Google quietly added a new set of Merchant Center attributes

Published 3 months ago • 1 min read

Google quietly added a new set of Merchant Center attributes

If you missed my LinkedIn post I report you here in the newsletter because small thing are very important to know!

They're called conversational attributes, and they exist for one reason: to feed your products into AI-driven surfaces like AI Mode in Search.

Here's what you can now submit:

→ Question and answer - FAQs straight in your feed ("Does it support Bluetooth?")

→ Document link - manuals, assembly guides, spec sheets (PDF)

→ Related product - accessories, required parts, "often bought with"

→ Item group title + Variant option - clean variant structure AI can actually parse

→ Popularity rank - how a product performs vs the rest of your catalog

A few things that make this a low-risk, high-upside move:

1. They're optional and won't affect the approval status of your existing products.
2. You can push them through a supplemental feed; no need to touch your primary data source.
3. If the info already lives in description, product_highlight, or product_detail, you don't duplicate it.

Feed optimization used to be about getting approved and ranking in Shopping.

Now it's also about being machine-readable for AI answers.

The brands that structure their product data for conversational retrieval will be the ones AI surfaces actually cite and recommend.

This is "GEO" at the feed level. And the spec is already live.

Not sure if your product feed is ready for AI search? Reply with FEED and your domain. I'll check whether your data is structured to get picked up by AI surfaces and what's missing

Ecommerce SEO Consultant & Founder at Searchind
I work with medium- to large-sized ecommerce. Only a few projects at a time. Direct accountability (no juniors, no generalists).
Ecommerce SEO trainer for freelancers, agencies, and companies.
Follow me on Linkedin.

Do you need an ecommerce SEO partner?

Write me at simoneparodi@searchind.com

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