Google Merchant updates — August 2026

GMC v1.1.0 was checked against Google's live Merchant API discovery documents at revision 20260826 and the official release notes available on August 30, 2026. It does not add v1alpha-only surfaces unless Google promoted them to stable v1.

API changes covered

• Loyalty Customers is GA. The new loyaltyCustomers/v1 API has one privacy-preserving manage operation; GMC exposes it as gmc loyalty-customers manage.
• Products: productInputs.patch, unpadded base64url product names, plural gtins, video links, handling cutoff times, minimum order values, loyalty shipping labels, offer-level returns, and the May 2026 conversational attributes are represented by the typed client.
• Inventories: local and regional writes now use Google's nested localInventoryAttributes / regionalInventoryAttributes wire shape. Older flattened GMC JSON remains accepted and is normalized, including legacy enum spellings.
• Accounts and quota: account filters, direct/indirect access selection, sub-account listing, isolated test-account creation, and the new account product-limit endpoints are available.
• Data sources: deprecated primaryDataSourceName default-rule references are normalized to self: true; product-review and merchant-review source types are recognized.

Google's latest updates, Products release notes, Inventories release notes, and Loyalty Customers release notes are the source of truth.

Deadlines and operational changes

Date	Change	GMC impact
Aug 18, 2026	The Content API for Shopping was retired.	Use gmc migrate and Merchant API v1; GMC does not call Content API endpoints.
Aug 24, 2026	Merchant Center performance reporting separated YouTube affiliate traffic and changed historical reporting.	Expect report totals/categories to differ across the change boundary; no request-schema change is required.
Sep 30, 2026	Pickup cost and minimum order values become required where applicable for in-store pickup in the UK, Switzerland, and EEA countries.	Supply the applicable pickup/minimum-order fields and check Merchant Center “Needs attention.”
Jan 31, 2027	Product images must be at least 500×500 px across categories and marketing methods.	Warnings are already active; replace undersized source images before enforcement.

See Google's Content API sunset notice, 2026 product-data specification update, performance reporting change, and pickup requirement.

Policy organization

Google is consolidating Shopping ads and free-listings policy pages in September 2026. Google says this is an organizational change rather than a new restriction; continue following the existing content, editorial, landing-page, and prohibited-product requirements. See the official consolidation notice.

Closed beta and alpha features

Real-estate product attributes remain a closed beta, while YouTube affiliate analytics, Product Studio, Reviews, and other v1alpha surfaces can change without stable-version guarantees. GMC keeps these outside the stable command surface for now.