Google Merchant Automatically Added Products – Issue

[Musik]

Hi everyone! Three months ago, I clicked "Start managing automatically found products" in the Data Source section. Then, one day later, I clicked "Stop managing", but my automatically found products were still appearing in Google Search.

Then I found this: https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/12158480?hl=en

There said "Note that Google may still show basic product information from organic search results even when a merchant selects "Stop managing products". If you don’t want the products on your site to appear on any Google Search, you can add a "noindex" tag to the product page."

Now I want some of my products to be shown on Google and some not. Can someone explain how to add the "noindex" tag to the products that I don't want to be shown on Google?

[EmmanuelFlossie]

If you are talking about text listings, this is not controlled by Google Merchant Center.

Google merchant center only controls shopping ads, free shopping listings, local listings, etc.

What listings are you talking about? And maybe share a screenshot, so we can verify it's a shopping listing, or text listing.

[Musik]

It's a free shopping listings. I use free Google & Youtube app. On the screenshot: 1) Is the produtcs that Google found automatically, 2) Is the products that were added by me using Google & Youtube app.

I decided to start showing my automaticelly found products on Google Search but I want some of them not to be shown on Google. To hide those products I need to add noindex tags to them as it said on the article that I posted here.

https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/12158480?hl=en

[EmmanuelFlossie]

Your making it yourself very difficult to manage.

I recommend using only 1 data feed solution, your google and youtube app, then simply remove the products you don't want to show in the app itself.

And remove the automatic imports.

Also having 2 feeds, will put you at high rist of suspension, if you show the same product twice.

[Musik]

Both of these feeds come from the Google and YouTube apps. The Content API feed contains products that I manually added to Merchant, while the other feed includes products that were automatically found by Google.

As I mentioned in the original post, I can't remove automatically found products. If I click "Stop managing automatically found products," the feed labeled "1" on the screen will be removed, but the products will still appear in Google Search.

The Google article I referenced also states that to stop these products from being shown, I need to add a "noindex" tag. The problem is that I don’t know how to add that tag to the products I don’t want to be shown on Google.

[EmmanuelFlossie]

I recommend you stop managing the automatically found products.

Then wait 24 hours.

If the issue persists, please share the screenshot of the listing you see. Not your google merchant center account.

As I am guessing you are not looking at shopping listings, but just normal text listings, which is not related to Google merchant center, hense your issues in assuming removing it in GMC, is the solution, while you might be talking about something completely different.

[Musik]

I stopped managing the automatically found products for 3 weeks, but they were still appearing on Google.

They appeared on the Google Search main page in the "Popular products" section and in Google Shopping.

The article from Google also stated that products may still appear even after clicking "Stop managing products."

I just want to know how to add a "noindex" tag to specific products from my shop to exclude them from Google.

[sanjnalal]

Hey Musik, 

I agree with EmmanuelFlossie, you are making it hard for yourself to manage your product feed like this. Most Shopify merchants just use the Google & Youtube app. The app has the exact feature you are looking for, excluding certain products from appearing on google search. 

• Go to Shopify Admin → Click on "Sales Channels" → "Google & YouTube".
• Click "Manage Availability" under the Product Feed section.
• Find the products you want to exclude.
• Uncheck the “Available on Google” option to stop syncing them.
• Save the changes.

Beyond this, I can recommend Nabu for Google Shopping Feed. It has a "Blocklist" feature.

The Blocklist feature enables you to filter products based on collections or product types and prevent them from being submitted to Google Merchant Center.

Any new products added to a blocklisted collection will be automatically excluded from the feed.

For specific products, you can directly do it from the app's dashboard (refer to the attached screenshot)

However, if you use the opt-out feature you will need to manually exclude any new products added to the existing list.