Step 1: Primary Account Setup
Introduction and Business Impact
To begin you need to create a multi client account (MCA). Instructions to perform this is in Account Creation. Once this is completed, a new sub-account must be created specifically in your MCA. Throughout this document, this is referred to as the 'Local Feeds Partnership provider sub-account', or 'POS LFP sub-account'. This account is primarily used to create and submit point-of-service (POS) inventory or sales feed data. An important note is that items submitted from the POS feed must contain a GTIN for retailers. This is to guarantee offers are matched correctly to an offer in Google's catalog and to simplify the ingestion mechanism. A Local Feed Partnership provider can in fact just submit GTINs through the pos.inventory method and a product feed is automatically created.
In order to start submitting API calls to the POS endpoint, your 'POS LFP sub-account' needs to be enabled. Contact your Google business Partner representative if this hasn't been completed yet.
UX Guidance
It's recommended that if you're going to act as a Local Feeds Partnership provider that your UX provides the ability to add store information for any locations that is using Local Inventory Ads or Free Local Listings. This means adding fields to enter the Google Business Profile store codes, physical storefront address, if different from the general business address that's collected.
Tech Guidance
- Create an email address that is going to be dedicated to POS/LFP so that it's
identifiable. For example,
pos@mystore.com. - The LFP provider, as the owner of the MCA, has access to all retailers' sub-accounts. However, if the retailer's Merchant Center account is not a sub-account to the MCA, and instead, it's a standalone Merchant Center account, the LFP linking mechanism outlined in next section gives access to the Local Feeds Partnership provider to submit data on the merchant's behalf. However the Local Feeds Partnership provider account is not able to access the Merchant Center account unless the email address has been granted permission to the merchant's Merchant Center account.
- Using an OAuth linking type step by enabling Google Business Profile v1.1 scope for local only or local & online stores can limit the manually steps taken for setting up LFP partnerships for merchants in the upcoming steps.
- New Sub-Accounts can be created utilizing Content API's Accounts Resource.