 minutes)
- Check for critical disapprovals (account-level issues)
- Monitor products pending review (new product launches)
- Note any significant changes in approved product count
Weekly Review (30 minutes)
- Review Diagnostics dashboard for new issues
- Check approval rate trend
- Address products with warnings before they become disapprovals
- Review price competitiveness for top-revenue products
Monthly Analysis (1-2 hours)
- Deep dive into price competitiveness across catalog
- Review Best Sellers for market trends
- Analyze Click Potential and prioritize feed improvements
- Compare Merchant Center data with Google Ads performance
- Identify products to add, remove, or reprice
Automation Tip
Set up automatic email alerts in Merchant Center for critical issues. Use the Merchant Center API or a tool with automated syncing to reduce manual data gathering.
Advanced Merchant Center Analytics Features
Custom Labels for Advanced Segmentation
Custom labels (0-4) let you add your own classification system to products. While Merchant Center doesn't analyze by custom labels, this data flows through to Google Ads and analytics tools.
Common custom label strategies:
- Margin tiers: High-margin, medium-margin, low-margin - useful for pricing strategy decisions
- Seasonality: Summer, winter, evergreen
- Performance: Best-sellers, new-arrivals, clearance
- Promotion status: On-sale, full-price, BOGO
- Inventory status: In-stock, low-stock, pre-order
Feed Rules for Data Transformation
Merchant Center's Feed Rules let you transform data without changing your source feed. As DataFeedWatch and other feed management experts recommend, use them for:
- Standardizing brand names
- Appending keywords to titles
- Setting custom labels based on conditions
- Fixing common data issues automatically
Supplemental Feeds for Enhanced Data
Supplemental feeds add data to your primary feed without replacing it. Use cases include:
- Adding custom labels from business systems
- Overriding titles or descriptions for specific products
- Adding promotion IDs for sale products
- Including COGS data for profit calculation
Frequently Asked Questions
What analytics are available in Google Merchant Center?
Google Merchant Center provides several analytics reports: Product status reports showing approval rates and disapprovals, Price Competitiveness reports comparing your prices to competitors, Best Sellers reports showing top products in your category, and Click potential metrics showing estimated additional clicks from feed improvements. However, Merchant Center doesn't show performance metrics like conversions or ROAS—that data lives in Google Ads.
How do I check my product feed health in Merchant Center?
Navigate to Products > Diagnostics in Merchant Center to see your feed health. This shows total products submitted, approved products, products with issues, and disapproved products. Click into each category to see specific issues like missing GTIN, incorrect pricing, or policy violations. Aim for 95%+ approval rate for optimal Shopping campaign performance.
What is the Price Competitiveness report in Merchant Center?
The Price Competitiveness report shows how your product prices compare to competitors selling the same or similar products. It includes benchmark prices (competitor averages), price gap percentages, and competitiveness status. Products priced significantly above benchmark typically see lower click-through rates and conversions in Shopping campaigns.
Can I see conversion data in Google Merchant Center?
No, Google Merchant Center doesn't show conversion or revenue data. It only contains product feed information and competitive insights. To see how products perform in terms of clicks, conversions, ROAS, and revenue, you need to access Google Ads or use an analytics tool that combines data from both platforms.
How often should I review Merchant Center analytics?
Review feed diagnostics weekly to catch disapprovals quickly. Check price competitiveness bi-weekly or after price changes. Monitor the Best Sellers report monthly to identify trending products in your category. For active Shopping campaigns, daily checks of critical disapprovals help prevent lost impressions.
Conclusion
Google Merchant Center analytics offer valuable insights that most advertisers overlook. Feed health diagnostics help you maximize product visibility. Price competitiveness data reveals your market position. Best Sellers and Click Potential guide improvement priorities.
But Merchant Center alone only tells half the story. The real power comes from combining it with Google Ads performance data. When you can see that your overpriced products have 50% lower conversion rates, or that your highest-margin items have terrible impression share, you can make decisions that actually move the needle.
Start by mastering the basics: maintain 95%+ feed approval, monitor price competitiveness for top products, and establish a regular review cadence. Then work toward unified analytics that connect product attributes with performance outcomes. For a deeper look at the metrics that matter, see our Shopping ads metrics glossary.
Your product feed is your Shopping campaign's foundation. The better you understand it, the more effectively you can optimize for profitability.