Giving an agency access to Google Merchant Center

Google Merchant Center is where a store manages the product data it gives Google. A store can bring an agency in two ways. An admin adds each agency person by their own Google Account. Or, where Google offers Merchant Center for Agencies, the agency requests a link from its own account and an admin approves it. Either way the store’s login stays with the store. This is delegated access in the form Google built for it.

Access types in a store’s Merchant Center

Merchant Center Help lists several access types. These are the ones that matter when you add outside people.

Super admin comes from Business Manager, a Google profile that links the Google apps and services a business uses. Help’s pages disagree on what the role gives here. The access page says of super admins, “In Merchant Center, they hold admin access.” The super admin page says a new super admin doesn’t “automatically get Admin access to linked accounts (like Merchant Center or Google Business Profile).” They have to be added inside each app. So count any super admin as a possible admin.

Help lists two more types that this table leaves out. One is YouTube Shopping affiliate program. The other is API developer, which gives no API access and marks the person who should get notices about software connected to the account.

Help answers the password question directly: everyone signs in with a Google Account of their own, so nobody needs yours.

Adding agency staff one by one

1. In Merchant Center, open Access and services, then the People and access tab.
2. Select Add person and type the person’s email address. It has to be linked to a Google Account.
3. Choose admin or standard, then select Add user.

Nothing changes until the person acts on the emailed invitation. Their access shows as pending until they accept. One ceiling applies to the person, not to you. A Google Account can be added to at most 100 Merchant Center accounts. Getting past that limit is one reason Google gives for the agency link.

Standard fits an agency that maintains your product feed. If the same agency also runs your Google Ads, it will ask for more, because the standard level leaves out reports and linking a Google Ads account. You can link the Google Ads account yourself and keep the agency at standard. For the ads side, see organizing agency access with a Google Ads manager account.

Linking through Merchant Center for Agencies

Google also offers an agency version of Merchant Center. Help describes it as a central place for an agency to manage its client connections and its team’s permissions. Ask your agency whether it has it. Google says only some agencies have it so far.

The link works like this.

1. Give the agency your Merchant Center ID. It starts the request from its own account and has to pick one of two levels for the whole agency: Admin, or Standard + performance and insights.
2. Your admin gets an email, and the pending request also shows on your People and access page, in the table headed Partners.
3. Your admin can only approve or reject. On approval, Help says, the agency “receives the exact access level” it requested. If that is more than you want to give, reject the request and ask for a new one.

One exception: Help says “The connection is automatically approved if the requester is already an Admin on the merchant’s account.” So check who at the agency holds admin on your account today before you assume every link will come to you for approval.

After approval, the agency decides which of its staff can open your account. Every admin on the agency’s own account gets all linked clients by default. Its standard users get only the clients the agency assigns them, through labels it sets up, unless the agency opens every account to them. What you control is the ceiling: no agency user can exceed the level you approved for the agency as a whole.

What you can and can’t see after a link

Help says “The client retains control over the connection at the agency level, not the agency user level.” So a link saves you from handling the agency’s staff changes, and in return you can’t see which of its people can open your account. If you need names, ask the agency for its list of assigned staff, and ask again when the list changes. Reporting your work in client accounts to the client describes this from the agency’s side.

Removing people, and two things to check first

To remove a person, an admin opens People and access, selects Manage next to the person, and chooses Remove person under Account Status. To end a link, an admin removes the agency in the Partners section of the same page, which the client can do at any time.

Check two things before you remove anyone.

First, website verification. If the site’s verification belongs to the person you remove, Help says “you’ll also lose your verification status (and subsequently your claim status).” Someone else then has to verify and claim the site again. To see whose verification it is, look in the People list for the “Verified website owner” label under a name. If it sits on an agency employee, verify the site under one of your own people before the agency leaves.

Second, super admins. They are managed in Business Manager, not in Merchant Center. Removing someone as a super admin there doesn’t remove their access to the linked accounts. If an agency person was ever made a super admin, remove them in both places.

Merchant Center won’t let the last admin remove themselves, so keep at least two admins from your own company and an agency employee is never the only one. When the contract ends, work through the account handover checklist for the store’s other accounts.