Exploring competitive data by connecting Merchant API with Productrise

Most SEOs and e-commerce marketers spend time guessing what their competitors are doing. You see a competitor showing up everywhere in Google Shopping and wonder: are they just outspending you on ads, or are they genuinely winning organic visibility? The Merchant Center interface doesn't make this easy to figure out. The data is either missing, buried, or presented in a way that makes it nearly impossible to act on.

The Merchant API, though, is a different story. Google is surprisingly generous with what it shares through the API, including detailed competitive data that just doesn't surface in the regular Merchant Center UI. The problem is that the raw API output is hard to interpret without some logic applied on top of it.

That's exactly what Productrise now does. We've built four pages on top of your Merchant API data: Analytics, Products, Pricing, and Competitors. The Competitors page, in particular, surfaces insights that most sellers have never had access to before.

What the Merchant API tells you about your competitors

The Merchant API exposes a surprising amount of competitive intelligence. Here's what it actually gives you:

Who your biggest competitors are, separated by channel. You can see who competes with you for organic visibility, who competes on ads, and who does both.

How many search result pages you share. The API might tell you that a competitor has 30% more visibility than you, but only on 20% of the pages you have in common. That's a very different situation than a competitor who outperforms you across the board.

The ad/organic ratio for every competitor. This is the really interesting part. Google tells you, for each competing domain, how much of their visibility comes from Shopping ads versus organic placements. That tells you whether a competitor is genuinely winning or just spending their way to the top.

This is all filterable by product category, country, and traffic type, so you can narrow it down to the specific markets that matter most to your business.

From raw data to competitive insight

The raw API response is not something you'd want to stare at for long. It takes some interpretation to turn those numbers into something you can actually use.

Productrise takes the competitor data from the Merchant API and plots it in a competitive landscape view. Each competitor shows up as a dot based on two metrics:

The X-axis shows the ads/organic ratio. Competitors on the left side of the chart lean organic, meaning their visibility is driven more by algorithmic rankings. Competitors on the right are paid-heavy, meaning a large share of their impressions come from Shopping ads.

The Y-axis shows relative visibility, which is their impression count divided by yours. Higher up means they're appearing more often than you across your shared search result pages.

Here's what the full competitive landscape chart looks like in Productrise:

What the four quadrants actually mean

One important thing to keep in mind: all of this data is relative to you. Competitors only show up in this chart if they share search result pages with your brand. This isn't a view of the entire market. It's a view of the competitive landscape specifically on the pages where your products already appear, or could appear.

With that context, the four quadrants break down like this:

• Organic + high visibility (top left): These are your true organic rivals. On the pages you share, they're showing up more often than you, and they're doing it without heavy ad spend. These are the competitors worth studying most closely, because whatever they're doing, it's working with Google's algorithm.
• Paid + high visibility (top right): These competitors are outspending you. Their impressions on your shared pages are driven more by ads than organic rankings. That's useful to know because it means their position is less about feed quality and more about budget.
• Organic + low visibility (bottom left): Niche players. They compete on some of the same pages but aren't a major threat yet. Worth keeping an eye on as they grow.
• Paid + low visibility (bottom right): Competitors spending on ads across your shared pages but not getting much back. They're paying for impressions without the visibility to show for it.

Merchant API data plus SERP tracking: a powerful combination

The Merchant API gives you aggregated data. It's broad, and frankly, some of it is a bit of a mystery in terms of exactly how Google calculates it. But it's a fantastic starting point for understanding the competitive landscape around your products.

Where it gets really powerful is when you combine it with keyword-level SERP tracking. Productrise already lets you track your product positions on a query-by-query basis. You pick the keywords that matter most to your business and track exactly where your products rank in Google's shopping carousels over time.

That gives you something the Merchant API can't: granular, query-level data you're in full control of. You decide which keywords to monitor, and you get precise position data instead of aggregated impressions.

Used together, these two data sources cover different angles. Merchant API shows you the broad competitive picture across all your shared pages. SERP tracking shows you exactly what's happening on the specific queries you care about most. Having both in your arsenal gives you a much more complete view than either one on its own.

Get started with Productrise

GMC integration is available on the Growth plan and higher. But even with a free account, you can start gaining valuable insights into your organic product visibility, track which of your products appear in Google's shopping carousels, and see what competitors are showing up for your target keywords. Get started for free and see where you actually stand.