Google Business Profiles To Drop Product Management For Merchant Center?

The folks at WhiteSpark showed screenshots of Google Business Profile limiting the control you have over your product listings within your local panel. They showed how “businesses can no longer edit existing Products on their Google Business Profiles and can only add new Products through Merchant Center.” Google Products is now automatically linked to Merchant Center in the GBP Manager. Google later on in the day reverted this change.

I spoke with someone at Google and they reassured me this was a bug that lasted a few hours or so and they have no intention to force people to manage their products in the Google Merchant Center.

Honestly I guess it would makes sense to move product management from Business Profiles to Merchant Center, as Google is gently pushing people away from the Google Business Profile Manager in general but again, Google said no – while you can manage your products in Merchant Center, Google has no intention to stop anyone from managing their products in Google Profile Manager.

Darren Shaw asked on Twitter “Is it the end of Google Products as we know it? Businesses can no longer edit existing Products on their Google Business Profiles (GBP) and can only add new Products through Merchant Center!”

When they try to edit products, they get this red notice that reads “Products can’t be edited. You can only delete products.”

Personally, I see the ability to add products on my business profile. But I have never done so, so I do not know if this will work and then I won’t be able to edit it after. I don’t sell product, so I rather not test this out – I believe the folks at WhiteSpark:

After a few hours of this bug, Google put things back, but it does make you wonder if this is the direction Google is headed. I mean, it makes sense Google would do this based on all other signals. Again, Google said no – this is not the direction Google is going with this.

We checked a bunch of profiles and we’re able to add and edit Products manually again.🐛 I wonder if this is just a sign of things to come though?

— Allie Margeson (@SeoAllie) May 31, 2022

Forum discussion at Twitter.