Google has updated its Merchant Center documentation to list eligible regions for local inventory ads and for free local listings as two separate sets, clarifying a distinction that was previously buried. As Search Engine Roundtable reported, the old help document grouped both product types together, obscuring the fact that the paid ads reach a materially larger set of countries.
Local inventory ads now cover more than 90 markets, spanning regions across Africa, Central Asia, Latin America, and Southeast Asia that are absent from the free listings roster. Free local listings apply to a smaller, predominantly Western-market set of roughly 50 countries.
For retailers with multi-region strategies, the practical implication is immediate: feed build decisions and budget allocation for local product visibility should be validated per market before any engineering work begins. A campaign built on the assumption that free local listings exist in a given country may instead require a paid local inventory ad setup.
Check your target markets against the updated overview page in Merchant Center before committing feed architecture to a region.
Search Engine Roundtable, reported by Barry Schwartz, June 29, 2026.
