On September 1st, Google started shutting down the old API that feeds product data into Google Shopping. If your online store uses an app, plugin or developer to automatically send product listings to Google Merchant Center, and they haven’t updated their system yet, your products have started dropping out of Shopping results and Performance Max campaigns. Quietly. No warning email to you.
Google retired the Content API for Shopping on August 18, and from September 1, requests to the old system started failing. If product data is still being sent through the old interface, listings can quietly drop out of Google Shopping and Performance Max campaigns.
This affects trades suppliers, hospitality wholesalers, retail shops and anyone selling physical products through a Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce or custom system that connects to Google Merchant Center through an app or feed tool.
Check if you’re affected
If you run Shopping ads or Performance Max, open your Google Merchant Center account and look at your product count over the last week. If it’s dropped, or if you’re seeing new errors about products being rejected, your feed system might still be using the old API.
You don’t need to understand the technical detail. You need to know who built or manages the connection between your website and Google. That’s the person or company responsible for fixing it. If you’re using a third party app (like a Shopify app or a feed management tool), check their website or support page for an update about the Merchant API migration. Most major platforms sorted this months ago, but smaller tools and custom integrations might not have.
What to do right now
There is no transition period. Applications still calling the old API will no longer receive responses.
If you manage it yourself
If you or your developer built a custom integration that sends product data to Google programmatically, you need to migrate to the Merchant API v1 now. The Merchant API is a simplified system designed to help manage Merchant Center accounts and product data. Google has published migration guides, but this is not a five minute job. It’s a rebuild. Budget for proper developer time.
If your products aren’t in Google Shopping, you’re invisible to people searching for what you sell.
Why this matters for local businesses
You might think this is just a backend detail for developers, but here’s the reality. If your products aren’t in Google Shopping, you’re invisible to people searching for what you sell. They’ll buy from the competitor whose feed is working. You won’t know until you check your reports and see traffic has fallen off.
Most businesses I work with don’t look at Merchant Center until something breaks. This is one of those weeks. Open it, check your numbers, and if anything looks wrong, act today.
Prompted by Google for Developers.