Set up Content API access

  • To use the Content API for Shopping, you need to set up an API Console project for API access and authentication.

  • You can authenticate using service accounts for accessing your own Merchant Center account or OAuth for managing other merchants' accounts.

  • For testing and development, Google provides Shopping samples and client libraries for easier integration with the Content API.

  • If your programming language isn't supported by the client libraries, you can directly use the REST API.

Summary

To use the Content API for Shopping with a given Merchant Center account, you must set up an API Console project. API Console projects help you manage API access and authentication for your Content API solution.

Manual steps

There are two ways you can authenticate to use the Content API for Shopping depending on whose merchant accounts you need to access:

Access your own Merchant Center account
If you only need to access your account (and sub-accounts, if using a multi-client account), then we suggest using service accounts. See the Service accounts guide for the steps to create a service account from the Merchant Center.
Access other merchants' accounts
If you plan to manage other Merchant Center accounts as a third-party, see the OAuth guide.

Once you have the appropriate authentication tokens, you can test your authentication setup with the Shopping samples, which support both service account and OAuth2 client authentication. These samples use the Content API client libraries, which we recommend using in your own applications if you're using a supported language. Otherwise, you can use the REST API directly.

Automatic steps

Not available for this process.