If you are using Google Merchant Center, you may have migrated from the Content API to the Merchant API, usually without you having to do anything. The problem is that it comes with bugs and issues that weren’t anticipated, including mine.
So I am writing a guide on what to check after Google’s automatic enforcement on 17th August 2026.
Product IDs
Check if your product IDs are still the same. If they have changed, your performance in Google Ads and organic listings can drop. It will take some time for performance to increase again.
Not only that, it can break many setups if you have exclusions per item ID or rules.
This issue is especially real with the Google and YouTube app for Shopify if you uninstall the app itself. So whatever you do, even today, do not uninstall and reinstall the app if you intend to keep using it, as that will change the product IDs from shopify_US_132456789_123456789 to shopify_ZZ_123456789_123456789. This issue has existed since August 2025, and only on July 17 did Ginny Marvin, a Google Ads Liaison, confirm the bug. It took a whole year to confirm the bug, with no other official mention or fix. The bug still exists today.
How do you check if you don’t know much about Google Merchant Center, and your IDs have changed??
You can go to Google Ads > Insights & Reports > Report Editor > Select Shopping Products.
Now look back 2 months, ensuring you are looking at dates before and after 17th August 2026. Then sort by item ID and click it twice to re-sort. Check whether the beginning part of the ID has changed.
If not, nothing to worry about.
If yes, it’s best to use a different data feed application so you can change the product ID back. However, if your performance has already stabilized, you don’t need to do anything.
Attribute Rules
With the migration, all your attribute rules will disappear. Because attribute rules are assigned to the primary feed. And with this automatic migration, it creates a new primary feed. It does not update the existing one. This means you need to re-add all your attribute rules.
The best way to do this is to open two tabs: one to view the old attribute rules, then manually copy the rules to the new merchant API attribute rules.
Supplemental Feeds
As noted above regarding the attribute rules, the new API creates a new primary feed; this means all supplemental feeds will not be linked to it.
To fix this, go to your primary feed > click on it > attribute rules > click on all other attributes > add the sources, and make sure the primary feed is the last one in the order.
Different Feed Labels
In many cases, this will also change your feed label. This means that if you have created a Google Ads campaign with a specific feed label, it will stop working.
Make sure you update your feed label in the campaign. Go to the campaign settings and view the feed setup. If you set it up to use all feeds, you don’t need to do anything. If you have assigned a specific feed label, then update the feed label in the campaign settings.
Remarketing Tracking
Make sure that you also check that your remarketing tracking works. Meaning that the IDs match between Google Merchant Center product IDs and your remarketing ID.
To check go to Tools > Data Manager > View Stats for your Google Tag.
Then click on id or ecomm_prodid and ensure the id’s match.
Conversion Tracking
Also check your conversion tracking data ensuring the cart data has the correct product ID. This to ensure your cross sell data works correctly, and that you can improve your performance, Google Merchant Center data and more.