Overview of Accounts sub-API

The Accounts sub-API within the Merchant API lets you programmatically create, configure, and manage your Google Merchant Center accounts. It offers a comprehensive suite of tools for managing the entire lifecycle and core configurations of your Merchant Center accounts. This API is essential for businesses and third-party providers looking to automate account setup and ongoing maintenance.

With the Accounts sub-API, you can do the following:

• Perform core Merchant Center account operations: Creating new Merchant Center accounts, retrieving their details, updating core settings, monitoring for account-level issues, listing accounts you can access, and deleting accounts when necessary.
• Establish your business information and online store presence: Configure your essential business details (like address and contact information), self-declared identity attributes, and set up your online store's website by specifying, verifying, and claiming your homepage URL. This is key to how your business is represented.
• Manage user access and communication preferences: Discover how to control who can access your Merchant Center account, define their specific permissions, and configure their email notification preferences for important account updates and news.
• Manage program enrollment and participation: Manage your enrollment in various Merchant Center programs (like Free listings or Shopping ads), manage your participation status, and understand program-specific requirements to expand your product's reach.
• Configure logistics: shipping, returns, and regions: Set up your account-level shipping settings, define your online return policies for customers, and create geographical regions for precise targeting and service delivery.
• Leverage advanced integrations and account linking: Learn to manage settings for omnichannel experiences, link to Google Business Profile accounts and local feeds partnership (LFP) providers, and establish and manage service relationships with other accounts, such as third-party providers or agencies.

This set of guides provides detailed instructions and examples for common use cases:

• Create an account: Learn the steps to programmatically establish a new Merchant Center account.
• Create and manage sub-accounts: Discover how to create and oversee accounts if you operate an advanced account, essential for managing multiple sellers or brands.
• Relationships: Understand how service relationships between different Merchant Center accounts (e.g., with advanced accounts or third-party providers) are structured and managed.
• Link a Google Business Profile: Connect your Merchant Center account with your Google Business Profile to enhance your local business presence.
• Control access to your account: Manage user permissions and roles within your Merchant Center account to control who can perform specific actions.
• Manage Merchant Center email notifications: Customize the email notifications you and other users receive for account alerts, news, and tips.
• Manage homepage settings: Set, verify, and claim your online store's website URL, a crucial step for account verification and program participation.
• Content API migration: To learn about the migration from Content API for Shopping, see Migrate account management.

Merchant Center account structure and relationships

The Merchant Center ecosystem supports different account structures to cater to various business needs. These accounts can also form relationships with each other, where one account (a service provider) offers specific services to another. The Accounts sub-API lets you interact with and manage these types and their relationships.

Merchant Accounts

This is a Merchant Center account, typically used by an individual business to manage their own product listings and programs directly.

Common Use Cases:

• Small to medium-sized businesses managing their own ecommerce presence.
• Merchants who want direct control over their Google Merchant Center setup.
• Merchants who use ecommerce platforms where the platform helps create and manage their account.

Relationships and services:

Merchant accounts can be linked to service providers for assistance with tasks like product data management or account and campaign management.

Advanced Accounts

An advanced account is a specialized account within Google Merchant Center. It's designed for businesses and platforms that need to manage multiple Merchant Center accounts at scale.

Common use cases:

• Store builders: Ecommerce platforms that enable merchants to create and operate their online stores.
• Marketplaces: Online platforms that host multiple individual merchants selling their products.
• Merchants that own multiple brands: These merchants own multiple brands and sell products in physical stores or online on multiple domains.
• International retailers: Retailers selling products across multiple countries and domains.
• Channel partners: Entities that help merchants list their products on various marketing channels and often provide related services.

Relationships and Services:

While all advanced accounts manage multiple merchant accounts, the optimal configuration and use of relationships and services often differ based on the specific business model. Understanding these distinctions is key to leveraging the API effectively. The following are recommended best practices for common use cases:

Store builders and Channel partners

These partners should create an advanced account and establish relationships with the merchants they work with.

• For existing Merchant Center accounts: The platform should establish an Account Management service link with the merchant's existing individual account. This allows the platform to manage aspects of the account with the merchant's consent.
• For new merchants without an account: The platform can use the API to create a new individual Merchant Center account for the merchant. A new account can be created under the platform's advanced account using the Account Aggregation service.

Marketplaces

Marketplaces operate one advanced account per domain and create seller accounts with the Account Aggregation service. It is common for marketplaces to use multiple seller types, some of which require additional configuration by Google's support team. The domain claim and program management is done on the advanced account level and inherited by the seller accounts. For additional details refer to the valid marketplace account structure help center article.

• Marketplace-owned seller account: A dedicated account for the marketplace's own products. This allows the marketplace to use its brand recognition, seller ratings, and specific 1P campaign strategies.
• Single-seller accounts: Each account contains products for a single third-party seller. This structure is ideal for larger sellers requiring distinct, seller-specific attributes or running seller-specific advertising campaigns.
• Multi-Seller accounts: A single account contains products from multiple third-party sellers, which simplifies the account and product management. For additional details refer to the multi-seller accounts help center article.

Merchants that own multiple brands

Multi-brand businesses typically use an advanced account to manage individual accounts for each brand, linked using an Account Aggregation service. This allows brands to operate independently (e.g., website claims, product data) while the advanced account simplifies centralized functions like user access, reporting, and sometimes campaign oversight.

International retailers

International retailers manage their global presence using an advanced account, with individual accounts per country or region linked using an Account Aggregation service. Their setup often varies based on domain structure:

• Single domain (with country subdomains/paths): The main domain is typically claimed at the advanced account level and inherited by regional accounts. These regional accounts then focus on managing localized product data, pricing, and availability.
• Multiple country-specific domains: Each regional account claims its own specific domain. In this model, the individual accounts handle local operations, while the advanced account is primarily used for centralized functions like user access, global reporting, and overarching campaign management.