MCP server for Google Merchant Center (Merchant API v1): products, promotions, reports, issues.
MCP server for Google Merchant Center (Merchant API v1). It provides tools for handling Google Merchant Center data across products, promotions, reports, and issues. The server is packaged under the name io.github.A1-x-Tech/mcp-google-merchants and documented in the repository README.
🛠️ Key Features
Integrates with Google Merchant Center via Merchant API v1
Supports products
Supports promotions
Supports reports
Supports issues
🚀 Use Cases
Manage Merchant Center products through an MCP interface
Publish or update promotions
Retrieve Merchant Center reports
Track and address Merchant Center issues
⚡ Developer Benefits
Standardized access to Merchant API v1 through MCP
Repository-aligned server identity: io.github.A1-x-Tech/mcp-google-merchants
⚠️ Limitations
Scope described is limited to Google Merchant Center (Merchant API v1) domains: products, promotions, reports, and issues
A1 Google Merchant Center MCP connects an AI app to your Google Merchant Center account. Find out why products are disapproved, inspect feeds and promotions, explore reports and market prices, then make deliberate changes to product data when you need to.
It works with the Merchant Center data behind Shopping listings: products, data sources, promotions and reports. Campaigns, budgets and bids belong to Google Ads and are outside this server.
22 tools. 15 operations only read Merchant Center data; 5 write product, data-source or promotion data; 2 are potentially destructive.
Your Google access. The server uses your OAuth credentials and the Merchant API v1 — it does not create a separate Merchant Center account.
Source-aware changes. Product and promotion inputs can be changed only through an API data source. A file feed can be re-fetched, but its contents are not edited here.
Visible boundaries. Tools carry read-only, write or destructive metadata, so an AI client can distinguish an inspection from a live change.
Start with a read-only question:
Which products are disapproved, and what issues does Google report for each?
You: Which products are disapproved, and what issues does Google report for each?
Assistant: Lists the affected products and explains the item-level issues that Merchant Center reports.
You: Show the current price and availability of product SKU-123, then prepare an availability update to in_stock.
Assistant: Shows the current product input, the API data source it belongs to and the exact change to make. It asks for confirmation before updating the live product input.
You: Confirm the update.
Assistant: Sends the update and explains that Merchant Center processes product data asynchronously. The processed product and its quality status can take several minutes to refresh.
You need Node.js 20+, a Google Merchant Center account and a Google Cloud project registered with Merchant Center. OAuth credentials are not required at install time — the server connects from the conversation, see Getting access.
Add the server to your AI app using one of the instructions below.
Say "connect Google Merchant Center": the assistant walks you through the OAuth client and the browser consent, no config files and no restart.
Ask the first read-only question above.
Codex
In the app:
Open Settings → MCP servers.
Select Add server.
Choose STDIO, then enter the launch command npx -y mcp-google-merchants@latest and the four environment variables below.
The current official path is Settings → Extensions. For a custom desktop extension, open Advanced settings → Extension Developer → Install Extension…, select a .mcpb file and follow the prompts.
This repository currently publishes an npm stdio package and does not contain a .mcpb bundle. For Claude Desktop builds that still support local configuration, use the following JSON stdio configuration as a fallback:
In those builds, save it to ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json on macOS or %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json on Windows.
Which products are disapproved, and what does Google report for each of them?
Show the title, price, availability and current status of product SKU-123.
Which products are out of stock?
Show the most frequent product issues for this Merchant Center account.
Explore performance and prices
Show clicks and impressions by product for July.
Which products are priced above the market benchmark in the United States?
What prices does Google suggest, and what impact does it predict?
Price comparisons and suggestions require the free Market Insights opt-in in Merchant Center. If the account has not opted in, the server explains why the report has no rows.
Inspect the account and feeds
List the Merchant Center accounts I can access.
Is the store homepage claimed? Show the current shipping settings.
List the product and promotion data sources, and identify an API data source.
Re-fetch this scheduled file feed now.
Make deliberate changes
Update the price and availability of this product in its API data source.
Create an API data source for a new product feed.
Create or update a promotion and then check its approval status.
For any request that changes data, first ask the assistant to show the target account, data source and exact fields it plans to change.
How Merchant Center data is connected
Merchant Center keeps the incoming data and the resulting product status separate:
An account contains product and promotion data sources.
A data source can be an API source, a file, a Google Sheet, the Merchant Center interface or an automatic feed.
A product input is the product data supplied by one source.
A processed product is what Merchant Center derives after processing that input. It includes eligibility and item-level issues.
The server can read every listed source type. It can create API data sources and update product inputs only in an API data source; it cannot write into a file, interface or automatic feed. To find products by condition, use a report query: list_products itself does not provide server-side filtering.
What can change
Operation
What happens
Confirmation boundary
Inspect accounts, products, feeds, promotions, reports, issues and quota use
Reads data from Merchant Center
Does not change Merchant Center
Create an API data source
Adds a source for product or promotion data
Changes the account
Update a product input
Changes selected product fields, such as price or availability
Changes live source data
Insert a product input
Replaces the complete input with the same ID in that API source; using a different source moves the product
Changes live source data
Re-fetch a file feed
Requests an out-of-schedule fetch of a file or Google Sheets feed
Starts asynchronous work at Google
Insert or update a promotion
Creates or changes a promotion
Changes live source data
Delete a product input
Removes the input from the selected data source
Destructive
Raw Merchant API request
Can access API methods without a dedicated tool
Potentially destructive
The MCP client decides how it asks you to confirm write and destructive tools. The server marks its read-only, write and destructive operations so the client can present the right boundary.
Getting access
The server uses the Google Merchant API and the OAuth scope https://www.googleapis.com/auth/content. There are two ways to hand it credentials, and the first one needs no configuration files.
Connect from the chat (recommended)
Say "connect Google Merchant Center" and the assistant runs the flow with you:
setup_instructions prints the checklist: create or select a Google Cloud project, enable Merchant API, configure the consent screen and create a Desktop app OAuth client.
Download that client's JSON ("Download JSON") and give the assistant its path — set_client stores it owner-only. The secret never goes through the conversation.
start_login returns a Google consent link. Open it on this machine and approve; the code comes back to a one-shot listener on 127.0.0.1 (PKCE), never through the chat.
finish_login exchanges the code, saves the tokens to ~/.config/mcp-google-merchants/credentials.json (mode 0600) and verifies them with a real Merchant API call — so a project that is not registered with Merchant Center yet is caught right there.
The tokens are re-read on every call, so the connection works immediately — no restart of the AI app. auth_status shows what is connected, logout revokes and deletes it. The Cloud-project registration below is still required: it is a Merchant Center step, not an OAuth one.
Environment variables (CI, unattended installs)
Create or select a Google Cloud project, enable Merchant API, and configure the OAuth consent screen.
In Google Cloud, create an OAuth client of type Desktop app. Save its client ID and client secret.
Authorize the Google account that has access to your Merchant Center and obtain a refresh token for the scope above. The OAuth 2.0 Playground can help with this step: enable Use your own OAuth credentials, enter the scope, authorize, then exchange the code for tokens.
Find your Merchant Center account ID in Merchant Center and use it as GOOGLE_MERCHANTS_ACCOUNT_ID.
Register the Google Cloud project with Merchant Center once. Google requires a production Merchant Center account with a verified website and an account administrator for this operation. The registration links one Cloud project to the Merchant Center account; until it is complete, Merchant API calls from that project are blocked. Follow Google’s developer registration guide.
The one-time registration is available through the technical raw_request tool, but it is safer to follow Google’s guide if this is your first Merchant API setup. Google may take up to five minutes to accept calls after registration.
Treat the OAuth client secret and refresh token as passwords. They are kept in the MCP client configuration and can grant access to the Merchant Center account.
Configuration
Variable
Required
Description
GOOGLE_MERCHANTS_CLIENT_ID
No*
OAuth 2.0 client ID.
GOOGLE_MERCHANTS_CLIENT_SECRET
No*
OAuth 2.0 client secret.
GOOGLE_MERCHANTS_REFRESH_TOKEN
No*
OAuth refresh token with the Merchant API scope.
GOOGLE_MERCHANTS_ACCESS_TOKEN
No*
Short-lived access-token alternative to the three OAuth values above.
GOOGLE_MERCHANTS_ACCOUNT_ID
No
Default Merchant Center account ID. Individual requests can select another accessible account.
GOOGLE_MERCHANTS_OAUTH_PORT
No
Fixed loopback port for the in-chat login; useful over SSH port forwarding.
GOOGLE_MERCHANTS_API_BASE
No
Merchant API base URL override.
GOOGLE_MERCHANTS_TOKEN_URL
No
OAuth token endpoint override.
GOOGLE_MERCHANTS_TIMEOUT_MS
No
Per-request timeout in milliseconds; default is 60000.
GOOGLE_MERCHANTS_MAX_RETRIES
No
Maximum retry count for temporary failures; default is 3.
* Use either the client ID, client secret and refresh token together, or a pre-minted access token. An access token usually expires in about one hour; a refresh token lets the server obtain a new access token when needed.
Data and telemetry
The server runs locally as a process started by your AI app. It sends Merchant Center requests to Google and refreshes OAuth access tokens through Google’s OAuth endpoint.
It sends anonymous usage telemetry to count active installations and tool demand: a random installation ID, package version, AI client and Node.js/operating-system versions, and the tool name. It never sends or stores OAuth tokens, Merchant Center data, tool arguments or prompts. Disable this telemetry for A1 MCP servers with:
bash
ASKADS_TELEMETRY=0
Limits and background work
Merchant Center processing is asynchronous. A newly inserted, updated or deleted product input can take several minutes to appear in processed products. Product and promotion approval issues appear later, not as an immediate API error.
Market Insights is optional. Price competitiveness and suggested-price reports return data only after the account opts into the free Market Insights program.
Quotas depend on the account and API method. Check current consumption with list_method_quotas; Google’s daily counters reset at 12:00 UTC.
Temporary limits are handled cautiously. When Google returns 429, the server follows Retry-After when provided and makes a limited number of retries. It does not replay a write after an uncertain network or server failure.
There is no background monitoring. The server works only while an AI app calls it. If your AI app supports scheduled tasks, you can ask it to check product issues or quota use periodically.
Aggregated product issues have an account limitation.list_product_issues works for standalone and sub-accounts, not advanced parent accounts.
Google OAuth 2.0 client secret (refresh-token flow).
GOOGLE_MERCHANTS_REFRESH_TOKENsecret
OAuth refresh token with scope https://www.googleapis.com/auth/content.
GOOGLE_MERCHANTS_ACCESS_TOKENsecret
Pre-minted OAuth access token (~1h lifetime) — alternative to the refresh trio.
GOOGLE_MERCHANTS_ACCOUNT_ID
Default Merchant Center account ID; tools can override it per call.
GOOGLE_MERCHANTS_OAUTH_PORT
Fixed port for the loopback listener of the in-chat login (127.0.0.1 + PKCE). Set it when the client runs over SSH port forwarding; otherwise a free port is picked per login.