Microsoft Shopping & Bing Merchant Center

TL;DR — Microsoft Merchant CenterGoogle Merchant Center (GMC) is a free platform where retailers upload and manage product data so their products can appear across Google — Shopping, organic Search product grids, Images, Lens, and AI surfaces. Since 2020 it powers free (organic) product listings, not just paid Shopping ads. (you may know it as “Bing Merchant Center”) is a free tool where you create a store and upload a product feed. That one feed can support eligible Microsoft product surfaces and lets you run paid Microsoft Shopping ads. Free-listing availability varies by market and program. It’s broadly analogous to Google Merchant Center for Bing and Copilot. If you already run Google Shopping, you can import your Google feed and be most of the way there.

What Microsoft Merchant Center is

When you search on Bing and see a row of products with prices and images, that data came from a product feed a retailer submitted to Microsoft Merchant Center (MMC). It’s a free platform inside Microsoft Advertising, and it’s the Microsoft equivalent of Google Merchant CenterGoogle Merchant Center (GMC) is a free platform where retailers upload and manage product data so their products can appear across Google — Shopping, organic Search product grids, Images, Lens, and AI surfaces. Since 2020 it powers free (organic) product listings, not just paid Shopping ads..

Here’s the useful part: one feed does two jobs.

1. Free Product ListingsFree product listings (originally launched as \"Surfaces across Google\" in 2020) are unpaid, organic product placements Google generates from your Merchant Center feed or on-page Product structured data. There's no bid and no CPC — Google matches your product data to a query and decides whether and where to show it — across the Shopping tab, Google Search (Popular Products grids), Images, Lens, Maps/Business Profile, YouTube, and Gemini; AI Mode and AI Overviews aren't on Google's official surfaces list, though practitioner reporting links them to the same eligibility pool. They're enabled by default in most cases for new Merchant Center accounts. — organic, unpaid placements on the Bing Shopping tab. You don’t pay per click. You just need an approved feed.
2. Paid Product Ads — if you want more visibility, you can run Microsoft Shopping Campaigns off the same feed.

You submit the feed once. Free listingsFree product listings (originally launched as \"Surfaces across Google\" in 2020) are unpaid, organic product placements Google generates from your Merchant Center feed or on-page Product structured data. There's no bid and no CPC — Google matches your product data to a query and decides whether and where to show it — across the Shopping tab, Google Search (Popular Products grids), Images, Lens, Maps/Business Profile, YouTube, and Gemini; AI Mode and AI Overviews aren't on Google's official surfaces list, though practitioner reporting links them to the same eligibility pool. They're enabled by default in most cases for new Merchant Center accounts. happen automatically once your products are approved; paid ads are optional on top.

The naming is genuinely confusing

A lot of people get stuck here, so let’s clear it up:

• “Bing Merchant Center” and “Microsoft Merchant CenterMicrosoft's free platform (inside Microsoft Advertising, formerly 'Bing Merchant Center') where retailers create a store and submit a product feed. One feed powers both free Product Listings on the Bing Shopping tab and paid Microsoft Shopping Campaigns — the Bing/Copilot-side twin of Google Merchant Center. As of 2026 it's also the product-data foundation Copilot draws on for AI-assisted shopping and checkout.” are the same tool — Microsoft renamed it. If a tutorial says “Bing Merchant Center,” it means MMC.
• “Bing Shopping” and “Microsoft Shopping” are the same surface — the shopping results — renamed the same way.
• “Microsoft Advertising” is the bigger platform that Merchant Center lives inside.

So all five terms are pieces of one system. If you were searching for the old name, you’re in the right place.

Why bother with Bing at all?

Bing is a distant second to Google — Ahrefs’ market-share data has generally put it around 4-5% of global search. So why set this up? Two reasons. First, it’s free and low-competition, and there’s meaningful US volume. Second — and this is the 2026 reason — Microsoft’s Copilot AI assistant draws on this same product data for AI-assisted shopping. Setting up a feed now isn’t just “a bit of extra Bing traffic”; it’s getting your products into Microsoft’s AI shoppingAI shopping optimization is the practice of making a merchant's products discoverable, recommendable, and buyable across AI shopping surfaces — ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Copilot, and Perplexity — by treating the structured product feed as a first-class optimization surface alongside the human-facing webpage, not a replacement for it. surfaces too.

How you set it up (the short version)

• In Microsoft Advertising, go to Tools > Microsoft Merchant Center and create a store.
• Verify your website (through Bing Webmaster ToolsMicrosoft's free portal for monitoring and improving how a site appears in Bing search — the peer to Google Search Console, plus IndexNow instant indexing, richer backlink data, and keyword volumes. Because Bing's index also feeds Microsoft Copilot, it doubles as a window into AI-search visibility.).
• Submit your product catalog — upload a feed file, or import your existing Google Merchant Center feed directly.
• Wait for approval (a manual review; commonly cited as up to about five business days), and your products start appearing.

Want the full required-field list, the exact ways Microsoft’s feed differs from Google’s, and how MMC feeds into Copilot Checkout? Switch to the Advanced tab.

TL;DR — MMC is the Bing/Copilot-side Merchant CenterGoogle Merchant Center (GMC) is a free platform where retailers upload and manage product data so their products can appear across Google — Shopping, organic Search product grids, Images, Lens, and AI surfaces. Since 2020 it powers free (organic) product listings, not just paid Shopping ads.: one feed drives free Product Listings and paid Microsoft Shopping Campaigns. Naming is a rename mess (Bing → Microsoft on both the tool and the surface). The feed spec is close to Google’s but not identical — Microsoft’s API lists ~13-14 required-for-insert fields, with shipping mandatory for Germany and sizing mandatory for apparel in FR/DE/UK/US, an identifierExists flag, and a schema that’s a deliberate superset that accepts a raw Google feed and silently ignores Google-only fields (why the Google-import tool works). Paid Shopping Campaigns and free-product surfaces have different market footprints, so verify the current country list and program eligibility rather than assuming one implies the other. Shopping Campaign reports measure paid delivery only, not free-listing visibility, and conversion tracking runs on Microsoft’s standard UET/attribution model — so some discrepancy against Google Analytics/Ads is normal.

What MMC is, and how it relates to Shopping Campaigns

Microsoft Merchant CenterMicrosoft's free platform (inside Microsoft Advertising, formerly 'Bing Merchant Center') where retailers create a store and submit a product feed. One feed powers both free Product Listings on the Bing Shopping tab and paid Microsoft Shopping Campaigns — the Bing/Copilot-side twin of Google Merchant Center. As of 2026 it's also the product-data foundation Copilot draws on for AI-assisted shopping and checkout. is the store-and-catalog layer; Microsoft Shopping Campaigns are the paid ads that draw from it. Microsoft’s own API docs put the relationship plainly:

“A Microsoft Shopping campaign enables you to advertise the products from your Microsoft Merchant Center store product catalog. Product ads from a Microsoft Shopping campaign include details about the product, an image, and optional promotional text.” — Microsoft Advertising, Product Ads

The same feed also powers free Product ListingsFree product listings (originally launched as \"Surfaces across Google\" in 2020) are unpaid, organic product placements Google generates from your Merchant Center feed or on-page Product structured data. There's no bid and no CPC — Google matches your product data to a query and decides whether and where to show it — across the Shopping tab, Google Search (Popular Products grids), Images, Lens, Maps/Business Profile, YouTube, and Gemini; AI Mode and AI Overviews aren't on Google's official surfaces list, though practitioner reporting links them to the same eligibility pool. They're enabled by default in most cases for new Merchant Center accounts. — the organic, unpaid side — so paid and free are two outcomes of one catalog, not two separate setups. That’s the same “one feed, free and paid” model Google Merchant CenterGoogle Merchant Center (GMC) is a free platform where retailers upload and manage product data so their products can appear across Google — Shopping, organic Search product grids, Images, Lens, and AI surfaces. Since 2020 it powers free (organic) product listings, not just paid Shopping ads. runs; the mechanics on the free side visibly followed Google’s template when Bing launched them in 2020.

The naming history, once

Because a real chunk of search volume here is people trying to map an old name to a new one:

• Bing Merchant Center → Microsoft Merchant Center (the tool).
• Bing Shopping → Microsoft Shopping (the consumer surface — the Shopping tab and shopping modules in Bing, Edge, and Copilot).
• Microsoft Advertising is the platform that contains Merchant Center.

Same system, renamed. If a competitor’s guide still says “Bing Merchant Center,” it’s describing today’s MMC.

Free Product Listings vs. paid Product Ads

Free Product Listings launched on the Bing Shopping tab in August 2020 — the US first, with the UK, Canada, Australia, France, and Germany named as near-term rollout markets. Existing Microsoft Shopping Campaigns advertisers were auto-enrolled: their already-approved product offers were opted into free listings with no separate action. New (non-advertiser) merchants had to create an MMC store, submit a feed, and get products approved — the same feed-and-approval pipeline that powers paid. Merchants who don’t want organic placement can turn free listings off in the store’s settings. (Microsoft’s original announcement blog now renders as a JavaScript shell I couldn’t pull clean text from, so I’m relaying these specifics from Search Engine Land’s contemporaneous coverage and Search Engine Roundtable rather than quoting Microsoft directly.)

Setting up an MMC store

Microsoft’s API docs describe the official workflow: in the Microsoft Advertising web app, open Tools > Microsoft Merchant Center, click Create store and provide the store details; create a product catalog and submit the feed via FTP/SFTP or the Content API; grab your store’s unique system identifier; then, if you want paid, create a Microsoft Shopping campaign (Product Ads, “Setup Microsoft Merchant Center”). Domain verification runs through Bing Webmaster ToolsMicrosoft's free portal for monitoring and improving how a site appears in Bing search — the peer to Google Search Console, plus IndexNow instant indexing, richer backlink data, and keyword volumes. Because Bing's index also feeds Microsoft Copilot, it doubles as a window into AI-search visibility., and store creation goes through a manual editorial review — secondary sources commonly cite up to about five business days, though Microsoft doesn’t pin an exact SLA in the docs I could verify, so treat that number as practitioner-reported.

The MMC feed spec — and how it differs from Google

This is where MMC earns its own article. Most competing content hand-waves with “title, price, image, availability” or repeats a wrong “6 required fields” claim. Microsoft’s actual Products resource API reference lists closer to 13-14 fields required for insert, depending on category and country.

Core required fields

Required for insert per Microsoft’s schema: availability, brand, channel (Local or Online), condition, contentLanguage (a 2-letter ISO 639-1Two-letter language codes used in hreflang (en, es, de). code from a supported list that’s narrower than Google’s), gtin, imageLink, link, mpn, offerId, price, targetCountry, and title — plus the conditional fields below.

Country-conditional requirements (the highest-value, least-covered facts)

Two rules routinely surprise people reusing a Google feed. Microsoft states them directly:

“NOTE: Shipping is required if the target country is DE (Germany); otherwise, it’s optional.” — Products resource

“This field is required for all Apparel & Accessories products when targeting: France, Germany, United Kingdom, and United States.” — Products resource, sizes

So a feed that’s fine targeting the US can generate warnings or rejections the moment you add Germany or start selling apparel into the UK.

The identifierExists flag

Microsoft’s identifierExists flag tells the system whether your product carries gtin, mpn, or brand identifiers:

“A Boolean value that determines whether the product offer specifies the gtinProduct identifiers are the standardized values — GTIN (Global Trade Item Number), MPN (Manufacturer Part Number), and brand — that shopping feeds like Google Merchant Center and Microsoft Merchant Center use to match a product listing to the correct item in their catalog. A GTIN alone is usually enough; without one, brand + MPN is the fallback; products with none declare that with the identifier_exists attribute., mpn, or brand identifiers. The default is true. Set to false if you do not specify all three of the identifiers.” — Products resource, identifierExists

Microsoft is softer than Google here: instead of hard-disapproving on missing identifiers, it warns. Per the same doc, MMC returns warnings if you don’t specify the gtin, mpn, and brand identifiers when they should be known — the offer is accepted, but you’re told to fix it. (This is the same identifier hygiene that feed optimizationGoogle Merchant Center feed optimization is the process of improving the quality, accuracy, and completeness of the product data you submit to Google Merchant Center — titles, identifiers, images, and attributes — so your products show up more often and in more relevant places across Shopping ads, free listings, and AI shopping surfaces. covers on the Google side.)

Fields Microsoft keeps but ignores (why a Google feed “just works”)

The genuinely distinctive fact nothing else in the SERP calls out: Microsoft’s schema is a deliberate superset of Google’s. Several fields exist purely so a Google-formatted feed doesn’t break on import — Microsoft accepts them and then does nothing with them:

“MMC does not use the additional images; this field is included for Google compatibility.” — Products resource, additionalImageLinks

The same doc marks adwordsGrouping, adwordsLabels, destinations, taxes, and validatedDestinations as Google-compatibility-only too. That’s the technical reason the Google Merchant CenterGoogle Merchant Center (GMC) is a free platform where retailers upload and manage product data so their products can appear across Google — Shopping, organic Search product grids, Images, Lens, and AI surfaces. Since 2020 it powers free (organic) product listings, not just paid Shopping ads. feed-import tool (originally launched in 2018, per Search Engine Land) works without field-by-field remapping: you can drop a raw Google Shopping feed in and the Google-only fields silently no-op. What doesn’t carry over cleanly is the country-conditional stuff above — the DE shipping and FR/DE/UK/US sizing rules — plus MMC’s own identifier handling.

Regional inventory (an MMC feature with no 1:1 Google name)

Microsoft has a Regional products resource for differentiated pricing/availability by region — essentially undocumented in consumer-facing SEO content:

“Use the regional products resource to manage region definitions and regional product offerings in your Microsoft Merchant Center store (MMC).” — Regional products resource

Note the country list for regional inventory is narrower than the general targeting list — don’t conflate the two:

“Supported countries/regions: US, CA, BR, GB, FR, DE, HU, CH, NL, AU, NZ, IN, ID, MY” — Regional products resource, countryCode

”Is Bing Shopping available in my country?” — kill the myth

A myth floats around that Bing Shopping reaches only a handful of English-speaking countries. That conflates the narrower free Product Listings rollout footprint (US first, then UK/Canada/Australia/France/Germany) with the far broader paid Microsoft Shopping Campaigns footprint, which per Microsoft’s own docs spans 90+ countries — Albania through Zimbabwe (Product Ads country availability). If a blog post tells you it’s six countries, it’s describing the wrong list.

What’s new in 2026

Two dated changes make this a “read the 2026 version” topic:

• Self-serve store name and domain edits (March 2026). Microsoft enabled changing your store name and domain inside Merchant Center without support intervention — name changes go through editorial review while ads keep running under the existing approved name; domain changes require ownership verification before taking effect. This reverses the still-repeated competitor claim that a store name “can’t be changed after creation” (Search Engine Land, surfaced publicly by independent PPC commentator Navah Hopkins).
• Product Explorer (June 2026). Microsoft added a unified catalog view inside Merchant Center — a searchable catalog, performance tracking, and eligibility-gap identification, initially for advertisers with fewer than 100,000 SKUs (Microsoft Advertising blog, Bhuvesh Arora).

MMC and agentic/AI commerce (Copilot Checkout, UCP)

This is the biggest thing competing content misses. As of 2026, Microsoft has repositioned MMC from “the Shopping-tab feed pipeline” to the product-data foundation for Copilot’s shopping and checkout — whether or not you run paid ads.

Microsoft’s framing on its Agentic CommerceThe Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) is an open standard/protocol whose first implementing AI platform is OpenAI and first compatible payment provider is Stripe, defining how AI shopping agents discover products, manage carts, and complete purchases on a buyer's behalf — by reading a merchant's product feed and APIs instead of crawling the website. page is that the foundation of agentic commerce is trusted product truth, and it draws a clean line between two mechanisms: product feeds primarily enable discovery (products showing up in AI responses), while the Universal Commerce ProtocolThe Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) is an open-source standard (Apache 2.0) led by Google and co-developed with Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Target, and Walmart that lets AI agents, merchants, and payment providers transact through a common language instead of bespoke integrations. Merchants advertise their capabilities at /.well-known/ucp. enables transactions (checkout and post-purchase actions inside AI experiences like Copilot). It’s explicit that the merchant stays the merchant of record — Copilot does not become the merchant of record — and that, today, Microsoft does not take a commission or affiliate fee (Microsoft Advertising, Agentic Commerce). (I’m paraphrasing rather than quoting because that page renders through JavaScript and I only have it via an extraction pass — verify the exact wording against the live page before treating any of it as a verbatim quote.)

In April 2026, Microsoft made U.S. support for Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) feeds generally available inside Merchant Center, with Target named as an early partner (PPC News Feed). I’m not going to re-explain UCP here — the mechanics live in the Universal Commerce ProtocolThe Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) is an open-source standard (Apache 2.0) led by Google and co-developed with Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Target, and Walmart that lets AI agents, merchants, and payment providers transact through a common language instead of bespoke integrations. Merchants advertise their capabilities at /.well-known/ucp. article in the ai-commerce cluster; this piece only needs to establish MMC’s role in it.

The important nuance: you don’t need MMC to sell through Copilot Checkout. Microsoft’s January 2026 Copilot Checkout announcement is clear that MMC isn’t a hard requirement — but its own guidance frames MMC feeds as what informs organic Copilot results, and it reiterates that the merchant stays the merchant of record, owning the transaction, customer data, and relationship (Microsoft Advertising blog, Copilot Checkout and Brand Agents). So MMC is the visibility lever for AI shoppingAI shopping optimization is the practice of making a merchant's products discoverable, recommendable, and buyable across AI shopping surfaces — ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Copilot, and Perplexity — by treating the structured product feed as a first-class optimization surface alongside the human-facing webpage, not a replacement for it. even outside classic Bing search — which is exactly why 2026 is a good time to set it up.

Shopping Campaign reports and conversion tracking

One gap worth closing: what you can actually measure, and where the numbers won’t match other platforms.

Reporting is paid-only. Microsoft’s Reporting API has a dedicated “Product Ads” report family for Microsoft Shopping Campaigns — ProductDimensionPerformanceReportRequest, ProductPartitionPerformanceReportRequest, ProductPartitionUnitPerformanceReportRequest, ProductMatchCountReportRequest, and ProductSearchQueryPerformanceReportRequest (Report Types — Microsoft Advertising API). These break performance out by product category, custom label, product partition, and the search queries that triggered your ads — genuinely useful for tuning a campaign. What they don’t do is tell you anything about free Product Listings visibility: every one of them is scoped to Shopping Campaign (paid) delivery data. There’s no equivalent first-party report for free-listing impressions or clicks in this API — a real measurement gap worth knowing about before you go looking for one.

Conversion tracking runs on Microsoft’s standard UET stack, the same mechanism used across all of Microsoft Advertising, not something Shopping-specific. You install a Universal Event Tracking (UET) tag, define conversion goals, and set a conversion window per goal (anything from 1 minute to 90 days; 30 days by default). Microsoft’s default attribution is last ad click — the most recent ad click before the conversion gets the credit — though it also supports data-driven attribution, which splits credit across the contributing keywords/clicks (How does conversion tracking work? — Microsoft Advertising).

Don’t be surprised when these numbers don’t match Google Analytics or Google Ads. Microsoft’s own conversion-tracking FAQ walks through why some discrepancy is expected, not a bug: separate UET vs. Google tag installs, different conversion windows or goal definitions between platforms, different unique-vs-all counting settings, Microsoft’s own cross-device attribution (which Google Analytics handles differently), and the fact that Microsoft doesn’t currently filter out test, fraudulent, or duplicate conversions. If your numbers are off, check those five things before assuming the tracking is broken.

Where this sits in the cluster

This is the Bing/Microsoft-specific counterpart to the Google Merchant CenterGoogle Merchant Center (GMC) is a free platform where retailers upload and manage product data so their products can appear across Google — Shopping, organic Search product grids, Images, Lens, and AI surfaces. Since 2020 it powers free (organic) product listings, not just paid Shopping ads. hub and the generic feed optimizationGoogle Merchant Center feed optimization is the process of improving the quality, accuracy, and completeness of the product data you submit to Google Merchant Center — titles, identifiers, images, and attributes — so your products show up more often and in more relevant places across Shopping ads, free listings, and AI shopping surfaces. deep dive — it owns what’s actually different about MMC. For the star-ratings side across both engines, see the product review feedsA product review feed is a structured XML file (following a Google-defined schema) that merchants or approved aggregators submit to Google Merchant Center — and separately to Microsoft Merchant Center — to populate the 1–5 star ratings and review counts shown on Shopping ads and free product listings. It is a different file from the main product feed, and different from Review/AggregateRating schema markup. piece in this cluster; for disapprovals and Microsoft’s three-tier enforcement model, see the disapprovals piece. The broader ecommerce SEOEcommerce SEO is the practice of optimizing an online store so its product and category pages rank in organic search and attract purchase-intent visitors. It uses the same Google algorithm as any other site, but compounds the usual SEO work with commerce-specific challenges like faceted navigation, product variants, and platform-imposed URLs. pillar ties the merchant-center cluster to product pages, category pages, and site structureWebsite structure (site architecture) is a site's visible hierarchy, navigation, breadcrumbs, and URL organization — how pages relate and how people and search engines move between them. Internal linking is the primary signal Google reads to understand that structure, not URL folders..

AI summary

A condensed take on the Advanced version:

• Microsoft Merchant CenterGoogle Merchant Center (GMC) is a free platform where retailers upload and manage product data so their products can appear across Google — Shopping, organic Search product grids, Images, Lens, and AI surfaces. Since 2020 it powers free (organic) product listings, not just paid Shopping ads. (MMC) = the Bing/Copilot-side Merchant Center. One feed drives both free Product ListingsFree product listings (originally launched as \"Surfaces across Google\" in 2020) are unpaid, organic product placements Google generates from your Merchant Center feed or on-page Product structured data. There's no bid and no CPC — Google matches your product data to a query and decides whether and where to show it — across the Shopping tab, Google Search (Popular Products grids), Images, Lens, Maps/Business Profile, YouTube, and Gemini; AI Mode and AI Overviews aren't on Google's official surfaces list, though practitioner reporting links them to the same eligibility pool. They're enabled by default in most cases for new Merchant Center accounts. (Bing Shopping tab) and paid Microsoft Shopping Campaigns.
• The naming is a rename: Bing Merchant Center → Microsoft Merchant CenterMicrosoft's free platform (inside Microsoft Advertising, formerly 'Bing Merchant Center') where retailers create a store and submit a product feed. One feed powers both free Product Listings on the Bing Shopping tab and paid Microsoft Shopping Campaigns — the Bing/Copilot-side twin of Google Merchant Center. As of 2026 it's also the product-data foundation Copilot draws on for AI-assisted shopping and checkout. (tool); Bing Shopping → Microsoft Shopping (surface); both live inside Microsoft Advertising.
• Free listingsFree product listings (originally launched as \"Surfaces across Google\" in 2020) are unpaid, organic product placements Google generates from your Merchant Center feed or on-page Product structured data. There's no bid and no CPC — Google matches your product data to a query and decides whether and where to show it — across the Shopping tab, Google Search (Popular Products grids), Images, Lens, Maps/Business Profile, YouTube, and Gemini; AI Mode and AI Overviews aren't on Google's official surfaces list, though practitioner reporting links them to the same eligibility pool. They're enabled by default in most cases for new Merchant Center accounts. launched August 2020; existing advertisers were auto-enrolled, new merchants submit a feed and get approved. Can be turned off in store settings.
• Feed spec ≈ Google’s but not identical. Microsoft’s API lists ~13-14 required-for-insert fields, with shipping mandatory for Germany and sizing mandatory for apparel targeting FR/DE/UK/US. The “6 required fields” claim is wrong.
• identifierExists flags whether gtinProduct identifiers are the standardized values — GTIN (Global Trade Item Number), MPN (Manufacturer Part Number), and brand — that shopping feeds like Google Merchant Center and Microsoft Merchant Center use to match a product listing to the correct item in their catalog. A GTIN alone is usually enough; without one, brand + MPN is the fallback; products with none declare that with the identifier_exists attribute./mpn/brand are present; missing identifiers warn rather than hard-disapprove (softer than Google).
• Schema is a deliberate superset: additionalImageLinks, adwordsGrouping, adwordsLabels, destinations, taxes, validatedDestinations are accepted but ignored (Google-compatibility only) — which is why the Google feed-import tool (2018) works without remapping.
• Regional inventory (regionalproducts) covers a narrower 14-country list — don’t conflate with the general targeting footprint.
• Paid Shopping Campaigns span 90+ countries — far broader than the free-listing rollout markets (a common myth).
• 2026 updates: self-serve store name/domain edits (March), Product Explorer (June), and UCPThe Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) is an open-source standard (Apache 2.0) led by Google and co-developed with Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Target, and Walmart that lets AI agents, merchants, and payment providers transact through a common language instead of bespoke integrations. Merchants advertise their capabilities at /.well-known/ucp.-ready feeds (US GA, April).
• Agentic commerceThe Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) is an open standard/protocol whose first implementing AI platform is OpenAI and first compatible payment provider is Stripe, defining how AI shopping agents discover products, manage carts, and complete purchases on a buyer's behalf — by reading a merchant's product feed and APIs instead of crawling the website.: MMC feeds enable discovery in Copilot; UCP enables transactions. You stay the merchant of record, Microsoft takes no commission today, and MMC isn’t required for Copilot Checkout — but its feeds inform organic Copilot results, making it the AI-shopping visibility lever beyond pure Bing search.
• Reporting is paid-only. Shopping Campaign reports (product dimension, partition, match-count, search-query) measure paid delivery, not free-listing visibility — there’s no first-party report for the latter. Conversion tracking runs on Microsoft’s standard UET/goals/attribution-window model, so some discrepancy against Google Analytics/Ads is expected, not a bug.

Official documentation

Primary-source documentation. Google publishes nothing about Microsoft’s shopping surfaces (it’s a competing product), so this section is Microsoft-only by nature — the closest Google-side context is the Google Merchant CenterGoogle Merchant Center (GMC) is a free platform where retailers upload and manage product data so their products can appear across Google — Shopping, organic Search product grids, Images, Lens, and AI surfaces. Since 2020 it powers free (organic) product listings, not just paid Shopping ads. hub, whose free-listings model Bing’s Product Listings followed.

Microsoft / Bing — API reference (static-rendered, quotable)

• Product Ads — Microsoft Advertising API — what MMC is, how Shopping Campaigns relate, the setup workflow, and the 90+ country availability list.
• Products resource — Microsoft Advertising API — the full required/optional field table, the DE-shipping and FR/DE/UK/US-sizing rules, identifierExists, and the Google-compatibility-only fields.
• Regional products resource — Microsoft Advertising API — regional/multi-region inventory and its narrower country list.
• Report Types — Microsoft Advertising API — the Product Ads report family (dimension, partition, match-count, search-query); scoped to paid Shopping Campaign delivery.
• How does conversion tracking work? — Microsoft Advertising — UET, conversion goals, attribution windows/models, and the official discrepancy-vs-Google-Analytics FAQ.

Microsoft / Bing — blogs & solution pages (JavaScript-rendered; verify wording live)

• Agentic Commerce — Microsoft Advertising — feeds-for-discovery vs. UCPThe Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) is an open-source standard (Apache 2.0) led by Google and co-developed with Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Target, and Walmart that lets AI agents, merchants, and payment providers transact through a common language instead of bespoke integrations. Merchants advertise their capabilities at /.well-known/ucp.-for-transactions, merchant-of-record, and the no-commission-today statement.
• Conversations that Convert: Copilot Checkout and Brand Agents (Jan 2026) — MMC not required for Copilot Checkout but feeds inform organic Copilot results.
• Product explorer in Merchant Center — product news for June 2026 — the Product Explorer catalog view.

Quotes from the source

On-the-record statements from Microsoft’s static-rendered API documentation. Each link is a deep link that jumps to the quoted passage on the source page.

Microsoft — what MMC is and how Shopping Campaigns relate

• “A Microsoft Shopping campaign enables you to advertise the products from your Microsoft Merchant CenterGoogle Merchant Center (GMC) is a free platform where retailers upload and manage product data so their products can appear across Google — Shopping, organic Search product grids, Images, Lens, and AI surfaces. Since 2020 it powers free (organic) product listings, not just paid Shopping ads. store product catalog. Product ads from a Microsoft Shopping campaign include details about the product, an image, and optional promotional text.” — Microsoft Advertising API, Product Ads. Jump to quote

Microsoft — the country-conditional feed rules

• “NOTE: Shipping is required if the target country is DE (Germany); otherwise, it’s optional.” — Microsoft Advertising API, Products resource. Jump to quote
• “This field is required for all Apparel & Accessories products when targeting: France, Germany, United Kingdom, and United States.” — Microsoft Advertising API, Products resource (sizes). Jump to quote

Microsoft — the identifierExists flag

• “A Boolean value that determines whether the product offer specifies the gtinProduct identifiers are the standardized values — GTIN (Global Trade Item Number), MPN (Manufacturer Part Number), and brand — that shopping feeds like Google Merchant Center and Microsoft Merchant Center use to match a product listing to the correct item in their catalog. A GTIN alone is usually enough; without one, brand + MPN is the fallback; products with none declare that with the identifier_exists attribute., mpn, or brand identifiers. The default is true. Set to false if you do not specify all three of the identifiers.” — Microsoft Advertising API, Products resource (identifierExists). Jump to quote

Microsoft — the Google-compatibility superset

• “MMC does not use the additional images; this field is included for Google compatibility.” — Microsoft Advertising API, Products resource (additionalImageLinks). Jump to quote

Microsoft — regional inventory

• “Use the regional products resource to manage region definitions and regional product offerings in your Microsoft Merchant CenterMicrosoft's free platform (inside Microsoft Advertising, formerly 'Bing Merchant Center') where retailers create a store and submit a product feed. One feed powers both free Product Listings on the Bing Shopping tab and paid Microsoft Shopping Campaigns — the Bing/Copilot-side twin of Google Merchant Center. As of 2026 it's also the product-data foundation Copilot draws on for AI-assisted shopping and checkout. store (MMC).” — Microsoft Advertising API, Regional products resource. Jump to quote

MMC vs. Google Merchant Center — what’s actually different

Feed fields Microsoft keeps but ignores (Google-compatibility only)

additionalImageLinks · adwordsGrouping · adwordsLabels · destinations · taxes · validatedDestinations

These exist so a raw Google Shopping feed imports without breaking. They no-op in MMC.

Fast facts

• Cost: MMC and free Product ListingsFree product listings (originally launched as \"Surfaces across Google\" in 2020) are unpaid, organic product placements Google generates from your Merchant Center feed or on-page Product structured data. There's no bid and no CPC — Google matches your product data to a query and decides whether and where to show it — across the Shopping tab, Google Search (Popular Products grids), Images, Lens, Maps/Business Profile, YouTube, and Gemini; AI Mode and AI Overviews aren't on Google's official surfaces list, though practitioner reporting links them to the same eligibility pool. They're enabled by default in most cases for new Merchant Center accounts. are free; paid Shopping Campaigns are optional on top.
• Setup path: Tools > Microsoft Merchant Center > Create store → verify domain (Bing Webmaster ToolsMicrosoft's free portal for monitoring and improving how a site appears in Bing search — the peer to Google Search Console, plus IndexNow instant indexing, richer backlink data, and keyword volumes. Because Bing's index also feeds Microsoft Copilot, it doubles as a window into AI-search visibility.) → submit feed (FTP/SFTP, Content API, or Google import).
• Approval: manual editorial review; ~5 business days commonly cited (practitioner-reported, not a documented SLA).
• Paid country footprint: 90+ countries — much wider than the free-listing rollout markets.
• Regional inventory countries: US, CA, BR, GB, FR, DE, HU, CH, NL, AU, NZ, IN, ID, MY.
• 2026: self-serve name/domain edits (Mar), Product Explorer (Jun), UCPThe Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) is an open-source standard (Apache 2.0) led by Google and co-developed with Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Target, and Walmart that lets AI agents, merchants, and payment providers transact through a common language instead of bespoke integrations. Merchants advertise their capabilities at /.well-known/ucp.-ready feeds (Apr, US).
• Copilot: MMC is not required for Copilot Checkout, but its feeds inform organic Copilot shopping results.
• Reporting: Product Ads reports (dimension, partition, match-count, search-query) cover paid delivery only — no first-party report for free-listing visibility. Conversions run on UET/goals/attribution windows; expect some divergence from Google Analytics/Ads by design.

Mistakes I see with Microsoft Merchant Center

“Bing Shopping only works in a handful of English-speaking countries.” Wrong because that’s the narrower free Product ListingsFree product listings (originally launched as \"Surfaces across Google\" in 2020) are unpaid, organic product placements Google generates from your Merchant Center feed or on-page Product structured data. There's no bid and no CPC — Google matches your product data to a query and decides whether and where to show it — across the Shopping tab, Google Search (Popular Products grids), Images, Lens, Maps/Business Profile, YouTube, and Gemini; AI Mode and AI Overviews aren't on Google's official surfaces list, though practitioner reporting links them to the same eligibility pool. They're enabled by default in most cases for new Merchant Center accounts. rollout footprint (US, then UK/Canada/Australia/France/Germany) — the paid Microsoft Shopping Campaigns footprint spans 90+ countries per Microsoft’s own docs. Instead: check the Product Ads availability list for your market before assuming you’re excluded.

“You can’t change your Merchant CenterGoogle Merchant Center (GMC) is a free platform where retailers upload and manage product data so their products can appear across Google — Shopping, organic Search product grids, Images, Lens, and AI surfaces. Since 2020 it powers free (organic) product listings, not just paid Shopping ads. store name once it’s set.” Wrong since March 2026 — Microsoft made store name and domain edits self-serve (name changes go through editorial review; domain changes need ownership verification). Some currently-ranking competitor articles still state the old rule. Instead: change it in Merchant Center directly rather than opening a support ticket or recreating the store.

“My Google Shopping feed will drop straight into Bing with zero changes.” Partly true, dangerously so. Microsoft built compatibility on purpose, so a raw Google feed imports and the Google-only fields silently no-op. But the DE-only mandatory shipping, the FR/DE/UK/US-only mandatory apparel sizing, and MMC’s own identifier handling are real differences that can throw warnings or rejections. Instead: import the Google feed, then audit specifically for those country/apparel conditionals.

“I need to run paid Shopping Campaigns to get free listingsFree product listings (originally launched as \"Surfaces across Google\" in 2020) are unpaid, organic product placements Google generates from your Merchant Center feed or on-page Product structured data. There's no bid and no CPC — Google matches your product data to a query and decides whether and where to show it — across the Shopping tab, Google Search (Popular Products grids), Images, Lens, Maps/Business Profile, YouTube, and Gemini; AI Mode and AI Overviews aren't on Google's official surfaces list, though practitioner reporting links them to the same eligibility pool. They're enabled by default in most cases for new Merchant Center accounts..” Wrong — free Product Listings piggyback on an approved MMC catalog with no ad spend. Paid is optional on top. Instead: create the store, submit the feed, get approved, and you’re in free listings.

“Merchant Center is only about Bing search traffic.” Increasingly wrong in 2026. Microsoft positions MMC feed quality as the input for Copilot’s organic shopping results and, when UCPThe Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) is an open-source standard (Apache 2.0) led by Google and co-developed with Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Target, and Walmart that lets AI agents, merchants, and payment providers transact through a common language instead of bespoke integrations. Merchants advertise their capabilities at /.well-known/ucp.-ready, for agentic checkout — independent of classic Bing search share. Instead: treat MMC as your AI-shopping visibility lever, not just a “second search engine” checkbox.

“Missing a GTINProduct identifiers are the standardized values — GTIN (Global Trade Item Number), MPN (Manufacturer Part Number), and brand — that shopping feeds like Google Merchant Center and Microsoft Merchant Center use to match a product listing to the correct item in their catalog. A GTIN alone is usually enough; without one, brand + MPN is the fallback; products with none declare that with the identifier_exists attribute. in Bing works exactly like it does in Google.” Not quite. Where Google often hard-disapproves on missing identifiers, MMC tends to warn — it accepts the offer via identifierExists=false but tells you to fix it. Instead: still supply gtin/mpn/brand whenever known; the warning is a signal, not a free pass.

“My Microsoft Shopping report shows how free listings are doing.” Wrong. Every Product Ads report (dimension, partition, match-count, search-query) is scoped to paid Shopping Campaign delivery — none of them measure free Product Listings impressions or clicks. Instead: treat those reports as a paid-campaign-only tool and don’t infer organic performance from them.

“My Bing conversion count should match Google Analytics exactly.” Not by default. Microsoft’s own conversion-tracking FAQ lists several structural reasons the numbers diverge — separate UET vs. Google tags, different conversion windows or goal definitions, unique-vs-all counting differences, cross-device attribution handled differently, and no built-in fraud/duplicate filtering. Instead: expect some discrepancy as normal, and only chase it down as a bug once you’ve matched tag installs, windows, and goal definitions across both platforms.

A Google feed imports but Microsoft reports country errors

Symptom: The same feed works in Google, but Microsoft warns or rejects offers after a target-country or apparel rollout. Likely cause: Microsoft-specific conditional fields are missing—shipping for Germany, or apparel sizing for France, Germany, the United Kingdom, or the United States. Fix: Segment affected offers by target country and category, add the required values from the commerce source, then reprocess the cohort. Confirm the warnings clear; do not populate a made-up size or shipping value just to satisfy the field.

Identifier warnings remain on accepted offers

Symptom: Products are accepted but return warnings about GTINProduct identifiers are the standardized values — GTIN (Global Trade Item Number), MPN (Manufacturer Part Number), and brand — that shopping feeds like Google Merchant Center and Microsoft Merchant Center use to match a product listing to the correct item in their catalog. A GTIN alone is usually enough; without one, brand + MPN is the fallback; products with none declare that with the identifier_exists attribute., MPN, brand, or identifierExists. Likely cause: Known identifiers are missing, or identifierExists does not match the submitted fields. Fix: Use the manufacturer-assigned values when known. For a product that genuinely has none, set identifierExists to false; otherwise supply the real identifiers. Confirm the next product response no longer includes the identifier warning.

Imported Google fields appear to have no effect

Symptom: A value such as an additional image or Google campaign field is present in the imported file but does not change the Microsoft listing. Likely cause: Microsoft accepts several Google-only fields solely for file compatibility and ignores them. Fix: Check the Microsoft Products resource definition before debugging transport. Move the intended value into a field Microsoft actually uses, or accept that there is no equivalent behavior.

Store or catalog never becomes usable

Symptom: The feed exists, but products do not reach free listingsFree product listings (originally launched as \"Surfaces across Google\" in 2020) are unpaid, organic product placements Google generates from your Merchant Center feed or on-page Product structured data. There's no bid and no CPC — Google matches your product data to a query and decides whether and where to show it — across the Shopping tab, Google Search (Popular Products grids), Images, Lens, Maps/Business Profile, YouTube, and Gemini; AI Mode and AI Overviews aren't on Google's official surfaces list, though practitioner reporting links them to the same eligibility pool. They're enabled by default in most cases for new Merchant Center accounts. or campaigns. Likely cause: Domain verification, store editorial review, catalog association, or product approval is incomplete. Fix: Verify the domain through Bing Webmaster ToolsMicrosoft's free portal for monitoring and improving how a site appears in Bing search — the peer to Google Search Console, plus IndexNow instant indexing, richer backlink data, and keyword volumes. Because Bing's index also feeds Microsoft Copilot, it doubles as a window into AI-search visibility., check the store and catalog status in Microsoft Merchant CenterGoogle Merchant Center (GMC) is a free platform where retailers upload and manage product data so their products can appear across Google — Shopping, organic Search product grids, Images, Lens, and AI surfaces. Since 2020 it powers free (organic) product listings, not just paid Shopping ads., and resolve feed issues before creating or attaching a paid Shopping campaign. Confirm both store and offers are approved rather than relying on a successful upload alone.

Microsoft Merchant Center store setup checklist

• Open Tools → Microsoft Merchant CenterGoogle Merchant Center (GMC) is a free platform where retailers upload and manage product data so their products can appear across Google — Shopping, organic Search product grids, Images, Lens, and AI surfaces. Since 2020 it powers free (organic) product listings, not just paid Shopping ads. → Create store in Microsoft Advertising.
• Enter the real store name, destination domain, target markets, and contact details.
• Verify ownership of the domain through Bing Webmaster ToolsMicrosoft's free portal for monitoring and improving how a site appears in Bing search — the peer to Google Search Console, plus IndexNow instant indexing, richer backlink data, and keyword volumes. Because Bing's index also feeds Microsoft Copilot, it doubles as a window into AI-search visibility..
• Create the product catalog and retain the store’s system identifier for API or campaign setup.
• Choose a supported submission method: FTP/SFTP, Content API, or Google Merchant CenterGoogle Merchant Center (GMC) is a free platform where retailers upload and manage product data so their products can appear across Google — Shopping, organic Search product grids, Images, Lens, and AI surfaces. Since 2020 it powers free (organic) product listings, not just paid Shopping ads. import.
• Include Microsoft’s core required product fields—not only the smaller set a simplified guide may list.
• Add shipping for Germany and apparel sizing for FR/DE/UK/US where those country/category conditions apply.
• Submit real GTINProduct identifiers are the standardized values — GTIN (Global Trade Item Number), MPN (Manufacturer Part Number), and brand — that shopping feeds like Google Merchant Center and Microsoft Merchant Center use to match a product listing to the correct item in their catalog. A GTIN alone is usually enough; without one, brand + MPN is the fallback; products with none declare that with the identifier_exists attribute., MPN, and brand values when assigned; align identifierExists with the actual product.
• Wait for store editorial review and product processing; treat any timing estimate as practitioner guidance, not a guaranteed SLA.
• Confirm approved products can appear in free Product ListingsFree product listings (originally launched as \"Surfaces across Google\" in 2020) are unpaid, organic product placements Google generates from your Merchant Center feed or on-page Product structured data. There's no bid and no CPC — Google matches your product data to a query and decides whether and where to show it — across the Shopping tab, Google Search (Popular Products grids), Images, Lens, Maps/Business Profile, YouTube, and Gemini; AI Mode and AI Overviews aren't on Google's official surfaces list, though practitioner reporting links them to the same eligibility pool. They're enabled by default in most cases for new Merchant Center accounts. before deciding whether to add a paid Shopping campaign.
• If adding paid campaigns, associate the approved store/catalog and verify the target market is on Microsoft’s current Product Ads availability list.

Google-feed import compatibility test

Test to run: Import a representative cohort, then compare the processed Microsoft product records and warnings with the source Google feed. Expected result: Supported product fields process, compatibility-only fields are safely ignored, and no required Microsoft field is missing. Failure interpretation: The feed is structurally accepted but country, category, or identifier requirements still differ. Monitoring window: As soon as the cohort finishes processing. Rollback trigger: Stop the full-catalog import when the sample produces systemic warnings, rejections, or material field loss.

Country-conditional field test

Test to run: Filter the upload to Germany-targeted offers and apparel targeting France, Germany, the United Kingdom, or the United States; inspect shipping and size values before and after processing. Expected result: German offers contain the required shipping data and applicable apparel offers contain sizing. Failure interpretation: The country/category transformation did not run or source data is incomplete. Monitoring window: Before upload and immediately after processing. Rollback trigger: Hold the target-market expansion when required values are missing or fabricated values would be needed.

Identifier response test

Test to run: Submit a sample covering products with GTINsProduct identifiers are the standardized values — GTIN (Global Trade Item Number), MPN (Manufacturer Part Number), and brand — that shopping feeds like Google Merchant Center and Microsoft Merchant Center use to match a product listing to the correct item in their catalog. A GTIN alone is usually enough; without one, brand + MPN is the fallback; products with none declare that with the identifier_exists attribute., brand-plus-MPN fallbacks, and genuinely identifier-less products; inspect the API or catalog warnings. Expected result: Assigned identifiers are present and correct, while identifier-less products explicitly use identifierExists: false. Failure interpretation: Identifier fields are missing, mis-mapped, or contradicted by the flag. Monitoring window: On the first processed response and after any identifier-source change. Rollback trigger: Do not roll the mapping across the catalog when the sample reuses identifiers or generates systematic warnings.

Test yourself: Microsoft Shopping & Bing Merchant Center

Five quick questions on how Microsoft Merchant CenterGoogle Merchant Center (GMC) is a free platform where retailers upload and manage product data so their products can appear across Google — Shopping, organic Search product grids, Images, Lens, and AI surfaces. Since 2020 it powers free (organic) product listings, not just paid Shopping ads. works and how it differs from Google’s. Pick an answer for each, then check.

Resources worth your time

Microsoft Merchant CenterGoogle Merchant Center (GMC) is a free platform where retailers upload and manage product data so their products can appear across Google — Shopping, organic Search product grids, Images, Lens, and AI surfaces. Since 2020 it powers free (organic) product listings, not just paid Shopping ads. is a genuine gap in my own byline — I haven’t written a dedicated Bing Merchant Center piece — so the list below is the sibling context on my site plus the verified Microsoft and third-party sources I’d send you to.

On this site

• Google Merchant CenterGoogle Merchant Center (GMC) is a free platform where retailers upload and manage product data so their products can appear across Google — Shopping, organic Search product grids, Images, Lens, and AI surfaces. Since 2020 it powers free (organic) product listings, not just paid Shopping ads. — the Google-side hub (free listingsFree product listings (originally launched as \"Surfaces across Google\" in 2020) are unpaid, organic product placements Google generates from your Merchant Center feed or on-page Product structured data. There's no bid and no CPC — Google matches your product data to a query and decides whether and where to show it — across the Shopping tab, Google Search (Popular Products grids), Images, Lens, Maps/Business Profile, YouTube, and Gemini; AI Mode and AI Overviews aren't on Google's official surfaces list, though practitioner reporting links them to the same eligibility pool. They're enabled by default in most cases for new Merchant Center accounts., srsltid). Read this first if you’re new to Merchant Center generally; MMC mirrors most of its model.
• Merchant Center Feed OptimizationGoogle Merchant Center feed optimization is the process of improving the quality, accuracy, and completeness of the product data you submit to Google Merchant Center — titles, identifiers, images, and attributes — so your products show up more often and in more relevant places across Shopping ads, free listings, and AI shopping surfaces. — generic feed best practices (titles, GTINProduct identifiers are the standardized values — GTIN (Global Trade Item Number), MPN (Manufacturer Part Number), and brand — that shopping feeds like Google Merchant Center and Microsoft Merchant Center use to match a product listing to the correct item in their catalog. A GTIN alone is usually enough; without one, brand + MPN is the fallback; products with none declare that with the identifier_exists attribute. coverage, images, feed rules) that apply to both engines.
• Universal Commerce ProtocolThe Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) is an open-source standard (Apache 2.0) led by Google and co-developed with Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Target, and Walmart that lets AI agents, merchants, and payment providers transact through a common language instead of bespoke integrations. Merchants advertise their capabilities at /.well-known/ucp. — the UCPThe Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) is an open-source standard (Apache 2.0) led by Google and co-developed with Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Target, and Walmart that lets AI agents, merchants, and payment providers transact through a common language instead of bespoke integrations. Merchants advertise their capabilities at /.well-known/ucp. deep dive; this article links out for the protocol mechanics rather than re-explaining them.
• Ecommerce SEOEcommerce SEO is the practice of optimizing an online store so its product and category pages rank in organic search and attract purchase-intent visitors. It uses the same Google algorithm as any other site, but compounds the usual SEO work with commerce-specific challenges like faceted navigation, product variants, and platform-imposed URLs. — the pillar that ties the merchant-center cluster to product pages, category pages, and site structureWebsite structure (site architecture) is a site's visible hierarchy, navigation, breadcrumbs, and URL organization — how pages relate and how people and search engines move between them. Internal linking is the primary signal Google reads to understand that structure, not URL folders..

Official Microsoft

• Product Ads — Microsoft Advertising API — the store setup workflow and the full country-availability list.
• Products resource — Microsoft Advertising API — the required-field table, the DE/apparel conditionals, identifierExists, and the Google-compatibility-only fields.
• Regional products resource — Microsoft Advertising API — regional inventory and its country list.
• Agentic Commerce — Microsoft Advertising — feeds-for-discovery vs. UCP-for-transactions and merchant-of-record framing.
• Report Types — Microsoft Advertising API — the Product Ads reporting family for Shopping Campaigns (paid delivery only).
• How does conversion tracking work? — Microsoft Advertising — UET, goals, attribution windows/models, and why numbers diverge from Google Analytics/Ads.

From around the industry

• Bing Shopping opens up to free product listings (Search Engine Land) — the Aug 2020 free-listings launch and auto-enrollment.
• Bing Merchant Center launches Google Merchant Center Import tool (Search Engine Land) — the 2018 origin of the Google feed-import shortcut.
• Microsoft lets merchants update store names and domains in Merchant Center (Search Engine Land) — the March 2026 self-serve name/domain change.
• Universal Commerce Protocol Supported in Microsoft Merchant Center (PPC News Feed) — the April 2026 UCP GA in MMC.
• Bing Shopping Now Allows Free Listings But All The Way In The Footer (Search Engine Roundtable) — contemporaneous coverage of where free listings first appeared.
• Free Product Listings on Bing Shopping (Hall Internet Marketing) — a practitioner walkthrough of the free-listings setup.

Microsoft Merchant Center

Microsoft's free platform (inside Microsoft Advertising, formerly 'Bing Merchant Center') where retailers create a store and submit a product feed. One feed powers both free Product Listings on the Bing Shopping tab and paid Microsoft Shopping Campaigns — the Bing/Copilot-side twin of Google Merchant Center. As of 2026 it's also the product-data foundation Copilot draws on for AI-assisted shopping and checkout.

Related: Google Merchant Center, Google Merchant Center Feed Optimization, Bing Webmaster Tools

Microsoft Merchant Center

Microsoft Merchant CenterGoogle Merchant Center (GMC) is a free platform where retailers upload and manage product data so their products can appear across Google — Shopping, organic Search product grids, Images, Lens, and AI surfaces. Since 2020 it powers free (organic) product listings, not just paid Shopping ads. (MMC) — historically called “Bing Merchant Center” — is the free platform inside Microsoft Advertising where retailers create a store and submit a product feed. That one feed powers everything on Microsoft’s consumer shopping surfaces: both free Product ListingsFree product listings (originally launched as \"Surfaces across Google\" in 2020) are unpaid, organic product placements Google generates from your Merchant Center feed or on-page Product structured data. There's no bid and no CPC — Google matches your product data to a query and decides whether and where to show it — across the Shopping tab, Google Search (Popular Products grids), Images, Lens, Maps/Business Profile, YouTube, and Gemini; AI Mode and AI Overviews aren't on Google's official surfaces list, though practitioner reporting links them to the same eligibility pool. They're enabled by default in most cases for new Merchant Center accounts. (organic, unpaid placements on the Bing Shopping tab) and paid Product Ads run through Microsoft Shopping Campaigns.

It’s Microsoft’s direct equivalent of Google Merchant CenterGoogle Merchant Center (GMC) is a free platform where retailers upload and manage product data so their products can appear across Google — Shopping, organic Search product grids, Images, Lens, and AI surfaces. Since 2020 it powers free (organic) product listings, not just paid Shopping ads., and the free-listings mechanic mirrors Google’s almost exactly — submit a feed, get approved, appear for relevant queries at no cost. But it has its own quirks: a Germany-specific mandatory-shipping rule, mandatory apparel sizing for France/Germany/UK/US, an identifierExists flag, and a Google Merchant Center feed-import tool that lets anyone already running Google Shopping shortcut setup because Microsoft’s feed schema is deliberately a superset that tolerates a raw Google feed (Google-only fields are accepted but silently ignored).

“Microsoft Shopping” is the consumer-facing brand for the surface itself — the Shopping tab on Bing and shopping modules in Bing, Edge, and Copilot. As of 2026, Microsoft has repositioned MMC feeds as the data foundation for Copilot’s organic shopping results and, when UCPThe Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) is an open-source standard (Apache 2.0) led by Google and co-developed with Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Target, and Walmart that lets AI agents, merchants, and payment providers transact through a common language instead of bespoke integrations. Merchants advertise their capabilities at /.well-known/ucp.-ready, agentic checkoutAgentic checkout is the transaction-completion step of agentic commerce: the mechanism by which an AI agent creates, updates, and finalizes a purchase on a shopper's behalf — selecting fulfillment, calculating tax and shipping, passing a scoped payment token, and triggering order creation — often without the shopper visiting the merchant's site. — so it’s no longer “just” a Bing-search feed pipeline.

Related: Google Merchant Center, Google Merchant Center Feed Optimization, Bing Webmaster Tools

Changelog