Google Shopping in Bulgaria: Merchant Center setup step by step

In short: Google Merchant Center is the account through which your store's products reach Google Shopping, Performance Max and YouTube. The account has no fee, you pay only for ad clicks. Bulgaria was among the markets Google opened for Shopping ads and unpaid product listings in July 2026, and product data goes in English for now, because Bulgarian is not yet a supported Merchant Center language.

This guide is from the CloudCart team, the Bulgarian ecommerce platform with the Google Shopping connection built in: account, store connection, feed attributes, disapprovals and campaign choice. CloudCart steps follow the platform documentation, Google's rules the Merchant Center Help Center.

Does Google Shopping work in Bulgaria?

Yes, with an English feed. In July 2026 Google opened Shopping ads and unpaid product listings for 14 new markets, Bulgaria among them, and product data for Bulgaria is submitted in English at this stage (Expert.bg, in Bulgarian). Bulgarian is still missing from Google's list of supported Merchant Center languages and currencies, and that page does not show Bulgaria in its country table yet. When you add Bulgaria as a target country, Merchant Center tells you whether it is available for your account.

A store that already runs in English fits what Google accepts for Bulgaria today:

Your store	Targeting Bulgaria now	Targeting other EU countries
English only	Yes, with an English feed	Yes, where English is accepted for that country
Bulgarian and English	Yes, with the English version	Yes, with the English version
Bulgarian only	Not until Google adds Bulgarian	Only with a version in the shopper's language

The whole buying journey has to be in the feed language: product pages, categories, menu, terms and checkout. A machine-translated storefront alone is not enough.

A comparison shopping service (CSS) is a company that places Shopping ads on Google for merchants. In most EU countries, Romania and Greece included, Shopping ads and unpaid listings go through a CSS (Google Merchant Center Help: Comparison Shopping Services). You can use Google Shopping as your CSS, a third-party CSS, or several at once, chosen in Merchant Center.

Important: the account, the feed and approved products can be ready before your first campaign, so the store sells from the day you switch ads on.

If you sell in Bulgarian today

Add an English version with the Multilang app (Apps → Multilang): a sister site in English that takes products and translations from the main store. Each site sends Google the feed in its own language, country and currency, so the English version connects to Merchant Center separately.

What Google Merchant Center is and how a product gets to Google

Merchant Center is where Google keeps your product data (name, price, image, availability, brand, barcode), checks it and approves or disapproves each product. An approved product can appear in unpaid listings in the Shopping tab, in paid Shopping ads, in Google Images, Lens, Maps and YouTube, and in dynamic remarketing. Barcodes for your own products are covered in barcodes for products.

The route is always store catalog → product feed → Merchant Center → review → display. A product feed is one record per product and variant, read as an XML file, a spreadsheet or through an API. Google Ads runs only the paid campaigns. Google does not sell or ship: the click leads to your store, so Merchant Center checks both the feed and the website.

Spreadsheets and manual entry break at the first sale: the price changes in the store, Google keeps the old one, and the product is disapproved. For a real store the choice is an integration or an XML feed, and CloudCart has both.

How much Google Merchant Center and Google Shopping cost

Merchant Center has no subscription and no upload fee. Unpaid listings cost €0 per click. Shopping ads and Performance Max cost per click by auction within the daily budget you set in Google Ads, and a third-party CSS has its own terms. In CloudCart the Google feed size depends on the plan (billed annually, excluding VAT, see pricing):

Plan	Price per month	Products in the Google feed
Baby Pack	€14	up to 100
Starter Pack	€33	up to 2,000
CC Pro	€83	up to 7,500
CC Master	€249	up to 10,000

Automatic product updates to Google are included in all four plans, and 0% commission on sales applies to orders from Google too.

How to create a Merchant Center account

Create the account at merchants.google.com with the company's Google profile, the one that will also run your ads.

1. Business details. Store name, country and website, matching what shoppers see.
2. Verify the website with the HTML tag method. You paste the meta tag into CloudCart in the next section.
3. Claim the website. Only a claimed site can show products.
4. Shipping. Cost and delivery time per target country, matching your cart, for example delivery in Bulgaria with Econt, Speedy or BOX NOW (the main Bulgarian couriers and parcel lockers) and your free shipping threshold.
5. Return policy. Period, method and who pays. Google shows it next to the product.
6. Link Google Ads and choose a CSS, needed only for paid ads.

Google also reviews the store: contact details with phone and address, terms of sale, return and privacy policies and HTTPS checkout. Missing pages are the most common reason for a suspension for misrepresentation. Give an agency access with its own profile, so the account stays yours.

How to connect your CloudCart store to Merchant Center

The built-in Google Shopping app sends the catalog straight to Google, shows each product's status and, with automatic updates on, sends changes when you save a product.

1. Install Apps → Google Shopping. It has no on/off switch: once set up, it works.
2. Sign in with Google in Settings. The connection covers the whole store.
3. Enter the Merchant Center ID (top right in Merchant Center). A wrong one shows "Invalid Merchant ID".
4. Paste the HTML tag if the site is not verified yet. CloudCart adds it to the store.
5. Map statuses to in stock, out of stock, preorder and backorder. Unmapped statuses use the quantity.
6. Set defaults: condition, adult content, and weight and dimensions (entered in millimetres, sent in centimetres).
7. Turn on automatic updates for title, description, images, price, sale price, availability, brand and category.
8. Map attributes in Attributes: colour, size, material, pattern, gender, age group and size type.
9. Send products from Products → + Add products, by category, manufacturer, collection or single products, ticking the destinations and the size system, for example EU.
10. Watch Status, which refreshes every 10 seconds. Products upload in batches of 10, one upload at a time, and Stop cancels it.

Products you delete in the app's Products tab leave Merchant Center in batches of up to 500; the products in your store stay untouched.

The built-in app or an XML feed for Google

	Google Shopping app	XML feed (Apps → XML Feed → Google)
How products arrive	Straight into Merchant Center	Google reads the file on a schedule
Updates	On save, with automatic updates on	Every few hours
Disapproval reason	In the admin, per product	Only in Merchant Center
Colour, size, gender, age	Yes, through Attributes	The basic fields

Use one method for the same products, or the account gets duplicate offers.

Which attributes a Google product feed needs

Fields you fill in the store go to Google by themselves:

Google attribute	Required	Source in CloudCart
id, item_group_id	Yes (group for variants)	Variant number; parent product number
title, description	Yes	Product name and description
image_link, additional_image_link	Yes	First image in order; the other images
price, sale_price	Yes	Variant price; discount with promotion dates
availability	Yes	Variant status or quantity
brand	Yes, for most goods	Manufacturer
gtin	When the item has a barcode	Variant EAN
condition	For used and refurbished goods	Default from Settings
google_product_category	Recommended	Google category of the store category
color, size, gender, age_group	For clothing and shoes	The Attributes tab

Set the Google category once

In Products → Categories, Taxonomy column, choose from Google's product taxonomy (about 5,500 options). Every product in the category inherits it, and the Facebook and Criteo feeds read the same value.

Important: automatic updates cover only the eight chosen fields. Barcode, Google category, condition and dimensions go with the first upload; to change them later, delete the product in the app and upload it again. The store product is not affected.

Why a product is disapproved in Merchant Center

Each row in the app's Products tab shows Google's status. Show details gives the destination, Google's explanation and a link to the rule.

Reason	Meaning	Fix in CloudCart
Missing value [gtin]	The item has a barcode, but it is missing	Enter the EAN. For your own product without a barcode, never invent one: set the brand.
Price mismatch	Feed price differs from the page	Include price and sale price in automatic updates.
Availability mismatch	Sold out on the site, in stock in the feed	Map statuses and include availability in automatic updates.
Image too small, watermark, overlay	Small image or text, logo, frame	A clean main image. Google's image requirements: at least 500 × 500 pixels for all products from January 31, 2027, 1500 × 1500 or more recommended.
Missing [color], [size], [gender], [age_group]	Clothing without required details	Map them in Attributes.
Landing page not working	Page error or hidden product	Show the product or delete it.
Misrepresentation	Too little business information	Visible contacts, terms, returns and privacy.
Unsupported language	Feed language not supported for the country	Connect the English version of the store.

After a fix use Refresh status. Google reviews again within hours, sometimes days. A shopper from Shopping arrives ready to buy: with CloudCart Pay they pay by card, Apple Pay or Google Pay in your checkout, with a 0% transaction fee through December 31, 2026, and cash on delivery stays available for Bulgarian shoppers who prefer it.

Unpaid listings, a Shopping campaign or Performance Max

	Unpaid listings	Standard Shopping	Performance Max
Cost	€0 per click	Cost per click	Cost per click
Where	Shopping tab, other Google services	Shopping ads in search	Search, Shopping, YouTube, Gmail, Display, Maps
Control	Feed data only	Product groups, bids, negative keywords	Goal, budget, audience signals
Best for	Every approved product	Small budget, testing products	Tracked sales, a few dozen ad orders a month

A practical order: unpaid listings from day one, a standard Shopping campaign for your 20 to 50 best sellers, then Performance Max once it has orders to learn from. Without accurate sales tracking PMax spends blind; budgets and bidding are in Google Ads for an online store.

Track purchases first: Apps → Google Tag Manager with Apps → Data Layer send GA4 ecommerce events up to purchase (Google Tag Manager and GA4 for an online store), and Apps → Google Dynamic Remarketing shows visitors the products they viewed. Every product from CloudCart carries custom_label_0 = CloudCart, to separate it in Google Ads.

How to prepare a feed that sells

1. Title formula: brand + type + model + key attribute, for example "[Brand] women's running shoes, model [X], black, 38".
2. A real EAN, so Google links the product to the exact model people search for.
3. A clean main image on a light background; lifestyle shots as extra images.
4. Facts first in the description: material, size, compatibility.
5. Sales with dates: CloudCart sends sale_price with start and end, and Google shows both prices.
6. Start with one category, fix disapprovals, then send the rest.

The same titles work in regular search: see ecommerce SEO and the online store SEO checklist. They also help when ChatGPT and Gemini recommend products, see GEO for an online store.

With a store connected to Claude Code, ChatGPT Codex, Gemini CLI or Cursor through a PAT token, one sentence such as "show products in Shoes with no barcode and no manufacturer" gets you the list and the fixes. More in AI in your online store.

One catalog for Google Shopping, Pazaruvaj and eMAG

The data you clean up for Google feeds the other channels too: Pazaruvaj (Bulgaria's largest price comparison site), eMAG Marketplace, the Facebook and Instagram catalog and the rest of the 21 ready-made connections. See selling on eMAG, OLX and Google Shopping from one store and integrations. Moving from WooCommerce first? Keeping your Google rankings is covered in the WooCommerce migration guide.

How long it takes from sign-up to the first ad

Setup takes hours; the time goes into Google's reviews and catalog fixes. For a few hundred products plan about a day for the account and verification, a day for the connection and a first category, hours to days for review, one to two weeks for barcodes, images and attributes, and two or three days for tracking and the first campaign.

Merchant Center account suspended: what to do

A disapproval stops one product; a suspension removes all products until the business-level problem is fixed. The reason is under account issues in Merchant Center.

1. Read the exact reason, usually misrepresentation or a price or availability mismatch.
2. Fix the site: visible phone, address and company, terms, returns, privacy, price with VAT and delivery cost before checkout.
3. Align the feed with automatic updates and Refresh status.
4. Request review once, when everything is fixed: after a rejected review Google may make you wait.

Checklist before your first Shopping campaign

• Site verified and claimed; shipping and returns match the store.
• Contacts, terms, returns and privacy visible in the store.
• Google category on every category; brand and EAN on products.
• Automatic updates on for price, sale price and availability.
• First batch approved; purchases tracked in GA4 and Google Ads.
• Feed in a language Google accepts for the country: English for Bulgaria for now.

Frequently asked questions

Create a store for €1, add your products and connect Merchant Center from Apps → Google Shopping. Setup questions: support@cloudcart.com.