With Things to do on Google, partners can help users discover new and exciting experiences and attractions around the world, right on Google Search. By promoting your inventory through free listings and a dynamic ad format, you can reach potential consumers who are already performing travel-related searches on Google.
Things to Do Center makes it even easier to manage your products by providing the tools you need to expand your reach and connect with users. You can configure feed credentials, view issues found in the products, and check the latest referral status of each product. To begin integrating with Things to Do Center and surfacing your inventory to travelers, contact our partnership team.
Initial setup
To create accounts and Secure Free Transfer Protocol (SFTP) endpoints, Google requires you to provide Secure Shell (SSH) keys to use as upload credentials. Once these are provided, Google will create a Things to Do Center account for you and 2 SFTP end points (one for development and another for production).
Learn how to generate a SSH Key pair for SFTP.
After your Things to Do Center account and endpoints are created, your Google representative will reach out to you and provide access details. As you develop the feed, you can upload it to the development end point and check the processing results in the Things to Do Center.
Product feed
The product feed is the primary way for you to provide Google with a list of products to display across Google.
The supported upload format is JSON. Each JSON file must be a complete ProductFeed object and may also be uploaded in a compressed format such as ZIP, TAR, GZIP.
If there are too many products to be uploaded in a single file, you can upload the data using multiple files. You’ll need to have the correct FeedMetadata field in each of the uploaded files. Things to do processing pipeline will then consider those uploads as a single feed.
Find location matches tool
In addition to details on your products, you also need to specify the location of a Point of Interest (POI). The preferred method is to provide the Place ID of a POI. The other 2 available options are to use the name and address of a POI (less preferred) or latitude and longitude information (least preferred).
The “Find location matches” tool in the Things to Do Center allows you to find the Place ID based on the name or address of a POI. This way you can obtain the Place ID of a POI without having to use the Places API. You can use the file upload functionality to research multiple POIs at the same time.
Monitor your products and diagnose issues
You can monitor the status of your products on the “Products” page. There are 3 types of statuses:
- Ads issues
- Free listings issues (admissions)
- Free listing issues (POI experiences)
You can view these statuses in their respective columns.
If your products have any issues, they might show up as an “Error” or “Warning” in the table.
Errors: Issues that affect the eligibility status.
Warnings: Issues that do not affect the eligibility status, but might affect how and where the product is displayed.
Learn more about all product issues.
