Google Shopping - the shelf of product cards that sits above the ordinary Google results - is expected to open for Bulgaria in October 2026. That is a few weeks before Black Friday and the Christmas season, which is exactly when online shops make their biggest turnover of the year. Bulgaria is already in beta in Google Merchant Center, so preparation can start now rather than in September.
When it opens and why only now
Bulgaria is one of the last countries in Europe without Google Shopping. Romania and Greece have worked with the platform for years. The reason it is happening right now is the adoption of the euro on 1 January 2026: with a shared currency, the prices of Bulgarian shops become directly comparable with those on the rest of the European markets, and comparing prices is what Shopping is for.
- October 2026 - expected launch for Bulgaria.
- Now - Bulgaria is in beta status in Google Merchant Center.
- At first - product feeds will be supported in English only.
- March 2027 - Bulgarian language support in the feed is expected.
What the English-only start means in practice: the titles and descriptions you send to Google need a working English version. If your catalogue exists in Bulgarian only, that is a separate job of real size and it is not solved in the last week.
Why this is not just one more advertising channel
In the markets where Shopping already runs, product ads collect around 66% of the clicks on retail searches and absorb over 76% of the advertising budgets in the sector. The effect is not limited to paid advertising: competitors' product cards push the text results further down, so a shop without a feed loses organic traffic too, even when it ranks first.
What every Bulgarian online shop has to do
The work falls into four fronts - Merchant Center, product feed, prices in euro and campaigns - broken down into seven concrete steps.
1. Google Merchant Center: create and verify
Merchant Center is the free panel through which you send your catalogue to Google. Without it nothing else matters.
- Register a Merchant Center account.
- Verify the shop's domain, that is, prove to Google that the site is yours.
- Link Merchant Center to the Google Ads account.
2. Product feed
The feed is an automatically generated file (or a direct connection to the shop) that tells Google what you sell, at what price and with what availability.
- Make it automated - XML, CSV or Content API - with products, prices and stock synchronised in real time. A manually uploaded file goes stale within days.
- Titles with the right keywords, complete descriptions, accurate categories.
- Fill in GTIN (the product barcode), MPN (the manufacturer's number) and brand where they apply. Missing identifiers limit visibility.
- An incomplete or low-quality feed is the number one cause of weak results. The problem is almost never the advertising, it is the data.
3. Prices in euro: feed, site and Schema in sync
- The feed, the product page and the structured data have to show the same price in the same currency (EUR).
- The most common mistake: the price on the page is in euro, but the Schema markup (the hidden code with which the site describes the product to Google) is still in leva. Google spots the mismatch and rejects the product.
- Review your psychological prices. 19.99 lv. becomes 10.22 €, which no longer looks like a price. Better to round it to 9.99 € or 10.50 €.
- Dual display in leva and euro is required by law until 8 August 2026. We put together a 7-point check for the site and the shop, if you have not been through it yet.
4. Quality product images
- At least 500 x 500 pixels. From 31 January 2027 this becomes a mandatory condition for approval.
- A clean white or neutral background.
- No promotional text on the image itself. No "-20%" badges on the photo.
5. Technical requirements for the site
- A valid SSL certificate (HTTPS) everywhere, checkout included.
- Clear terms and conditions and a returns policy.
- Current prices and stock. Google compares the page against the feed and penalises the discrepancies.
- Schema.org Product markup with price, availability and rating.
- Core Web Vitals speed: LCP (how long until the main content appears) under 2.5 seconds and INP (the delay on the first touch of the screen) under 200 milliseconds. Most Shopping traffic comes from a phone.
6. The new video_link field
From 30 June 2026 Google validates and shows videos through the video_link attribute in the feed. It is not mandatory, but if you already make short product videos for social media, use them here too.
7. Campaign strategy
- Shopping campaigns are managed differently from ordinary Search campaigns.
- Google does not work with manually chosen keywords. It reads the feed and decides for itself when to show the product. That is, optimising the feed is optimising the campaign.
- Plan a structure by categories and product groups, a bidding strategy and a budget.
- Consider Performance Max campaigns.
Preparation schedule: July - October 2026
| Period | What to do |
|---|---|
| July - August | Registration in Merchant Center, domain verification, linking to Google Ads. An audit of the prices in euro and of the Schema markup. |
| August - September | Building the product feed, optimising titles and descriptions. Checking the images. |
| September | Testing the feed, clearing the errors and the rejected products. Preparing the campaigns. |
| October | Launching the Shopping campaigns for Black Friday. |
As of August 2026 the first two windows overlap in practice. If you have not started yet, run Merchant Center and the price audit at the same time - they do not depend on each other.
And one more thing from 2026
Preparing for Shopping overlaps with another job from this year: the new rules for online traders require clear terms, a complaints procedure and transparent returns information. Google checks those same pages before it approves the shop. One job does the other as well.
You have around 2 months to prepare.
PLANA Solutions offers a free consultation, a site audit and a concrete proposal: where the feed is, where the prices are, where the Schema is and what is left until October. We work with online shops on Odoo and e-commerce platforms every day.
