The Forgotten SEO Tactic: How to Audit Your Google Merchant Center Feeds

Most ecommerce marketers think about product feeds only in the context of paid ads. Google Merchant Center is a PPC tool, right? Not exactly.

What’s often overlooked is how your feed drives organic visibility in Google’s product grids and free listings. If your feed is broken, incomplete, or uncompetitive, your products won’t stand a chance against competitors, even if your site’s SEO is strong.

In this article, we’ll walk through a framework for auditing your product feed. It’s a mix of strategy and practicality, focused on what really matters if you want your products to be eligible, visible, and competitive in today’s search results.

Setting the Stage: Product Grids Are Now Front and Center in SERPs

Ecommerce SEO has changed, and quietly too. Product grids are now among the most visible organic features on Google’s results pages.

According to Brodie Clark’s 2025 research, organic product grids appear in a majority of ecommerce searches:

• Popular Products grids appear in 81% of ecommerce queries, most often at position 1.
• More Products grids show up in 65% of results, typically near the bottom of page one.
• Fast Pickup or Delivery and In Stores Nearby grids appear in roughly 15–25% of searches, rewarding retailers with strong local or logistics data.
  

In other words, product grids now dominate where users look and click. And what powers all of these free listings? Your Google Merchant Center feed.

Yet, while search teams obsess over meta titles, Core Web Vitals, and backlinks, the feed often gets delegated to IT or PPC. That’s a critical miss. Merchant Center feeds are now a primary source of truth for ecommerce visibility, both paid and organic.

If you’re not auditing your feed, you’re leaving organic performance on autopilot. And autopilot is a dangerous place to be in a competitive ecommerce landscape.

A Framework for Feed Auditing

At Uproer, we like to think about product feeds through three lenses: eligibility, optimization, and competitive edge. Miss one, and your products risk disappearing from the places that matter most.

1. Eligibility & Feed Health (The Must Fix Issues)

Before you worry about optimization, make sure your products can even show up. Common eligibility blockers include:

• Account suspensions or policy violations (shipping, returns, tax inaccuracies)
• Mismatched branding (store name and domain not aligned with your live site)
• Incomplete or unclear shipping and return policies
  

Common mistake: Relying on boilerplate or half-complete policy text. Google wants accurate, transparent details, and vague copy raises red flags.

Think of this as clearing the runway. Without it, nothing else you do will matter.

2. Competitive Edge Factors (The Tie Breakers)

Once eligibility is handled, competition takes over. Google favors products that create the best overall shopping experience, even for organic grids. That means:

• Top Quality Store badge: Your ticket to visibility and trust
• Competitive pricing: If you’re consistently higher, expect to lose grid placement
• Shipping speed: Faster options are favored across paid and organic listings
• Returns: Transparent, flexible policies boost credibility and visibility
• Reviews: More reviews equal more authority in Google’s eyes

Pro Tip: Audit your top competitors’ grids. If they’re consistently showing up ahead of you, look at how they perform on reviews, returns, and delivery times.

3. Core Attributes (The Non Negotiables)

Google uses required product attributes to match your items to user queries. Skip these, and your visibility tanks. At minimum, ensure these are clean and complete:

• id – unique and stable for each product or variant
• title – keyword rich (under 150 characters), starting with brand and product type
• description – detailed and unique, not copied from your product page meta description or title. You have up to 5,000 characters for the description attribute. 
• link – canonical URL with correct variant parameters
• image link – high resolution, no overlays or watermarks - we generally recommend between 5-8 images per product
• availability – in stock, out of stock, or preorder
• price and currency – must exactly match your site
• brand – precise manufacturer name
• gtin / mpn – essential for Popular Product grid eligibility
  

Common mistake: Missing GTINs. Google prioritizes products with GTINs for exact match visibility. Skipping them means you’re invisible in key grid placements.

4. Optional Attributes (The High Impact Extras)

Optional attributes separate the winners from everyone else. They expand query matching, improve filter eligibility in Shopping results, and directly influence whether your products appear in specialized product grids.

But “optional” is a bit of a misnomer. In some categories, these attributes are effectively required if you want full visibility.

For example, in Apparel & Accessories (Product Category ID 166), attributes like color, gender, and age group are considered required for eligibility. If they’re missing, your products may not appear at all in free listings or product grids, even if everything else in your feed looks healthy.

Here’s why this matters: Google’s Shopping algorithms use these attributes to match user intent and power product filters. When a shopper refines a query like “women’s blue running shoes,” Google depends on the gender and color fields — not just the title — to understand and rank the right products. Missing or inconsistent data in these fields breaks that connection.

Pro Tip: Treat category-specific attributes as mandatory. If an attribute exists on your product page, feed it to Google. These fields improve discoverability, eligibility, and conversion by ensuring your listings align perfectly with how users search and filter

5. Structured Data & Variant Schema

Google cross references your Merchant Center feed with your on-page structured data. If they don’t match, your products may disappear from grids even if your feed looks perfect.

At minimum, your Product schema should include:

• name, image, sku, brand, gtin/mpn
• offers, aggregateRating (if available)
  hasVariant and variesBy schema for products with variants
  

Pro Tip: If you sell products in multiple sizes or colors but don’t have proper variant schema, Google may treat them as one product. That kills your eligibility for exact match placements in product grids.

6. Quick Wins (High ROI Fixes First)

If your feed is in rough shape, start here:

• Fix GTINs and variant schema to unlock eligibility
• Add optional attributes (color, size, material) to rank for more queries
• Match competitor title patterns to improve grid inclusion
• Focus on earning the Top Quality Score badge by focusing on your shipping times, return policies, pricing, and fast user experiences. 

Pro Tip: Audit Popular Product grids for your top keywords. See how your competitors structure their titles, then mirror that logic while staying authentic to your brand.

Bonus Tip: Optimize for Google’s “Features” Filter

Google is increasingly surfacing filter-based product grids in organic search — often highlighting “Features” like non stick, BPA free, or water resistant directly on page one. These filters now appear across many industries:

• Cookware: “Non stick,” “dishwasher safe”
• Electronics: “Water resistant,” “Bluetooth enabled”
• Home goods: “Hypoallergenic,” “machine washable”
• Beauty: “Fragrance free,” “cruelty free”
  

Products that clearly communicate these attributes in their feed are more likely to appear in these filtered grids.

Google relies on the product_detail attribute to understand these product features. This field lets you specify structured details that don’t fit into standard attributes (for example, Feature: Non stick: Yes).

How to take advantage:

• Add a supplemental feed for product_detail attributes.
• Use columns for section_name, attribute_name, and attribute_value.
• Example:
  
  • section_name: Features
  • attribute_name: Non stick
    attribute_value: Yes

Adding structured feature data helps Google confidently match your products to high-intent, filtered searches — improving eligibility in Popular Products, More Products, and other organic product grids.

Pro Tip: Treat product_detail as an advanced SEO lever. The clearer your structured features, the more often Google will surface your products for precise shopping filters.

Implications for Ecommerce Marketers

Here’s the reality: if you’re ignoring your feed, you’re ignoring one of the biggest organic visibility levers in search today.

Brodie Clark’s research shows that 81% of ecommerce queries now include a Popular Products grid, often at the very top of the page. These are not fringe placements; they’re prime organic real estate.

Marketers often say they don’t have time for feed audits, but every weakness in your feed translates directly into lost clicks and revenue.

It’s time to reframe your product feed as more than a technical upload. It’s a living SEO asset that deserves the same attention as your metadata, site architecture, and content strategy.

At Uproer, we've leveraged GMC optimizations to drive triple-digit click growth for our ecommerce clients. Check out our GMC case study.

Conclusion: Don’t Let Your Feed Hold You Back

Google Merchant Center isn’t just a PPC tool. It’s the foundation of your organic shopping visibility.

Audit your feed through the lenses of eligibility, optimization, and competitive edge. Fix the common mistakes. Give Google clean, complete data to work with. Because if you don’t, your competitors will.

Ready to improve your organic product visibility? Let's talk.