On this page
This guide is for online store owners who want their products in Bing Shopping. It walks through setting up Microsoft Merchant Center step by step: creating the store, verifying the website, and choosing between importing from Google Merchant Center and sending a separate feed file. Then it covers how to read the issues Microsoft reports and fix them.
What Microsoft Merchant Center is and where products appear
Microsoft Merchant Center, once called Bing Merchant Center, is where you keep the product catalog that Microsoft Advertising uses. It is part of your Microsoft Advertising account, under Tools → Merchant Center. Approved products can show in these places:
- Product listings in the Bing shopping tab. The tab has an unpaid section, and clicks from it are free. A store with approved products is opted in automatically, according to Microsoft’s Product listings help (opens in a new tab).
- Product ads from Microsoft Shopping campaigns and Performance Max campaigns, across the Microsoft Advertising Network. These are paid per click.
- Copilot. Microsoft says its shopping answers in Copilot (opens in a new tab) use information from the web and from a merchant’s feed in Microsoft Merchant Center.
For the shopping tab’s filtered results, Microsoft asks for a GTIN, brand and MPN on every product, and for colour, age group and gender on clothing and accessories.
What you need before you start
- A Microsoft Advertising account. The store is created and managed inside it.
- A verified website. Microsoft accepts two methods: verification in Bing Webmaster Tools, or an existing Universal Event Tracking (UET) tag on the site. A UET tag must register at least 50 events before the domain appears, and it can take another 48 hours after that.
- A store that passes review. Microsoft rejects stores for an unverified domain, adult products, no presence in a supported market, no real privacy policy, a checkout without SSL, or a domain that already has a store.
- Product pages on that domain. Every product link must be a sub-path or subdomain of the store’s URL. Offers that point elsewhere are rejected.
Step 1: Create the Microsoft Merchant Center store
- In Microsoft Advertising, select Tools → Merchant Center → Manage stores (the shopping cart icon).
- Select Create store.
- Under domain validation, choose Validated via Bing Webmaster Tools or Validated via Universal Event Tracking (UET) tag, and pick your domain.
- Enter the store name and store description. The name appears in your Product ads.
- Select Save. The next page shows whether the store was approved, rejected or queued for manual review.
Manual review can take up to five days, and Microsoft emails you the decision. Use the top-level URL of your site, such as https://example.com, without a port or IP address. Microsoft’s store setup help (opens in a new tab) is clear that you can’t change the domain once the store exists.
Step 2: Import from Google or send a Bing Shopping feed
Once the store is approved, you add products. Most stores choose one of two routes: import from Google Merchant Center, or give Microsoft its own feed file.
| Route | How it works | Good for | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Import from Google Merchant Center | Sign in to Google from the Import tab. Microsoft copies your Google offers into its own Google Import catalog, once or on a daily, weekly or monthly schedule. | Stores whose Google feed is already clean and approved. No second feed to maintain. | You get Google’s data as it is, including pending and disapproved offers, and Google values Microsoft doesn’t accept. |
| Feed file from a URL | Microsoft downloads the file from your server once every 24 hours, or on a daily, weekly or monthly schedule you set. | Stores that want Bing-specific titles, links or availability, or don’t use Google at all. | File must be under 1 GB and publicly reachable, or protected with a user name and password. |
| Manual upload or FTP/SFTP | Upload a file in the feed settings, or push it to Microsoft’s FTP/SFTP server. | Testing a few products. | Manual upload is for files under 4 MB and goes stale quickly. |
Importing is the fastest start if your Google feed is clean. A separate feed makes sense when you want different titles for Bing, links tagged for Bing in your analytics, availability values Microsoft accepts, or products you send to Microsoft but not to Google. Shopify, BigCommerce and PrestaShop have their own Microsoft apps; other platforms use one of these routes.
Route 1: Import from Google Merchant Center
- Select Tools → Merchant Center and choose your store.
- Open the Import tab and select New import.
- Sign in to the Google account that has your Google Merchant Center store.
- Under When, choose Now for a one-time import, or a daily, weekly or monthly schedule.
- Use Find and replace string in URL to change tracking values, for example “google” to “bing”, so clicks are credited correctly.
- For a schedule, add a schedule name and choose when to get email notifications.
- Select Next, review the summary, then Start Import or Save.
Imported products go into their own Google Import catalog, which you see in the Feeds tab. Microsoft’s Google import help (opens in a new tab) lists what to expect:
- Only online offers with the Shopping destination, in markets Microsoft supports, are imported. Local-only offers are skipped.
- All matching offers are imported, including pending and disapproved ones. Fix problems in Google first.
- Imported offers expire after 30 days, so the import has to run at least that often. A schedule keeps them current.
- The domain of the products in Google must match the Microsoft store’s domain, or the import fails with a store domain mismatch.
- Changing your Google password can break the connection. Select Change account and sign in again.
- Importing one store from a Google account with several stores isn’t supported yet; Microsoft asks you to contact Support.
- Deleting a scheduled import doesn’t delete the products it imported.
Route 2: A separate feed file
Go to Tools → Merchant Center → Feeds, select Create feed, choose Primary feed and the Online product ads destination, and set the country of sale. Under Input method you choose Manually upload, Upload via FTP/SFTP, Automatically download file from URL or Import.
For a store, the URL download is the one to use: your platform rebuilds the file, and Microsoft fetches it from your server once every 24 hours, or on the daily, weekly or monthly schedule you set. The file must be under 1 GB. According to Microsoft’s feed file help (opens in a new tab), it must be:
- Tab-delimited plain text (TXT, or compressed as ZIP, GZ, GZIP, TAR.GZ or TGZ), or an existing Google-formatted XML file.
- One header row, then one product per line, with no HTML and no tabs or line breaks inside values.
- Named without spaces, up to 50 characters.
Required attributes are id, title, description, link, image_link and price, plus brand, gtin and mpn where the manufacturer assigns them. A processed feed then goes through editorial review, which takes up to 24 hours, or up to three business days if it needs a second look.
Where Microsoft’s attributes differ from Google’s
Microsoft accepts Google’s attribute names, so one feed can serve both. But its product attributes (opens in a new tab) and Google attribute list (opens in a new tab) treat some of them differently:
| Attribute | Microsoft rule | What it means |
|---|---|---|
availability | in stock, out of stock or preorder. Default is in stock. | No backorder value. Send backordered products as preorder only if that matches the page, or as out of stock. |
title | Up to 150 characters, no promotional text or all caps. | Same limit as Google. Key information first. |
description | Up to 10,000 characters, no HTML. | Must describe the same product as the landing page. |
identifier_exists | TRUE or FALSE. | Needed for new products only when there is no GTIN and brand, or MPN and brand. |
product_type | One value. | A comma-separated Google value is read as one string, so match it exactly in campaign filters. |
price | Number plus ISO currency. | Exclude tax in the US. Include VAT in the UK, France, Germany and Australia. |
shipping, tax | Ignored. | Except shipping, which is required for Germany and Austria. |
image_link | bmp, gif, exif, jpg, png or tiff. 220 × 220 px recommended minimum. | 250 × 250 px minimum for clothing and shoes. No watermarks or text. |
ads_redirect | Optional URL for paid clicks. | Free listings use link; Product ads use ads_redirect when both are present. |
expiration_date | Up to 30 days ahead. | Items expire after 30 days unless the feed is sent again. |
Checking status and fixing common issues
Select Tools → Merchant Center, choose the store and open Summary. The Product issues tab shows approved products and every issue, with samples of the affected offers. The Feeds tab shows each feed’s summary and settings, and the Product performance tab shows impressions and clicks from free listings. These are the issues from Microsoft’s troubleshooting list (opens in a new tab) that stores run into most:
| Issue | Fix |
|---|---|
| The offer does not meet our editorial guidelines | Open the issue in the Product issues table, check the policy violation and its samples, fix the products and send the feed again. You can request a review if you think the rejection is wrong. |
| The product URL should be a sub-path of the store’s domain | Every link must be on the verified domain or a subdomain of it. Check for links to a different host, such as a CDN or an old domain. |
| The product URL is redirecting to a different domain | Send the final product URL. Put tracking redirects in ads_redirect, on the same domain. |
| Duplicate offer based on the merchant product ID | Each id must be unique across all feeds in the store, per market. |
| Price or availability doesn’t match the page (microdata) | Microsoft compares the feed with the Product structured data on the page. Update the feed more often, and send the price an anonymous visitor sees. |
| robots.txt doesn’t allow access | Let Bing crawl product pages, and let adixbot fetch images. |
| Offer is currently under review | New and changed offers can take up to three business days. Contact Support if it takes longer. |
If the store itself is rejected, fix the cause, then select Request a review in the Product issues tab. You get one review per store, so fix everything first. If free listings show no impressions, check that the store is approved, that Show free Product Listings in the shopping tab is on under the store’s Settings → Product listings, and that the feed is set to run.
Microsoft Shopping campaigns, briefly
Paid Product ads need an approved store. When you create a Shopping campaign, you link it to a store, and you can’t change that store after saving. By default every product in the store is included; product filters and custom labels narrow it down. If you already run Shopping campaigns in Google Ads, Microsoft Advertising can import them, but only once you have a Microsoft Merchant Center store. Performance Max campaigns use the same store, and the excluded_destination value Shopping_ads keeps a product out of both campaign types. Start with free listings, check that products are approved, then decide whether ads are worth it.
For nopCommerce stores
nopCommerce has no Microsoft feed built in. Our free Merchant Center Feed for Google plugin builds the Google feed, and that is enough for the import route. The paid add-on Merchant Center Pro adds a guided Microsoft channel with both methods: it walks you through the Google import, with no file involved, or builds a separate Microsoft feed with its own private link. That feed cuts titles to 150 characters, sends backorder as preorder, keeps identifier_exists, can tag links with utm_source=bing&utm_medium=shopping, and is rebuilt on the free plugin’s schedule. The page also shows when Microsoft last fetched the file. If you haven’t set up the Google side yet, start with our nopCommerce Google Shopping feed guide.
Frequently asked questions
Is Microsoft Merchant Center the same as Bing Merchant Center?
Yes. Bing Merchant Center is the old name. Today it is Microsoft Merchant Center, and you reach it inside Microsoft Advertising under Tools → Merchant Center.
Are Bing Shopping listings free?
Product listings are. Approved products show in the unpaid section of the Bing shopping tab, and clicks from it are not charged. You pay only for clicks on Product ads from Shopping or Performance Max campaigns, if you run them.
Can I use my Google Merchant Center feed in Microsoft Merchant Center?
Yes, in two ways. The Import tab copies your offers from Google Merchant Center on a schedule. Or point a Microsoft feed at the same file, if it is tab-delimited text or Google-formatted XML. Microsoft ignores some Google attributes and doesn’t accept backorder as availability.
How long does approval take?
A new store is approved, rejected or sent to manual review, which can take up to five days. After that, a submitted feed usually processes within minutes to a few hours, and the editorial review of products takes up to 24 hours, or up to three business days if a second review is needed.
Do Microsoft Merchant Center products appear in Copilot?
Microsoft says Copilot’s shopping answers use information from the web and from a merchant’s Microsoft Merchant Center feed. Copilot Checkout, buying inside Copilot, is currently open only to English-language merchants selling to US buyers in US dollars.
Next steps
- Verify your domain in Bing Webmaster Tools, or check that your UET tag has recorded events.
- Create the store and wait for approval.
- Fix disapprovals in Google first, then import on a schedule, or set up a feed URL that Microsoft fetches daily.
- Check Product issues after the first review, and Product performance a week later.
Running nopCommerce? Merchant Center Pro guides you through either route. Questions about a feed for another setup? Write to contact@cartenvo.com.