Verify and claim URL for Merchant Center

Summary

Only one Merchant Center account can claim a specific URL. You must verify the URL through your Merchant Center account to show that you have administrative access to the website, and then claim that URL to link its product data to your merchant account.

Consider the following guidelines when choosing a URL:

  • Only approved developers can use the Content API for Shopping to overwrite a website claim.

  • You need to have the existing claimant change the URL on their account. If you need help, contact your Technical Account Manager.

  • You should only claim the highest domain level you need. Claims at higher levels affect lower level URLs. For example, a merchant claiming example.com means that another merchant can't claim merchant.example.com or example.com/merchant.

Manual steps

Verify a URL

  1. Sign in to your Merchant Center account.
  2. From the navigation menu, click the tools icon.
  3. Under Tools, select Business information.
  4. Click the Website tab.
  5. Enter the URL, starting with http:// or https://. Use a domain that you own and maintain.
  6. Click Continue.
  7. Choose one of the available options to verify the website.

Claim a URL

Claiming a website gives you the exclusive right to use that website for product data on your Merchant Center account. You must verify a website before you can claim it.

After verifying the website, click Claim website.

If you’ve already created a feed, you’ll need to refetch it after you’ve claimed a website. If you use the Content API, you’ll need to re-upload your feed so it can be recrawled.

See Verify and claim your website URL for more detail.

Automatic steps

There are two steps to claim a website with Google APIs. These are verifying the website with the Site Verification API and then claiming the website with the Content API for Shopping.

  1. Use the Site Verification API to verify that you have access to the website. Multiple Google accounts can verify access to the same website, but only one account can claim the website. You can only claim a website after you have verified your access to it.

    If the account you authenticate with for the Site Verification API doesn't have access to the merchant account you're claiming a website for, you should add the email of an account that doesn to the owners field before calling insert or update.

  2. Once verified, approved developers can use the accounts.claimwebsite method in the Content API for Shopping to claim the website to their Merchant Center account. Contact your Technical Account Manager for details.