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Last Modified 11 November 2025
Location Guides, SOPs & Policies (GMC) > Client Guides

How To Create A Google Merchant Center Account (Shared Guide)

From FAQ-Off, the Calibre9 knowledge base

Prerequisite:

Before you can sign up for a GMC account, you would first need to have a Google account. We recommend making one that’s unique to your business instead of using your personal account. (ex. calibrenine.webmaster@gmail.com)

Steps:

 
 
  • Select where you want your customers to pay for their purchases
Tick Yes or No to if you sell your products online or in a physical store. Select Yes on both if you have both.
  • Enter your store’s website URL
  • After hitting Continue, it will direct you to a landing page and just click Continue to Merchant Center
 
  • Enter the name of your Company / Brand. This is what will be displayed as your vendor name within your Merchant Listings.
  • Select your Country
It is crucial you select the correct one because you are unable to change this after the set-up.
 
  • You have now created your account!
  • You can choose to continue setting up your account by following the steps shown in the Overview.
As part of our process, we require you to complete at least the Business Info (red), and the Shipping & Returns (blue) as second priority if you can.
Please also complete our Shipping & Returns Info Form. This will be important for later steps of our process.
 
  • Add your business details and phone number
Make sure you have your company address exactly as it is on your website and Google Business Profile (if you have multiple GBPs, just enter the address of your headquarters). If you do not provide this, your GMC will not be approved.
The phone number provided will be sent a confirmation text for 2-Factor Authentication.
 
  • Validate and claim your website address.
Merchant Center will provide you different options on how to do so and you will need to follow the instructions provided.
 

An advanced Multi-Client Account is recommended for businesses that manage multiple stores and domains at scale. Sub-accounts will become nested under this advanced structure and each sub-account can have distinct names, website URLs and data sources (feeds).

With this type of set up, you won’t need to create separate unique accounts for each business because the MCA is a "Manager" account used to organise merchants' sub-accounts (MC accounts). For example, if you own a family of companies, you can set up at MCA Account (which becomes the parent) that houses all your sub-accounts (for each business).

This set up is often recommended by Google to avoid being flagged for Misrepresentation especially if you have two or more stores that sell some of the same products. They recommend avoiding having multiple separate Merchant Center accounts that contain similar content as this could lead to account disapproval.

For example, if you have your main brand online store, but also have a separate online retailer store that sells your brand’s products among other brands’ products. Having separate Merchant Center accounts would put you at risk for getting account-level suspension. The solution would be to consolidate them by creating an advanced MCA account and housing the two stores as sub-accounts so that Google understands they are owned by the same merchant entity and not attempting to impersonate or misrepresent the other as the brand or business in user interactions.

Organising merchant sub accounts (MC accounts) with your Multi Client Account

Each merchant sub-account (MC account) can have a distinct store name and a unique website URL. The figure below demonstrates how you can organise one or more MCA: accounts for your merchants, who may have more than one online store, and in more than one country:

  • Single Domains (such as myshop.com) under an MCA can be associated with separate Merchant Center subaccounts.
  • Different Domains (such as us.myshop.com) and subdirectories (such as myshop.com/us) in that domain can use the same Merchant Center account.
  • Separate domains (such as games.com, sneaker.com, myshop.fr and myshop.de) require a separate merchant account for each domain.

Follow these steps to request an advanced account set up.

Categories: GMC Guides, SOPs & Policies (GMC)