Yesterday, Google announced the launch of the new Google Merchant Center. The Google Merchant Center will replace Google Base for those who submit products through Google Base.
Confused? Google Base is sticking around, but Google has added a new Google Merchant Center, which is focused around merchants who submit product data to Google. Before the other day, all products submitted to Google, to be displayed in Google Product Search, was submitted (mostly) through Google Base. Now, Google wants you to submit that data though the new Google Merchant Center.
So what is Google Base for? Well, anything else that you want to submit data to Google. Other data includes upload real estate, jobs and vehicles. Yes, you can pretty much submit whatever you want and Google will figure out how to deal with it.
Google tried to make the migration from Google Base to Google Merchant Center as smooth as possible. Google said:
For the vast majority of users, existing settings, data feeds or items will not be affected. You will find everything in your account as you expect it to be.However, a small percentage of users who have been uploading to Google Base both Product listings and other item types will need to sign in to Google Base and create new FTP settings. Otherwise, they will not be able to upload any non-Product feeds via FTP. Their existing FTP settings will work normally for Product feeds, and can be accessed in Google Merchant Center. We apologize for this unavoidable inconvenience. These users have been already notified directly by email. You can find instructions on how to change your FTP settings in Google Base here.
For more details about this change see the FAQs.
If you are confused by the title, just look back at the history of this product. It all started out as Froogle, yes Google named their product search feature Froogle. Then it was changed to Google Shopping and then to Google Products and then Google flipped back between Shopping and Products. Then Google Base came out, but the consumer side remained Google Shopping. And now we have yet another tool to manage, Google Merchant Center. Got all of that? I may have missed some.
Forum discussion at Google Merchant Center Help (formerly Google Base Help) and WebmasterWorld.
