Why Google Ads and Merchant Center Numbers Are About to Move
- Heidi Schwende
- 3 hours ago
- 9 min read
What's Different Starting August 17 and 24
Summary:
Two Google Ads and Merchant Center changes are landing back to back this month. Starting August 24, Google is changing how Merchant Center classifies and reports traffic, retroactive to July 1. YouTube affiliate clicks move out of the organic count into their own category, organic YouTube measurement gets redefined to match YouTube's standards, and product-level reporting expands to include Performance Max, Video, App, and Demand Gen. A network segmentation dimension is coming later, with no date confirmed. Seven days earlier, on August 17, Google is also changing how budget-limited Target CPA and Target ROAS campaigns bid, including Performance Max, so any campaign that's been outperforming its stated target starts delivering closer to that target instead. None of these changes reflect a shift in actual product performance on their own. The August 17 change can move real numbers. The August 24 change moves how those numbers get labeled and counted.
Why it matters:
A separate Google Ads bidding change lands August 17, seven days before this one, and pulls budget-limited Performance Max, Shopping, and Search campaigns on Target CPA or Target ROAS closer to their stated targets, which is a real efficiency shift, not a reporting one.
Organic traffic will likely drop once YouTube affiliate clicks are pulled out and organic YouTube measurement is redefined, and that drop reflects a definition change, not lost performance.
Paid impressions and clicks will likely climb once Performance Max, Video, App, and Demand Gen data feeds into the same reports, and that climb reflects newly visible spend, not new reach.
Reading either move as a performance signal risks reallocating budget or rewriting strategy on the strength of a label change instead of a result.
The retroactive restatement back to July 1 touches anything built on historical data, including bid rules and feed-linked dashboards, so those need review before August 24, not after.
Google Ads and Merchant Center changes
These changes move the dashboard in two directions at once and neither move reflects a single thing your store did differently.
That gap between what the dashboard shows and what actually happened is where ecommerce operators get into trouble. Someone opens the report, sees free listing traffic fall off a cliff, and starts pulling budget or rewriting the SEO plan before checking whether the product changed or the definition did.
Here's what's actually shifting, and what it means if you sell product through Google.
What's Changing in the Google Merchant Center Reporting Update
Google confirmed the update in a Merchant Center Help Center announcement, with four changes rolling out starting August 24 and applying retroactively to data back to July 1.
YouTube Affiliate Traffic Gets Its Own Category in Merchant Center
When a creator in Google's affiliate program tags a product in a video, Short, or livestream and someone clicks through, that traffic has always landed under "Organic" in Merchant Center. Starting August 24, it moves to a new "YouTube affiliate" label and comes out of the organic count entirely. Google is upfront that this could cause a one-time significant drop in reported organic traffic, and that drop is a reclassification, not a change in how products are actually performing.
Organic YouTube Traffic Measurement Is Being Redefined
Separately from the affiliate carve-out, Google is realigning how it counts organic YouTube clicks and impressions to match YouTube's own reporting standards. That's a second, independent pressure pushing organic numbers down at the same time.
Merchant Center Product-Level Reporting Expands to All Ad Formats
Performance reports will now pull in data from every Google Ads channel and format, including Performance Max, Video, App, and Demand Gen, not just Shopping campaigns. Expect a one-time bump in impressions and clicks as that data enters the picture. The performance was already happening. Merchant Center is simply the last place to show it.
A New Network Reporting Dimension Is Coming to Merchant Center
Google has confirmed, without a date, that merchants will eventually be able to segment Merchant Center performance by network, similar to how Google Ads reporting already works.
The Performance Max Bidding Change That Lands One Week Earlier
Seven days before any of this hits Merchant Center, Google is changing how budget-limited Performance Max, Shopping, and Search campaigns actually bid. This is a real change to campaign behavior, not a reporting change, and it's the piece merchants running Shopping and Performance Max off the same feed need to untangle from what happens a week later.
Starting August 17, Google is updating bidding for any campaign marked "Limited by budget" that runs Target CPA or Target ROAS, including Target CPC for Demand Gen. The scope covers Search, Shopping, Performance Max, Demand Gen, and Travel, across Google Ads and Search Ads 360. App, Video Reach, and Video View campaigns are excluded, along with Hotel and Display, which already bid this way.
Right now, a budget-limited campaign that's been beating its target, running a lower CPA or higher ROAS than what's actually set on the account, is allowed to keep beating it. After August 17, Google pulls that delivery closer to the stated target instead.
Google's own example makes the mechanics plain; a campaign with a $10 Target CPA that's actually been running at $5 will start delivering closer to $10. Nothing changes automatically on the advertiser's side, Google won't touch anyone's targets or budgets, but if a target has sat untouched while performance quietly outperformed it, the gap closes on its own starting that day. Google introduced a Bid Target Adjustment Tool on July 6 specifically to let advertisers review and reset targets before the change lands.
The reason this belongs in the same conversation as the Merchant Center update is timing. A merchant running Performance Max off a Merchant Center feed could see a real CPA increase or ROAS decline on August 17, then watch reported organic and paid traffic shift again on August 24 for reasons that have nothing to do with bidding.
Two changes landing a week apart, one behavioral and one definitional, means a rough patch in the reporting could have either cause, or both, and telling them apart after the fact is harder than catching it before. Reviewing and resetting Target CPA and Target ROAS bids ahead of August 17 removes one variable, so whatever shows up after August 24 can be traced to the reporting change and nothing else.
Merchant Center Feed Integration: What This Reporting Update Means for Your Data
Merchant Center's product-level reporting is only as reliable as the product ID it's tied to. That matters more here than in a typical reporting update. These changes reclassify traffic against the same product IDs your feed already generates. They don't touch the feed itself.
Google has also brought YouTube Shopping affiliate analytics into the Merchant API, in a version that mirrors what's now showing up inside Merchant Center.
If your team pulls performance data through the API rather than the UI, whether into a BI tool, an ERP, or a custom dashboard, that pipeline needs to account for the new "YouTube affiliate" category and the redefined organic YouTube metrics, or it will keep reporting last month's definitions on top of this month's numbers.
Two things to check before August 24
First, any automated feed rule or bidding logic that uses historical product performance as an input, a custom label based on impressions, a bid adjustment tied to click volume, will see that historical baseline restated back to July 1. Recalculate before the rule fires on the new numbers.
Second, if you use a feed management tool or third-party dashboard that ingests Merchant Center data, confirm with the vendor that their integration has been updated for the new traffic categories. A feed that's technically healthy can still feed a reporting layer that's reading the old taxonomy.
None of this is a feed quality issue. Titles, GTINs, structured data, and merchant standing still do the same job they did last week. The only thing that shifts is whether the systems reading the output of that feed know how to sort what they're seeing.
Why This Merchant Center Update Matters for Ecommerce Sellers
Merchant Center is the backbone of product discovery for anyone selling through Google Shopping, free listings, Performance Max, or YouTube Shopping. When the traffic taxonomy underneath that backbone changes, it touches every retailer running a Shopping feed, regardless of category.
The organic side is where the risk sits
Free listings have been one of the few ecommerce channels where visibility didn't require a bid. If your organic traffic number drops on August 24 and you don't know why, the instinct is to treat it as a signal. It's worth resisting that instinct, because Google is finally separating a revenue-share channel from an unpaid one.
Your actual free listing performance, the part driven by product feed quality, titles, structured data, and merchant standing, hasn't moved. What moved is what's allowed to sit inside that number.
The paid side carries a different risk
When impressions and clicks jump because Video, App, and Demand Gen data now feeds into product-level reporting, it's tempting to read that as expansion, as if the account suddenly reached more shoppers. What actually happened is the reporting layer caught up to spend that was there all along.
If budget conversations get built on that jump without the context, you end up justifying decisions with a number that was always incomplete, not one that's now improved.
Merchant Center Reporting Update Checklist: What to Do Before August 24
Two dates, two different fixes. Here's the order to work through them:
Review and reset Target CPA and Target ROAS bids on any budget-limited Search, Shopping, or Performance Max campaign before August 17, using Google's Bid Target Adjustment Tool, so the bidding change doesn't get mistaken for a reporting artifact a week later.
Pull your current Merchant Center organic and paid numbers now, by product and by traffic source, so you have a true pre-change baseline.
Flag the date internally, especially for anyone outside the marketing function who watches these reports, so a natural drop in organic doesn't trigger a scramble.
When the new YouTube affiliate category appears, treat it as its own line item worth evaluating on its own terms, not a subtraction from organic performance.
Hold off drawing conclusions about paid channel performance until the Performance Max, Video, App, and Demand Gen data has settled into a normal reporting rhythm, typically a few weeks past a change like this.
Bottom Line on the Merchant Center Reporting Update
Two changes, two different kinds of true:
The August 17 bidding update can genuinely move your CPA and ROAS, and that one calls for action on the account, not just an explanation.
The August 24 reporting update doesn't touch performance at all. It changes how honestly the platform labels what's already been happening, which is a better foundation for decisions once the dashboard stops moving.
Either way, the job right now isn't to react to the numbers as they land. It's to know in advance which change is behind whatever moves.
Frequently Asked Questions:
Will all my YouTube traffic move into the new "YouTube affiliate" category on August 24?
No. Only products enrolled in and eligible for commission under the YouTube Shopping affiliate program get pulled out of organic. Products not eligible for commission continue to be reported under "Organic," so a partially enrolled catalog will show traffic split by product, not by placement.
How big will the organic traffic drop actually be?
Google hasn't published a number or a range, only the word "significant." The size depends entirely on how much of a given merchant's free listing traffic has been arriving through creator tags, which is the figure this change is designed to finally make visible.
Will Google automatically change my Target CPA or Target ROAS targets on August 17?
No. Google has been explicit that it won't adjust anyone's budgets or bid targets automatically. If a target no longer reflects current performance, the advertiser has to update it before the 17th using the Bid Target Adjustment Tool.
Does the August 17 bidding change affect every Performance Max campaign?
No. It only applies to campaigns marked "Limited by budget" that run Target CPA or Target ROAS. Campaigns that aren't budget-constrained, or that are already delivering close to their stated target, shouldn't see a noticeable difference.
Do I need to pause campaigns or take emergency action before August 17?
No. Google hasn't advised pausing anything. The recommended action is a review, not a shutdown: pull a list of budget-limited campaigns running target-based bidding, compare actual performance to the stated target, and decide whether the gap is intentional or just a target nobody has revisited.
Does the Merchant Center reporting change affect how my products actually rank or get surfaced?
No. This is a reporting and labeling change only. It changes how traffic gets categorized and counted in Merchant Center reports. It doesn't touch product eligibility, feed quality signals, or how products are chosen to appear in search, Shopping, or YouTube surfaces.
Sources
Merchant Center performance reporting updates — Google Merchant Center Help
Changes to target based bid strategies — Google Ads Help
Google updates Merchant Center with cross-platform reporting — Search Engine Land
Google Merchant Center Performance Reporting Update Coming August 24th — Search Engine Roundtable
Google Merchant Center organic traffic drops in August 24 reporting change — PPC Land
Merchant API latest updates — Google for Developers
Google Is Ending Target Overperformance – What to Fix Before August 17 — Search Engine Journal
Google's August 17 Bidding Change: What Advertisers Need to Do Now — Optmyzr
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