This page describes policies that you must comply with to participate in the vehicle listings program. Be aware that these policies can be updated at any time.
Overview
When Google evaluates your feed, we exclude individual vehicles that don't include any of the required fields listed in the Feed specification or that violate the policies on this page. Additionally, we might exclude entire dealerships that violate the policies below, or if the inventory is incomplete when we compare it to the dealership's website.
Dealership policies
- The dealership must have a claimed and verified Business Profile on Google. See How to verify your business on Google.
- The Business Profile must have the Place type
vehicle_dealer. See How to choose a category for your Business Profile. - The dealership must be based in a country where the vehicle listings program is supported, which is currently limited to the U.S. & U.S. territories.
Vehicle policies
- Only include vehicles with a valid
Vehicle Identification Number:
- Vehicle parts, accessories, tires, and services are not supported.
- Vehicle auctions and auction pricing are not supported.
- Vehicles available for rent, lease or subscription are not supported.
- Examples of supported vehicle types: passenger cars and trucks, RV, ATV, motorcycles, trailers.
- Only include vehicle inventory for sale directly from the dealership. Vehicles from private sellers, individuals, or auto brokers are not permitted.
- If a vehicle isn't located at the dealership, mark the vehicle as
IN_TRANSITorSHIP_TO_STORE. See vehicle_fulfillment.
Image policies
For the best viewing experience on both large and small screens, we require high quality images that show the vehicle for sale with minimal background. Only provide images that you're permitted to share for use by Google.
Image Specifications
| Attribute | Requirement |
|---|---|
| File Formats | JPEG (.jpg or .jpeg) or PNG (.png) |
| Minimum Dimensions | 256 x 256 pixels (recommended is 800 x 600) |
| Maximum image size | 64 megapixels |
| Maximum file size | 16 MB |
| Recommended aspect ratio | 4:3 |
Image quality issues
The following types of images will be excluded:
- Images with inappropriate or sensitive visuals.
- Images that can't be crawled by Google.
While images may not be excluded for the reasons below, we've heard from users that they do not contribute to a good user experience and could negatively impact your vehicle listings performance. We recommend avoiding these types of images for best results. Google may utilize technical solutions, like the ones described in Automatic image improvements, to modify these images to be more consistent with our guidelines.
- Images that don't have stable URLs.
- Images that have watermarks or overlays.
- Placeholder images which don't show the vehicle available for sale.
- Stock images, especially those which don't show the correct vehicle exterior (for example, color, model, etc.)
Please refer to this documentation about how to fix image issues.
Vehicles without images might be ranked lower on Google. For this reason, although vehicle images aren't required, we strongly recommend uploading high quality images for every vehicle.
Price policies
We want to show the lowest possible price that is publicly available to all consumers. Any discount shown needs to apply to all consumers. For instance, don't include veterans discounts.
If you would like to show only MSRP prices for a new vehicle, put the MSRP price
in both the price and vehicle_msrp fields.
We exclude vehicles with prices that fall outside of the range of prices that we expect, based on similar vehicles that are available for sale.
Mileage policy
We exclude any new vehicle with more than 20,000 miles.
Business Profile Products
We hide the Business Profile Products when showing vehicle listings on Business Profiles.
Can we enable both vehicle listings and Products on our Business Profile?
Our users found it confusing to see two similar modules next to each other. Additionally, vehicle listings consistently have significantly higher interaction rate compared to Products, so we believe it provides users with the best experience when searching for vehicles.