Tag Archives: content_api

Content API for Shopping: Automatic Quota

The Content API for Shopping now automatically increases your products and accounts quotas as your account grows.

Because your API quota now changes dynamically, we have removed the static chart from our published limits guide. To check your current daily quota and usage, and current per minute quota, you can call the quotas.list service.

The following errors are not API quota errors and can’t be resolved by automatic quota increases. They require you to request a quota increase.

  • too_many_items: Merchant quota exceeded
  • too_many_subaccounts: Maximum number of subaccounts reached

Automatic quota only applies to the products and accounts services. If you need an increased API quota for any other service, or if you’re hitting your daily API quota for the products or accounts services or need a temporary increase for the accounts or products services, contact us with the following information:

  • Your Merchant Center ID
  • Which methods you’ve reached your quota limits on
  • An estimation of how many calls per day you need for those methods
  • The reason why you need an increased quota

Note that our general quota policy is you should not update your products more than twice per day, and that you should check your accounts and account statuses not more than once per day.

If you have any questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to contact us via the forum.

Benji Rothman, Content API for Shopping Team

Deprecating Content API Easy Onboarding In Merchant Center

Starting on March 29, 2024, the Content API for Shopping authentication method and tab in Merchant Center will no longer be available in the classic Merchant Center. This tab, which creates a service account for you, will not be migrated to Merchant Center Next. Service accounts formerly created through this tab will continue to work even after the deprecation. You can still authenticate your Content API calls with a new service account via the service account setup to generate an API key.

After the deprecation, follow these steps, further detailed in our API documentation, if you need to set up a new service account to access the Content API for Shopping:

  1. Ensure you have an existing cloud project or create a new one in the Google Cloud Console.
  2. Generate or access your service account credentials.
  3. Download the JSON private key from Google API Console. This JSON private key can be used in the same way as the one downloaded from Merchant Center previously.
  4. Add the new service account as a user to your Merchant Center account. If you’re a third-party developer (and don’t have access to the Merchant Center UI for the account), your client will need to complete this step for you.

If you have any questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to contact us via the forum.

Benji Rothman, Content API for Shopping Team

Buy on Google For Search and Shopping Deprecation

Buy on Google for Search and Shopping will no longer be available starting September 26, 2023. All Merchant and Consumer support will end for Buy on Google on Search on November 25, 2023. The only exception is that the orders.get and orders.list methods will remain available for Search and Shopping until October 30, 2024, so that merchants can download their historical order data.

See below for the specific timeline of when Buy on Google methods will no longer be available for the Search and Shopping program.

June 28, 2023 onwards:

September 30, 2023:

October 31, 2023:

All the orders related resources (orders, orderinvoices, orderreports, orderreturns, ordertrackingsignals) and all their underlying methods. The only exception is that the orders.get and orders.list methods will remain available for Search and Shopping until October 30, 2024, so that merchants can download their historical order data.

If you are currently using the Buy on Google endpoints for Search and Shopping via the Content API, you will need to stop using these services for Search and Shopping before the dates listed above, as your requests will start to fail after that date.

If you have any questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to contact us via the forum.

Benji Rothman, Content API for Shopping Team

Planned Content API maintenance from 15:00 UTC to 17:00 UTC on September 28, 2023

The Content API for Shopping will undergo planned maintenance on September 28, 2023, from 15:00 to 17:00 UTC.

During this time, you will not be able to make any changes to your account such as updates to users, business information, feeds, shipping details, or linking your Google Ads accounts.

You can still upload products to your existing feeds or data sources and run ads as usual.

If you have any questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to contact us via the forum.
Benji Rothman, Content API for Shopping Team

Launching the Merchant Support Service

On August 23rd, 2023, we introduced new features in the Content API for Shopping to help you display detailed information about product and account issues to your merchants, and enable those merchants to request re-review or perform other actions. The new MerchantSupport service provides more transparency about our policy-related requirements to your merchants. These methods should be used for merchants based in the EEA, but can be used globally.

Here are the 2 new methods (developer guide):
  • Render account issues: provides UI elements with text in the language you select to display account issues to your merchants and redirect link to Merchant Center for merchants to request a re-review or perform other actions
  • Render product issues: provides UI elements with text in the language you select to display product issues to your merchants and redirect link to Merchant Center for merchants to request a re-review or perform other actions
All issue texts returned from MerchantSupport methods above are localized. Clients can request texts in any Merchant Center supported language. Please note that merchants need to have access to their Merchant Center account in order to perform the actions.

If you are based in EEA, we highly recommend implementing MerchantSupport methods by the end of the year, so that your merchants will have more information regarding our policy-related requirements, and have access to our new features. In the future we will expand the MerchantSupport service to let you request re-review or perform other actions directly with the Content API for Shopping. With this future addition, your merchants will not have to be redirected to Merchant Center, they will be able to request the action directly in your UI.

If you have any questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to contact us via the forum.
Benji Rothman, Content API for Shopping Team

New Merchant IDs are now 64-bit in Content API for Shopping

In the Content API for Shopping, we informed you last June that new Merchant IDs were migrating from 32 bit to 64-bit signed integers.

Existing Merchant IDs haven’t changed. Beginning on March 13, 2023 new Merchant IDs created could be in the 64-bit signed range. Through a slow rollout over the next few months, a higher percentage of new Merchant IDs will be in the 64-bit signed range. By June 2023, all new Merchant IDs created will be in the 64-bit signed range.

To avoid any issues, please make sure your applications are fully compliant with IDs within a range of 64-bit signed integer values.

If you have any questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to contact us via the forum.
Benji Rothman, Content API for Shopping Team

Issues from all destinations to be included in Productstatuses Service by default in the Content API for Shopping

Starting on April 24, 2023, the Content API for Shopping methods productstatuses.list and productstatuses.get will include issues from all eligible destinations by default. This will likely increase the size of the response you get back from the same call.

Currently, the responses you get when using the productstatuses.list and productstatuses.get methods only include issues from Shopping Ads and don’t include issues from other destinations, for example free listings issues.

Including issues from all eligible destinations will let you provide your users with an overall better experience. This change will improve your issue visibility across all destinations. In turn, you will see an increase in the number of results, or the size of responses you’ll receive.

No action is needed from you as the free listing issues will now be included by default when using the Content API for Shopping methods productstatuses.list and productstatuses.get.

However, if you want to keep the calls to only display issues from Shopping Ads, we suggest setting the query parameter destinations[] in the productstatuses methods to Shopping.

Learn more about the changes to the product statuses methods in the Content API for Shopping Product statuses documentation.

If you have any questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to contact us via the forum.
Benji Rothman, Content API for Shopping Team

Request Account Reviews with the Content API

In the Content API for Shopping, your Merchant Center account and the products in it might be disapproved for various reasons. Historically, you have been able to see the status of your merchant center account for free listings and Shopping ads with the accountstatuses service. In Q1 2022 we introduced the freelistingsprogram and shoppingadsprogram services to provide more granular detail. You can now use the requestreview method on the freelistingsprogram and shoppingadsprogram services to request your account to be re-reviewed after making changes to fix your product and account data.

For an in-depth explanation of how to use the freelistingsprogram and shoppingadsprogram services, please refer to the Free listings and Shopping ads guides.

If you have any questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to contact us via the forum.

Benji Rothman, Content API for Shopping Team

Feed label support added to datafeeds service in Content API for Shopping

On September 22, 2022, we updated you on changes to country targeting for shopping products, and how to use the feedLabel field. We’ve made additional changes to help you integrate feedLabel. Here are our previous announcements: What’s new
Merchant Center & Content API
As of November 8th, 2022 we’ve added the ability to manage feedLabel for datafeeds. The feedLabel field is now available in the following resources:
  • products
  • datafeeds
  • DatafeedStatus
You can now see which countries a datafeed explicitly targets in datafeedtarget. This applies when you use feedLabel instead of country in the datafeedtarget configuration.

We’ve also added the targetCountries field for datafeeds, so you can configure targeting for datafeeds directly. You can still configure targeting outside the feed, for example, by setting the shipping attribute of the products resource.

Note: You can’t manage Primary and Supplemental API feeds with the datafeeds service. You need to use the Merchant Center UI.

Behavior changes
Here’s a clarification of new API behavior for feedLabel:

Insert and update
You can now call Products.insert and Products.update with a feedLabel set to any valid string, for example “WINTERPRODUCTS”.

You can now use feedLabel without setting targetCountry during insertion and updates. Errors that used to warn of this requirement have been removed.

If you use both feedLabel and targetCountry in these calls, their values must be the same.

See Use feed labels to advertise products from specific feeds for the definition of a valid string for feedLabel.

Targeting
If you don’t use targetCountry for products, you must either set the shipping attribute of the products resource, or use the targetCountries field for the datafeeds resource to ensure your products target the chosen countries.

Opt out of receiving products and datafeeds without a country
If you’re concerned your codebase cannot handle products and datafeeds without a country, and you want to opt out of receiving them via the Content API for Shopping, fill out the following form: Feed label replaces target country in the Content API for Shopping - temporary exemption.

When you’re ready to support feedLabel, you can opt back in to receiving these offers.

If you have any questions about this change, please visit the Content API for Shopping forum.
Ian Ballantyne, Content API for Shopping Team

Feed label support added to datafeeds service in Content API for Shopping

On September 22, 2022, we updated you on changes to country targeting for shopping products, and how to use the feedLabel field. We’ve made additional changes to help you integrate feedLabel. Here are our previous announcements: What’s new
Merchant Center & Content API
As of November 8th, 2022 we’ve added the ability to manage feedLabel for datafeeds. The feedLabel field is now available in the following resources:
  • products
  • datafeeds
  • DatafeedStatus
You can now see which countries a datafeed explicitly targets in datafeedtarget. This applies when you use feedLabel instead of country in the datafeedtarget configuration.

We’ve also added the targetCountries field for datafeeds, so you can configure targeting for datafeeds directly. You can still configure targeting outside the feed, for example, by setting the shipping attribute of the products resource.

Note: You can’t manage Primary and Supplemental API feeds with the datafeeds service. You need to use the Merchant Center UI.

Behavior changes
Here’s a clarification of new API behavior for feedLabel:

Insert and update
You can now call Products.insert and Products.update with a feedLabel set to any valid string, for example “WINTERPRODUCTS”.

You can now use feedLabel without setting targetCountry during insertion and updates. Errors that used to warn of this requirement have been removed.

If you use both feedLabel and targetCountry in these calls, their values must be the same.

See Use feed labels to advertise products from specific feeds for the definition of a valid string for feedLabel.

Targeting
If you don’t use targetCountry for products, you must either set the shipping attribute of the products resource, or use the targetCountries field for the datafeeds resource to ensure your products target the chosen countries.

Opt out of receiving products and datafeeds without a country
If you’re concerned your codebase cannot handle products and datafeeds without a country, and you want to opt out of receiving them via the Content API for Shopping, fill out the following form: Feed label replaces target country in the Content API for Shopping - temporary exemption.

When you’re ready to support feedLabel, you can opt back in to receiving these offers.

If you have any questions about this change, please visit the Content API for Shopping forum.
Ian Ballantyne, Content API for Shopping Team