Overview and data requirements

What is a Local Feeds Partnership provider?

Merchants who have a physical presence can benefit from Local Inventory Ads and Free Local Listings through Google's Local Feeds Partnership (LFP) integration. The Local Feeds Partnership integration helps retailers use Local Inventory Ads or Free Local listings through an inventory data provider.

At a glance, the optimal setup to integrate as an LFP requires the following steps. Some of them are a one-time setup while others are a recurrent event for every single merchant.

  1. Account structure:
    1. Create a MCA (Multi Client Account) account or convert an existing Merchant Center into one.
    2. Set up a sub-account in the Partner's company name as it will be used to submit data as a Local Feed Partnership provider. Work with Google Support to enable the feature after creating the account.
    3. Set up the necessary Merchant Center accounts to submit data for.
  2. Google Business Profile linking:
    1. Link the retailers' Merchant Center accounts to their Google Business Profiles.
    2. You can then either retrieve the Business Profile store codes entered in the Google business profile or, alternatively, send business address and phone numbers so that Google can operate a match to the Google Business profile using your specified store codes.
  3. Data transmission and requirements:
    1. Set up Authentication for calling the API (recommended) or use a file upload mechanism.
    2. Enable Local Free Listings and or Local Inventory Ads as destinations in your retailer's merchant center accounts.
    3. Submit product and inventory data for all your retailers' accounts.
  4. Trusted Status (depending on which page a user lands on)
    1. All Merchants' offers clicks land on a Google hosted store page:
      • Upon passing 5 in-store inventory checks for 5 merchants, partners are granted "Trusted" status. No further inventory checks are required to onboard subsequent merchants. Those 5 merchants should be representative of the larger set of merchants.
    2. All Merchants' offers clicks land on the Merchant hosted store page:
      • Only landing page guideline checks are required. No in-store inventory checks needed. Upon passing 10 guideline checks, partners can achieve "MHLSF-only" trusted status.
    3. A partner can achieve both Trusted statuses if their retailers have a combination of Google Hosted and Merchant Local store fronts. In this case, five merchants need to pass the in-store inventory checks and ten merchants need to pass the website guideline checks.

Summary of one time operation and recurrent steps for every Merchant Onboarding

LFP Partnership onboarding - One time operations:

  • MCA and LFP sub-account setup
  • Set up Authentication for calling the API
  • Achieve Trusted status

Merchant onboarding - One time operations:

  • Merchant Center creation (if merchant doesn't exist yet) under the MCA
  • Link Retailer's Merchant Center Account to the LFP sub-account
  • Link Retailer's Merchant Center Account to the Google Business Profile
  • Enable Free Local Listings and or Local Inventory Ads as destination

Recurrent events for every single onboarded Merchant Center account:

  • Data transmission: product and inventory data.
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