Connect Google Shopping

This is the complete guide to selling on Google Shopping — connecting Merchant Center, listing your whole catalog through Google’s product API, and reading Google’s approval status honestly. ILLUMA lists your products through the Merchant API (one product at a time, kept current automatically), not a static file feed — so a change in your catalog reaches Google without you touching a spreadsheet.

ℹ️ Before you start: you’ll need a Google Merchant Center account with admin access, your products in the catalog with clean SKUs, and — importantly — your Storefront URL set (see Settings). Google requires a working product link and a verified website to approve listings.

1. Connect Google Merchant Center

1. Open the channel — go to Channel Hub, select Google Shopping, and click Connect Account.
2. Authorize with Google — sign in and grant ILLUMA access to your Merchant Center content. Google returns you to the channel.
3. Wait for registration — right after connecting, ILLUMA registers itself on your Merchant Center account. This can take up to ~5 minutes to propagate on Google’s side.

✅ Once connected, the channel shows Connected and binds to your Merchant Center account ID. No products are sent until you list them.

⚠️ Seeing 403 errors in the first few minutes? That’s the registration still propagating. Give it ~5 minutes; it clears on its own.

2. List your products

Listing sends your products to Google through the Merchant API — each product is pushed individually and updated in place whenever it changes.

1. Open Listings — from the Google channel, open the Listings tab.
2. Click List All Products — this assigns your active catalog to the channel and publishes it to Google in one action. Confirm when prompted.
3. Watch it run — a job appears in the Activity tray and counts down as products publish.

For a subset, use List by Category or select products on the Not Assigned tab and list them. To re-push everything already on the channel, click Sync All. See Listing your catalog for every option.

What ILLUMA sends to Google for each product: title, description, price (and a strikethrough MSRP when your compare-at price is higher than the selling price), images, brand, product link, availability worked out the same way your storefront does (on-hand stock plus vendor-supplied stock, backorder and dropship settings), and identifiers like GTIN, MPN, color, and size where you’ve set them.

💡 Tip: If a product has no GTIN or barcode, ILLUMA automatically tells Google no identifier exists so the listing isn’t rejected for a missing one. Supplying real GTINs still improves reach.

3. Google’s review — what the statuses mean

Sending a product to Google is not the same as it being live. Google reviews everything, and ILLUMA reads that verdict back and shows it to you — it never marks a product live just because it was sent. See How listings work for the full model.

Badge	Google’s state	Meaning
Live	Approved	Serving in Shopping — it’s working
Under review	Pending	Accepted, Google is still vetting it
Rejected	Disapproved	A data or policy problem to fix
Removed	No longer held	Was live, dropped off Google (usually expired)
Not listed	Not on Google	Assigned but never published — run List All Products

ILLUMA re-checks Google roughly every hour and updates these badges and your Listed count. Because Google’s own review takes time (typically ~30 minutes after ingest, often much longer for a new account), a freshly listed product will sit at Under review for a while — that’s normal and expected.

💡 The Dashboard tab has a Product Approval Status card — Approved / Pending / Disapproved / With Issues — with a Refresh button and a list of products that have issues.

4. Keep your products listed

Products listed through the Merchant API expire ~30 days after they were last sent — this is Google’s behavior, not ILLUMA’s. To keep everything live, click Sync All periodically (weekly is plenty). It re-sends every product already on the channel, which resets Google’s 30-day clock.

✅ Re-running is safe. Google updates each product in place under the same product key, so a re-send can never create a duplicate listing. Every assigned product is sent again on each run, so there is no need to click it more than once a week.

5. Reconcile with Google

The Reconcile button (Google channel header) compares what you have locally against what Google actually holds, and reports:

• Missing from Google — listings you have that aren’t on Google (expired, never pushed, or rejected). A Sync {N} Missing Products button re-lists them.
• Extra on Google — products on Google that no longer map to anything local (orphans). ILLUMA lists them for you; removing them from Google is a support-assisted cleanup today, so ask us if the count is large.
• Archived locally — products you’ve archived locally that are still on the channel. Google keeps serving these until they expire (~30 days); automatic take-down on archive is not in place yet.

6. Import existing Google listings

If you already have products in Merchant Center, import and link them instead of re-creating them.

1. Click Import from Google on the Listings tab — the Google Import card runs a job that pulls your Merchant Center products.
2. Review the matches — ILLUMA auto-matches by GTIN, MPN, or title into Matched and Unmatched tabs.
3. Confirm — accept the matched ones; for Unmatched, use Match to pick the right catalog product or Dismiss to skip.

7. Settings

Open the Google channel’s Settings tab → Google Shopping Settings:

Setting	What it does
Storefront URL	The base of your product links. Required — without it, products have no link and Google disapproves them.
Target countries	Where your products may be shown. Google will not start reviewing products until the data source has at least one target country, so pick yours here (default US). ILLUMA applies the choice to your Merchant Center data source when you save.
Content Language	The listing language (default English).
Feed Label	A label for the product set (default US). Used as the fallback target country only when no target countries are selected.
Archive behavior	What happens on Google when you archive locally: Ask before removing, Remove automatically, or Don’t change channel listings.

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Likely cause	Fix
Everything is “Under review”, nothing “Approved”	Google is still reviewing your account and/or products — new Merchant Center accounts and feeds go through review before anything serves. This is on Google’s side, not an ILLUMA push failure (the products were sent successfully).	Check that Target countries is set in Settings, then check Merchant Center for account status / website verification and any Shopping ads policy review. Verify and claim your website, resolve account-level flags, then wait for Google to finish reviewing.
A product shows “Rejected”	Google disapproved it for a data or policy issue	Open Dashboard → Product Approval Status → Products with Issues, read the flagged attribute, fix it in the catalog, and re-list.
All products disapproved with a link/website issue	Storefront URL isn’t set, so products have no product link	Set Storefront URL in Settings → Google Shopping Settings, then re-list.
A product was Live, now shows “Removed”	It expired (~30 days) or Google dropped it	Click Sync All — the honest badge is telling you it’s no longer serving.
“Assigned but not listed” / Not listed	Assigned to the channel but never published	Run List All Products.
Listed count shows “—”	The hourly status check hasn’t confirmed yet	Wait for the next check; ILLUMA shows “—” rather than a number it can’t stand behind.
403 errors right after connecting	Merchant Center registration still propagating	Wait ~5 minutes; it clears automatically.
Channel shows “Expired”	Google authorization expired	Click Reconnect on the channel and re-authorize, then click Sync All so anything that dropped off while disconnected is re-sent.

Next: Syncing inventory, price & product data — what keeps a live listing accurate.