Google Merchant Center has quietly eased a compliance requirement for local advertisers in two of the three DACH markets. Merchants in Austria and Germany no longer need to list an impressum URL, the mandatory business-disclosure page under German-language legal convention, to run local inventory ads or appear in free local listings. PPC News Feed, credited to spotter Hana Kobzová, reported the change on September 21, 2026, after finding it reflected on Google’s own help documentation.
The requirement has not disappeared entirely. An impressum URL remains mandatory when a merchant offers in-store product and price availability hosted on Google, and Switzerland keeps the requirement across all local ad formats. Previously, all three DACH markets shared the same impressum rule for local listings and inventory ads.
The distinction narrows what used to be a blanket regional policy into a feature-specific one. Merchants running local inventory ads or free listings in Austria or Germany can now launch without the impressum field, but any team also using Google-hosted store availability should confirm the page is still live before that feature goes down over a missing link.
PPC News Feed, September 21, 2026.
