Why do Google Merchant Center data and Google Search Console data insights differ for the same associated website?

Unveiling the Power of Google Merchant Center & Search Console: Two Sides of the Same Coin

Want to master your online presence? You need to understand the crucial data provided by Google Merchant Center and Search Console. While both tools serve your website, they offer unique insights.

Merchant Center dives deep into your product data, tracking performance in Google Shopping. It reveals how your product listings are performing, capturing impressions, clicks, and conversion rates.

Search Console, on the other hand, focuses on your website's organic search performance. This platform unveils how Google sees your website, revealing insights into traffic sources, keyword performance, and technical SEO issues.

In this blog post, we'll explore the individual strengths of both platforms and ultimately show you how to leverage their combined power for a truly impactful online strategy.

Google Merchant Center and Google Search Console provide different data sets and insights about your website for several reasons:

1. Data Focus:

• Merchant Center: Focuses on product data and shopping performance. It primarily tracks data related to your product feeds, listings, shopping campaigns, and customer interactions with your products in Google Shopping.
• Search Console: Focuses on website traffic and technical SEO. It provides data on how users find your website through organic search, crawl errors, page indexing, and other technical factors impacting your website's visibility.
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2. Data Collection Methods:

• Merchant Center: Collects data from your product feeds, shopping campaigns, and user interactions with your product listings on Google Shopping.
• Search Console: Collects data from Googlebot's crawl of your website and user interactions with your website through organic search.

3. Data Granularity:

• Merchant Center: Provides detailed data about individual products, such as impressions, clicks, conversion rates, and average order value.
• Search Console: Provides website-level data, such as impressions, clicks, average position, and other technical metrics.

4. Data Coverage:

• Merchant Center: Primarily focuses on data related to products listed in Google Shopping. It may not capture all website traffic, especially from sources other than Google Shopping.
• Search Console: Captures all organic search traffic and provides a broader view of your website's performance.

5. Data Interpretation:

• Merchant Center: Helps you analyze the performance of your product listings and optimize your shopping campaigns.
• Search Console: This helps you understand how Google sees your website, identify technical issues, and improve your organic search ranking.

Differences in Insights:

• Traffic Sources: Merchant Center provides insights into traffic from Google Shopping, while Search Console shows traffic from all organic search results.
• Product Performance: The Merchant Center provides detailed data about individual product performance, while the Search Console provides website-level data.
• Technical Issues: Search Console helps identify technical SEO issues, while Merchant Center focuses on product data quality and compliance.

Both Google Merchant Center and Google Search Console are valuable tools for optimizing your website and its online presence.

They provide complementary data and insights, allowing you to gain a comprehensive understanding of your website's performance across different channels.

It's essential to use both tools combined to optimize your website for organic search and shopping campaigns.

Hit the trigger point with both data sets.

Thank you

Momenul Ahmad

MomenulAhmad: Helping businesses, brands, and professionals with ethical SEO and digital Marketing. Digital Marketing Writer, Digital Marketing Blog (Founding) Owner at SEOSiri, SEO Copywriter (Remote) at Octoparse - Octopus Data Inc, SE Ranking AI Writer Reviewer, Web Writer at Washington MORNING, CMO at Organic Agri Pro, Web Developer and Digital Marketing Strategist at nazrulsangeet.com a parental concern of Sangeet Bidya Bithi, (Gopalpur Shishu Shikkha Niketon), Pabna.