Google Merchant Center API

Manage your account with the Google Merchant API. This tool improves efficiency for complex product data management, powering your Shopping ads. This article explains the benefits, applications, and setup instructions for the Google Merchant API.

Introducing Merchant API (Content API Successor)

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On this page

What is Merchant API?
- How you can use Merchant API
- Benefits
Get started with Merchant API
- Before you begin
- Authentication with Merchant API
Debug API errors with API diagnostics
Frequently asked questions

What is Merchant API?

The Merchant API allows you to interact directly with your Merchant Center account and follows a new design philosophy that fosters faster innovation at the speed of change. It is the redesign and official successor to the Content API for Shopping, replacing it as the primary way to programmatically manage complex setups at scale.

Merchant API vastly increases the efficiency of managing large or complex accounts by enabling programmatic access for automated account, product, and inventory management, as well as performance reporting. This powers your organic and Shopping ads experiences on Google, serving as a complementary interface to the Merchant Center platform.

Merchant API: New Features & AI Tools [2026 Guide]

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How you can use Merchant API

Merchant API allows you to programmatically manage and control how your business and products appear on Google. Its newly designed interface allows you to access data, insights, and unique capabilities at scale and at ease. It lets you create and manage multiple data sources, enabling better organization of information about products, promotions, and reviews. With Merchant API, you can manage products in a way that complements other product data upload methods such as files and autofeed. Merchant API also lets you run multiple individual requests in parallel.

Use the Merchant API to:

Programmatically access data, insights, and capabilities for shopping experiences on and off Google.
Enhance organic and ads experiences with advanced setup, reporting, insights, and notifications.
Innovate at the speed of change by leveraging the API's modular structure.

The API can be accessed using gRPC or REST. To help you get started, the Merchant API interface is supported by all popular programming languages, including Java, PHP, Python, Node.js, .NET, and Apps Script.

Benefits

Leverage latest technology: Benefit from a faster, more efficient API to ensure your setup is ready for the next wave of innovation.
Upgrade more efficiently: The new modular design allows you to implement changes and roll out new features with greater speed and less effort.
Streamline data management: Effortlessly control multi-source feeds, regional availability, and store-specific inventory from a single, streamlined interface.
Unlock exclusive, API-only features: Gain access to powerful tools, such as Google Product Studio for AI-powered imagery and direct account notifications.

Get started with Merchant API

How to Migrate to Merchant API

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Before you begin

To run a Merchant API request, you must have the following:

A Merchant Center account: This is the account you will be querying, updating, and uploading data to. Make sure that you have the necessary permissions to manage products and inventories on this account.
A Google Cloud project: The project is used for getting API access to your account.
Register at least one user with the API developer role: Link your Merchant Center account to the Google Cloud project by completing a one-time Developer registration. The API developer users of the linked account will receive API communication, including mandatory service announcements, developer surveys, and opportunities.

Authentication with Merchant API

Use the Google APIs Explorer to run Merchant API requests. APIs Explorer uses Google OAuth 2.0 for authentication. Before running the requests, make sure that the Google OAuth 2.0 checkbox is ticked.

To authenticate using OAuth 2.0, you need to sign in to your Google Account, and then sign in to APIs Explorer. You also need to allow APIs Explorer to manage your product listings and accounts.

Learn more about getting started with Merchant API.

Debug API errors with API diagnostics

Errors with your API requests can prevent your store from managing your presence on Google and from reaching online customers. To diagnose and fix errors with your API requests, access the “API diagnostics” tab, which allows you to:

View all the successful and failed API requests for a selected time period
Determine the number of successful and failed requests per API version, service, and method
Review examples of failed requests

Note: You can use the API without the API diagnostics tool in Merchant Center. Ensure the API diagnostics add-on is activated if you want to get insights on API errors in Merchant Center. Learn more about activating add-ons in Merchant Center.

Find API diagnostics

Errors from your API requests may prevent your products from showing on Google. Follow the directions below to review the errors:

In your Merchant Center account, navigate to Settings in the left navigation menu.
Select API diagnostics.

On the “API diagnostics” page, you can monitor, diagnose, and fix errors with your API requests. You can also determine which methods cause critical errors across API versions.

Review API requests

There are 2 main parts of the "API diagnostics" page:

Your API calls: A timeline graph that shows the number of successful and failed API requests for a specific time period.
API calls performance: A table that shows the total API requests and the number of failed API requests.

Note: The timestamps on the graph are based on the time zone specified in your account settings.

To review API requests:

In your Merchant Center account, select Settings in the left navigation menu.
Select API diagnostics.
Use the "Time period" filter to specify the time period.
Use the filter bar on top of the page to specify the API service request and method (for example, products with the "Insert" method) that you want to review. Both the table and the timeline update to show the specific API service request and method.

View failed API requests

When the table displays the results for your selected data range, you can browse through the listed services and methods to quickly determine the causes of the failed API requests. By default, the errors are listed by service name, but you can change the sort order by selecting a column header.

To view the failed requests:

In your Merchant Center account, select Settings in the left navigation menu.
Select API diagnostics.
Go to the “API calls performance” table, and select the items under the “Failed calls” column to view more details of your failed API requests.
Use the details under the “All errors for products / insert” section that appears as a guideline to fix failed API requests.

Frequently asked questions

Is Merchant API the same as Content API for Shopping?

The Merchant API is a redesign of the Content API for Shopping, which is now deprecated. It offers enhanced features for automated account and product data management.

What is Content API for Shopping?

The Content API for Shopping is a legacy Google tool that lets developers manage product data programmatically. It has been redesigned and succeeded by the Merchant API. To use the latest features for automated account management, you should migrate to the new Merchant API.

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