'Found by Google' in Merchant Center: why you shouldn't rely on 'Feedless' for organic shopping

Google has a clear ambition: become the main crossroads for e-commerce. To get there, it has been building what it calls the Shopping Graph, a massive, constantly updated index of products sold across the internet. To feed that index, Google relies on three data sources: product feeds submitted through Merchant Center, structured data on product pages, and the product detail pages themselves.

Most merchants engage with all of these. But for smaller brands and merchants without the resources or technical skills to manage a proper product feed, Google has created an alternative. When Google crawls your website and recognizes products you haven't submitted through a feed, it can notify you inside Merchant Center and offer to manage that data itself. No feed required. Google will find your products, extract the information it needs, and add them to your account automatically.

This feature is called "Found by Google." And while it looks like a helpful shortcut, there are some real reasons to think twice before using it.

What "Found by Google" actually is

Google has been quietly expanding its Shopping Graph for years. Part of that effort involves identifying products on websites that haven't been formally submitted to Merchant Center. When Google detects those products, merchants may see a notification inside their Merchant Center account, specifically under Settings > Data sources, letting them know that Google has found products that can be added automatically.

The screenshot below shows what that notification looks like in practice.

If you opt in, Google uses structured data on your product pages to extract product details like title, price, and availability. It then formats that data and submits it to your Merchant Center account. The idea is that your products can then appear across Google surfaces, including organic product carousels, without you needing to build or maintain a feed.

This is what your data sources section looks like once you allow Google to add those products.

For merchants who find feed management overwhelming or costly, this can sound like exactly what they need.

Why it sounds better than it is

The appeal is obvious. You let Google crawl your site, it finds your products, and they start appearing in search results. No feed management tools, no product data exports, no ongoing maintenance.

But the reality is more complicated, and there are a few scenarios that tend to play out when merchants rely on this.

Google finds products that shouldn't be in a feed

When Google crawls your site, it doesn't always identify what you'd consider a "product" in the traditional sense. It might pick up shipping upgrade options, warranty add-ons, insurance packages, or coupon codes. These aren't really products, and submitting them to Merchant Center creates bloat in your account. You end up with a feed full of entries that have no business being there, and no clean way to manage which ones are included.

It can lead to disapprovals and account issues

This is where things get more serious. Google's automated systems aren't perfect at processing data it extracts from product pages. Price mismatches, incomplete attributes, and policy violations can all trigger disapprovals. There are reports from merchants who have seen spikes in disapprovals after allowing Google to manage their "Found by Google" products, and in some cases, widespread issues have led to account limitations.

Google does acknowledge this in its own documentation: "Google employs automated systems to identify and remove products that potentially violate our policies, but this may not be 100% accurate." That's a notable caveat for something marketed as a low-effort solution.

You lose control over your data

When Google is the one sourcing and formatting your product data, you have no direct input over what it submits. Titles might not include the keywords your customers actually search for. Descriptions might be pulled from the wrong section of your page. Prices might not reflect your current promotions. You're handing over something that directly affects your organic visibility and hoping Google gets it right.

What to do instead

If you see the "Found by Google" notification in Merchant Center, don't just click accept. Take a moment to investigate.

Start by looking at which products Google has identified. Ask yourself whether they actually belong in a product feed. If they're warranty packages, shipping options, or other non-products, you probably don't want them in Merchant Center regardless of how they got there.

But if Google has found products that genuinely should be in your feed, that's a different situation entirely. And in that case, the right move is to take control of the data yourself.

Rather than letting Google assume what your product information is, feed it to Google through an actual product feed. This gives you the ability to:

• Write product titles that are optimized for the search terms your customers use
• Keep descriptions accurate and specific to each product
• Ensure prices in your feed match what's on your website
• Avoid the disapprovals that come from Google misreading your page data
• Track and manage your organic visibility over time

That last point matters more than most people realize. When Google manages your data, you have limited insight into what's being submitted or how your products are performing. When you control your feed, you can track exactly which products are appearing in carousels, spot drops in visibility early, and make targeted improvements.

The difference that feed control can make is significant. Our own case study on supplemental feed optimization shows how taking control of product data, rather than leaving it to Google, can lead to meaningful visibility gains that Google's automated approach wouldn't have produced on its own.

How to remove "Found by Google" products if needed

If you've already opted in and want to stop Google from managing these products, you can do that inside Merchant Center. Go to Settings > Data sources, find the "Found by Google" data source, and select "Stop managing products" from the three-dot menu.

The bigger picture

Google's goal with "Found by Google" isn't primarily to help your business. It's to build a more complete Shopping Graph. The more products Google can index and surface, the better its own shopping experience becomes. That's worth keeping in mind when evaluating whether this feature serves your interests.

For merchants who genuinely can't manage a product feed, the feedless route might still get some products in front of shoppers. But for anyone serious about organic shopping visibility, the product feed is still the right foundation. It's the layer where optimization actually happens, where you can improve titles, align structured data, and close the gap between what Google knows about your products and what it needs to know.

If you're not sure where your current feed stands, or whether the products Google has found for you are helping or hurting, a product feed audit is a good place to start. It's one of the fastest ways to see what's actually being submitted to Merchant Center and where the issues are.

Productrise runs feed audits automatically, checking your titles, descriptions, prices, images, and structured data across your entire product catalog. You can start for free and see exactly where your feed stands before making any decisions about letting Google fill in the gaps.