Google Merchant Center for Jewelry Stores: Shopping and Facebook Feeds

Free listings or Shopping ads?

A customer searches for "oval sapphire halo ring" on her phone and sees pieces with photos and prices from several stores. Some of those are paid ads and some are free listings. Both come from Google Merchant Center, the free account where you send Google a list of your products, called a feed.

According to Google's free listings help page (opens in a new tab), new Merchant Center accounts are opted in to free listings by default, but being opted in does not mean every piece will show. Only product pages qualify; your home page and category pages do not. Free listings also ask for a return policy on your website and, in the US, shipping information.

Both use the same feed, so the work below pays off either way.

What a jewelry feed needs in Google Merchant Center

Google's product data specification (opens in a new tab) lists what each product needs. For a jewelry store, these are the fields to get right:

Jewelry sits inside Google's Apparel and Accessories category, with subcategories for rings, necklaces, earrings, bracelets and watches. For free listings, Google asks products in that category for an age group, a gender and a color (age group rules (opens in a new tab)), so it is easier to send them from the start than to clear warnings later.

One-of-a-kind, estate and custom pieces

Product feeds were designed around goods with barcodes. Much of what a jeweler sells has none, and Google allows for that:

• Without a GTIN, leave the field blank. Google asks for a GTIN only when the manufacturer assigned one, and tells merchants not to guess or make one up. If a piece has no GTIN and no brand with a manufacturer part number, set identifier_exists to no.
• Without a brand, leave that field empty too. Don't fill it with placeholder words like "Generic" or "None". For pieces your shop designs and makes, your store's name can be the brand.
• Estate pieces are used. Google requires the condition field for second-hand items, so set it to used (condition attribute (opens in a new tab)). Saying "estate" or "pre-owned" in the title helps shoppers too.
• One piece, one listing. When a one-of-a-kind piece sells, it has to leave the feed or show out of stock right away, or shoppers will click through to something you can't sell them.

Describe lab-grown and treated stones clearly

The FTC's Jewelry Guides apply to your feed and website just as they apply at the counter. A lab-made stone described with a gem name needs a qualifier such as "laboratory-grown" or "laboratory-created" immediately before the name, shown as clearly as the name itself (16 CFR 23.25 (opens in a new tab)). In practice, write "laboratory-grown diamond" in the title, not only somewhere in the description.

The guides also say to disclose gemstone treatments that are not permanent, need special care or significantly affect value, and for online sales that disclosure belongs in the product description (16 CFR 23.24 (opens in a new tab)). This is general information, not legal advice; check the guides with your own advisor.

Google rules that trip up jewelry stores

Watch for these before they turn into disapprovals:

• Price and availability mismatches. Google crawls your product pages and compares them with your feed. Prices must match exactly, and a mismatch can get the piece disapproved and may put the account at risk of suspension (mismatched price help (opens in a new tab)).
• Photos. The main image must clearly show the exact item for sale, with no promotional text, watermarks or borders (image requirements (opens in a new tab)). On April 14, 2026, Google announced that the minimum size for product images rises to 500 x 500 pixels on January 31, 2027 (2026 specification update (opens in a new tab)).
• AI-made photos and text. Images created with generative AI must keep the metadata that marks them as AI-generated, and AI-written titles and descriptions belong in Google's structured title and structured description fields (AI-generated content (opens in a new tab)).
• Designer names. Google's counterfeit policy covers listings that pair a brand name with words like "replica", "imitation" or "knock off" to pass a piece off as the real thing. Google treats violations as egregious, which can mean suspension without warning (counterfeit products policy (opens in a new tab)). Keep other designers' names out of titles for pieces that aren't theirs.

Keeping prices and stock in step with your POS

A feed is a copy of your inventory, and copies drift. The safest setup is a feed generated from the same inventory your POS uses, so a sale, a hold or a price change reaches the feed without anyone having to remember it.

1. Update the feed at least daily, and more often if your tools allow. One-of-a-kind pieces can't wait for a weekly upload.
2. Make sure a held or sold piece drops out of the feed or shows out of stock.
3. Reprice in one place. After a move in gold, change the price in the POS and let the website and feed follow. Our post on gold prices and margins covers how to reprice.
4. Leave memo pieces off the feed unless your memo agreement allows online listings.
5. Spot-check 5 pieces a week. Price and availability in Merchant Center should match the product page and the tag.

The same problem shows up on your own site, and we covered it in keeping your website in step with your cases.

Local inventory for pieces in your store

Google can also show shoppers what is in stock nearby, either at no cost through free local listings or paid through local inventory ads. That suits pieces people want to see in person before buying, like engagement rings and watches.

To take part you need a physical store, and shoppers must be able to visit, see and buy the item there (local inventory policies (opens in a new tab)). The setup has 3 parts:

• A Google Business Profile for each store, with a store code.
• Your regular product feed.
• A local inventory feed that gives, for each store and piece, the store code, the product ID, availability, quantity and price.

Store codes in the local feed must match the codes on your Business Profile, and Google may ask you to take part in inventory verifications. If your profile needs work first, start with local SEO for jewelry stores.

Facebook and Instagram catalogs

Meta works from a catalog, a list of your products that drives catalog ads on Facebook and on Instagram's feed, Stories and Explore (Instagram catalog ads (opens in a new tab)). You can usually fill it from the same product data you send Google, with a few differences in Meta's catalog field rules (opens in a new tab):

• The required fields are familiar: id, title, description, availability, condition, price, link and image_link, plus at least one of brand, GTIN or MPN.
• Titles can run to 200 characters, but Meta recommends 65 or fewer so they don't get cut off.
• Images must be JPEG or PNG, at least 500 x 500 pixels and no larger than 8 MB.
• Prices are written as a number and a currency code, like 1250.00 USD.
• If an ID appears twice, Meta ignores every copy, so IDs have to be unique.

Catalog ads also use the Meta Pixel or app events to measure what shoppers do on your site (catalog ads overview (opens in a new tab)), so plan that part with whoever manages your website.