Due to the growing importance of Google Shopping campaigns in paid search results for brands and manufactures, getting product data correct and consistent is an increasingly urgent task. The product itself has been fairly sleep, but Google announced this week some new features and an expansion of Manufacturer Center.
Google Manufacturer Center, which was launched in 2015, was designed to be a central repository for the product data which powers Google Shopping campaigns. Google is now using this data in knowledge panels in the US, which includes product features, images and descriptions. Earlier last month, Google started to show a lot more content in knowledge panels on mobile, such as product features as shown below in the image:
Google Manufacturer Center is now available in more countries: Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK.
With the Manufacturer Center API launch, brands and third-party data partners are able to add, update and delete products without having to rely on manual feed uploads.
Not only is there streamlined data quality management, Manufacturer Center offers analytics about how individual products perform on Google within their broader categories. The analytics show overall impressions for the category,
the product’s share of category impressions, total clicks and how the click-through rate compares to the category benchmark click-through rate on a week-by-week basis over a four-week period.