What your dot can see in Merchant Center
Through MCP Ads, your dot can list your Merchant Center accounts and client sub-accounts, and read a product status summary: counts of approved, pending and disapproved products per country and destination, with the most common issues. From there it can open a single product with its status, destinations and item-level issues, or render those issues the way Merchant Center shows them, with the explanation, the impact and the steps to fix.
It can also read account-level issues such as suspensions, policy warnings and missing settings; data sources (primary and supplemental feeds, API sources, promotion sources); promotions and their approval status; shipping settings, return policies and business information; which programs are enabled; whether the homepage is claimed; terms of service that are still pending; and top products by clicks, impressions or conversions. The Merchant Center MCP page lists the full set.
Connect it in a few minutes
Dots use the same apps and connectors as ChatGPT, so MCP Ads is added once in ChatGPT and your dot can then use it. The MCP Ads plugin is in review for the ChatGPT plugin directory; until it is listed, you add it as a custom connector in Developer mode. There is no API key to copy: you sign in through the browser.
Connect Merchant Center under Connections in the MCP Ads dashboard. It shares one Google sign-in with Google Ads, GA4 and Search Console, with its own permission.
In a Business workspace, custom connectors may need an admin to turn on Developer mode first. The Dots setup page and the Dots docs have the same steps.
Dots follow ChatGPT's permissions, and you can add rules for which tasks need your approval. Research a dot does on its own is read-only; tasks you give it or schedule can act, under their own rules and approvals, on top of the approval controls in MCP Ads.
The steps:
- In ChatGPT, open Settings → Plugins → Browse plugins, and turn on Developer mode if custom connectors are not offered yet.
- Add a custom connector named MCP Ads with the URL https://mcp-ads.com/mcp-slim.
- Sign in through the browser window that opens, with the login that owns your MCP Ads account.
- Let your dot use the MCP Ads app, then ask it: "Once you are in, show my product status summary and the three issues affecting the most products."
The approval check, on a schedule
The most useful routine is short: every morning, or every Monday for a small catalogue, ask your dot for the status summary and to report only if disapprovals rose or a new issue appeared. When one did, have it open two or three affected products and read Google's fix steps, so the note you get says what to change, not just that something is wrong.
Order the work by revenue. Your dot can pull Merchant Center product performance, and, if Google Ads is connected too, Shopping performance by product, so a disapproved best-seller comes before a disapproved item that never sold.
| Issue type | Where it shows | Usual owner of the fix |
|---|---|---|
| Product data (price, availability, identifiers) | Product issues | The feed or the product page |
| Policy | Product or account issues | The product listing or the site |
| Account setup (shipping, returns, homepage) | Account issues | Merchant Center settings |
| Promotion rejected | Promotion status | The promotion terms |
Prompts that work
Name the account (and country, if you sell in several), and ask for the fix steps, not just the issue name.
- Show approved, pending and disapproved products for the US on Shopping ads, with the top five issues.
- For the ten disapproved products with the most clicks last month, show Google's explanation and fix for each.
- Are there any account-level issues or terms of service I still need to accept?
- List my data sources and when each feed was last fetched, then fetch the main feed now.
- Which promotions are pending or rejected, and why?
- Every morning at 7, check the product status summary and message me only if disapprovals rose since yesterday, with the new issue and three example products.
- Every Monday at 9, list the top 20 products by clicks and flag any that are not approved in every country I sell in.
What your dot should always confirm with you
Your dot can change specific attributes of a product while leaving the rest untouched, set store and regional prices and availability, fetch a scheduled feed now instead of waiting, create promotions, and update shipping settings and return policies. Several Merchant Center actions are marked in MCP Ads to be confirmed with you first, because they change whether anything serves: disabling a program such as free listings or Shopping ads, unclaiming the homepage, deleting a data source (which removes products only it supplies), accepting terms of service, adding or removing users, and deleting an account, which cannot be undone.
Treat a scheduled Merchant Center check as read-and-report, and make fixes in a separate request you can see. Your dot sees only the Merchant Center accounts your Google login can reach and that you connected in MCP Ads.
Pitfalls and honest limits
Fix data at its source. A product often comes from a feed file or a store plugin, and a fix made only through the API may be replaced when that source next updates. Where the problem is in the feed, change the feed. Changes also take a few minutes to show in the product status, and Google reviews some changes before a product serves again, so check the next day rather than immediately.
Every tool call counts toward your MCP Ads plan; a product-by-product sweep of a large catalogue is many calls, so start from the summary and drill into the products that matter. MCP Ads is free for 30 tool calls a month, then $49/month flat for unlimited; see pricing and the Merchant Center setup docs.
