The symptom
- No Merchant Center account, or one with zero approved products.
- No feed plugin (Google for WooCommerce, Product Feed PRO, CTX Feed, WooCommerce Product Feed) installed.
- Products appear in normal Google results but never in the Shopping tab or AI Mode product carousels.
Why it matters
Shopping surfaces do not crawl for products; they read a structured feed with id, title, description, link, image, price, availability, GTIN, brand, shipping. Google AI Mode and AI Overviews shopping results come from Merchant Center; Copilot from Microsoft Merchant Center; ChatGPT Shopping from an OpenAI product feed once the merchant programme opens in your country.
Free listings in Google Shopping cost nothing — a feed is pure upside.
How to check it yourself
- Do you have access to Merchant Center? Is a feed listed under Products → Feeds with recent fetch time?
- Look for feed plugin scripts in page source or a feed URL such as
/wp-content/uploads/woo-feed/....
How to fix it
- Install Google for WooCommerce (official; syncs via API) or a feed plugin if you need custom rules. Connect Merchant Center, verify the site, set shipping and returns policies.
- Map fields:
id= SKU,gtin,brand,condition,google_product_category,priceincl. VAT,availability,shipping. Fix disapprovals until the approval rate is 95%+. - Export the same feed for Microsoft Merchant Center (Copilot/Bing) — it accepts Google’s format.
- Prepare the OpenAI product feed (JSON/CSV spec published by OpenAI) so you can enrol the day the merchant programme opens in your country; feed plugins added this format in 2026.
- Schedule refresh at least daily; stale prices get products disapproved.