Google Merchant Center with several brand domains

Can one Shopify store run a Google Merchant Center account per brand domain?

Yes, but not through Shopify’s Google & YouTube channel alone. The channel sends Merchant Center one feed for the store, with every product link on the primary domain. Merchant Center expects a feed’s product links to sit on the website that account has claimed, so each brand domain needs its own account and its own feed, with links on that brand’s domain.

You can see it in the feed itself. Every item’s link carries the same host, whichever brand the product belongs to:

<g:link>https://your-primary.example/products/linen-throw</g:link>
<g:link>https://your-primary.example/products/fern-print</g:link>
<g:link>https://your-primary.example/products/oak-frame</g:link>

That is the same shape of problem as the sitemap: every domain serves the same sitemap, and every page names the primary as canonical. The Google feed is the Shopping side of it.

What does Merchant Center require of each feed’s links?

The links have to be on the website the account has claimed, and each landing page has to show the price and availability the feed states, in the feed’s currency. A feed whose links point at a different storefront from the one the account claims either sends shoppers to the wrong brand or has its products disapproved.

• A claimed website per account. Each brand domain is claimed in the Merchant Center account that advertises it.
• Links on that website. Every product link in the feed sits on the claimed domain.
• A landing page that agrees. Price, sale price and availability on the product page match the feed, in the feed’s currency.

Do you need a separate feed for each country and language?

Not for each country. One data source can target several countries, so countries charged the same price in the same currency can share a file. A different language does want its own data source, and its landing pages have to be in that language.

The catch on a Shopify store with Markets is that the price a country pays is not always its own currency. A country without its currency enabled is charged the market’s base currency, sometimes with an uplift, and only the store’s own pricing says so. A feed has to follow what the landing page shows, not what the country’s currency would suggest. Our markets and languages page covers what Umbrella supports.

Should Shopify’s own feed stay on once each brand has its own?

Switch it off in any account that now receives a brand feed. Two feeds describing the same products in one account compete for the same offers and risk disapproval.

You can keep the Google & YouTube channel installed for anything else you use it for. What matters is that each Merchant Center account has one source for a given product.

How Umbrella builds a feed per brand

On the Scale and Portfolio plans, Umbrella builds a Merchant Center feed for each connected storefront, beside its sitemap:

• Only that brand’s products, the ones assigned to it in Umbrella. A product assigned to no brand is left out, not given to your primary, so no brand advertises another’s catalogue.
• Every link on that brand’s domain, with its images, its brand name and, where the product has a Shopify category, its Google category.
• One file per price group and language. Umbrella prices each market the way your store actually charges it, and countries paying the same price in the same currency share a file. Scale covers your home market in your primary language; Portfolio covers every market and language you sell in.
• Checked before it publishes. Sample prices are compared with the live product page, and a file whose product count suddenly collapses is held back rather than published.
• Rebuilt with your sitemaps, on the same schedule. You paste each feed’s URL into that brand’s Merchant Center account once, as a scheduled fetch, and Google collects it from there. Umbrella holds no Google credentials.

See which plan includes feeds, or send us your domains and we will tell you what your current feed says.