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You can control which CSSs may publish your Shopping ads as Product Listing Ads (PLAs) on Google’s search results page. Do this by opting in to specific CSSs — read on to find out how.
Multiple CSSs advertising your products
Multiple CSSs can advertise your products in Google’s Product Listing Ads. This can benefit you by raising your shop’s product visibility without increasing your CPC. Multiple CSSs advertising on your behalf will never inflate your CPC, due to the newly designed second-price auction on Google’s PLAs. Check out “Will I end up paying more for Shopping ads if more than one CSS advertises on my behalf?“ to learn more.
How is this happening?
CSSs are now allowed to show PLAs for merchants in Google’s search results page without needing to claim or verify the site URL. When a CSS advertises on your behalf, it typically creates a new Merchant Center which it has full control over. In this way, a CSS could fully manage a Shopping campaign on your behalf.
So how can you opt in or out and monitor all your CSS activity?
Prevent downtime and maintain complete control over all CSS advertising activities by using the CSS activity dashboard in the Merchant Center to opt in to the CSSs of your choice.
You can see which CSSs are advertising for you by retrieving the CSS activity dashboard in the Google Merchant Center. Start by making sure you have access to this CSS activity dashboard in the Google Merchant Center. This dashboard can only be accessed from a Merchant Center where you have claimed your site URL and that is associated with Google Shopping CSS. The URL claim is required because Google wants to verify that only the owner of the URL has rights over their CSS activity.
But you have probably switched your Merchant Center to Shoparize CSS or another CSS partner and therefore lost access to the CSS dashboard. (Remember, you will need a Merchant Center that has claimed your domain under Google Shopping CSS.) If you have already made this switch, you will need to create a new Merchant Center with Google Shopping CSS and claim your website there. This URL claim will not affect your campaign operations or cause downtime in your campaigns with other CSSs.
To create a new Merchant Center account, navigate to https://merchants.google.com/ and sign up for a Merchant Center account with a Google account that is not yet associated with an existing Merchant Center.
Note: If you have not switched to Shoparize CSS or another CSS partner, and your Merchant Center is still under Google Shopping CSS, you do not need to create a new Merchant Center Account.
Here are the easy steps you can take to check which CSS is advertising your products on Google:
Step 1: After creating the Merchant Center with Google Shopping CSS, you just need to claim and verify the site URL to view the CSS activity dashboard. You can find the Comparison Shopping Services dashboard in Shopping ads setup under the Tools menu.
Step 2: Click on Comparison Shopping Services, and scroll down. You will see all the CSSs that have uploaded your inventory and might be advertising products on your behalf.
Step 3: Choose whether you would like to Enable or Disable a specific CSS by ticking the box associated with that particular CSS. When you opt in or opt out of a CSS, that CSS will receive a notification.
Note: You can also use this Comparison Shopping Services overview to select your CSS partner to represent you in free listings or place products outside of Europe. Read more about free listings here.
Remember: Different CSSs can contribute to your existing campaigns in many ways, like feed and campaign optimization. We recommend that merchants ask their CSSs which strategies they are using and whether they provide in-depth performance analysis.
We hope this article has been helpful. If you have any questions, please reach out to us at css@shoparize.com.
