Pickup

Pickup is available with local inventory ads in all supported countries. The feature is also supported by free local listings in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States and Vietnam.

Currently, pickup is not supported for free local listing in Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, and Sweden. Contact support if you’d like to change your product page experience by selecting “Switch to in-store product price and availability hosted on Google” as you fill out the contact us form.

Pickup enables you to provide a direct online to offline experience for your customers. For items that can be picked up in store within a specific SLA regardless of store availability, pickup enables you to use your stores as an omnichannel asset and differentiator. Unlike product pages with in-store availability, pickup doesn't require full inventory information.

Your pickup setup might also require you to specify a pickup cost [pickup_cost] and a free pickup threshold [free_pickup_threshold]. Refer to our dedicated help centers for more information.

In order to implement pickup, you must meet the following requirements:

• You must be able to identify your store locations which are eligible to fulfill online orders.
• You must be able to fulfill store pickup orders either if the product is currently in stock or will be available within a defined SLA. The SLA refers to the timeframe within which an item will be available for in-store pickup.

On this page

• Website requirements
• Data requirements
• Select participating Business Profile locations
• Opt into pickup
• Frequently asked questions

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Website requirements

To be eligible for pickup, your website must meet the following requirements on both desktop and mobile devices, including tablets:

• Provide options to pick up a product: The landing page or the checkout flow must display the option to pick up the product on the same day or at a later date. Customers must be able to purchase or reserve a product for pickup.
• Product pages or checkout flow must clearly display the pickup SLA. The SLA refers to the timeframe within which an item will be available for in-store pickup.
• Allow customers to select the store where their order will be available for pickup.
• If charged, display the pickup fee: If there are any extra charges for pickup, it must be clear. This can be shown on the checkout flow. For a more detailed overview of what constitutes a misrepresentation, consult our misrepresentation policy.
• Provide pickup confirmation: A notification must be sent when the order is ready to be picked up (for example, by sending an email or SMS).
• Show fulfillment option before payment information is entered: Allow customers to view your fulfillment options before checking out. For a more detailed overview of what constitutes a misrepresentation, consult our misrepresentation policy.

Note: You can’t change your pickup experience while your website is being reviewed. The review can take up to a few days, and you’ll be notified when it’s completed.

Website recommendations

In addition to the website requirements above, we recommend the following:

• Don't require customers to create an account before showing your fulfillment options.
  • For example: Provide a “check out as guest” option.
• Don't require customers to enter address information before showing your fulfillment options.

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Data requirements

You can now set up pickup SLAs directly within the “Shipping and returns” section of Merchant Center. Learn more about setting up local pickups. Note that the values same_day and next_day are currently not supported by this feature.

In addition to the product data, you must add the following attribute to your data:

Attribute	Optional or required	Possible values	Data source	Note
Pickup SLA [pickup_sla]	Required	same_day next_day 2-day 3-day 4-day 5-day 6-day multi-week Text/tab delimited example multi-week XML example <g:pickup_sla>multi-week</g:pickup_sla>	Product data or Inventory data. Tip: If available, we recommend adding [pickup_sla] in your inventory data if there are differences between your stores.	Submit the maximum amount of time it will take for you to fulfill an online order to one of your stores. If an item is not available to pickup, set [pickup_method] to “not supported”. Tip: You can set the pickup SLA [pickup_sla] to multi-week if you want to show a fixed annotation, the ad will render the annotation “Store pick-up”.

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Note: Starting September 1, 2024, you only need to submit the pickup SLA [pickup_sla] for your pickup setup. The pickup method [pickup_method] attribute is now optional, so we recommend not including it.

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Select participating Business Profile locations

By default, Google will show local inventory ads in the linked Business Profile location group.

If all of your store locations are eligible to fulfill online orders, select the Business Profile location group that contains all of your store locations during account linking.

If only a subset of your store locations are eligible to fulfill online orders, organize these stores into a separate location group. During account linking, select this location group.

If you're unable to reorganize your store locations into groups, reach out to our support team:

1. Fill out the contact us form and select I want to exclude some of my stores from serving pickup.
2. Under “Provide a list of store codes and addresses for your locations that do not offer the option for users to pick up their product(s):”, specify the store codes and addresses of the locations that aren't eligible to allow users to pick up your products.

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Opt into pickup

To enable pickup for your stores, follow these steps:

1. Go to Add-ons in Merchant Center.
2. Under Discover, select the Local inventory ads add-on or the Free local listings add-on.
   • If these add-ons were already activated in the past, you will find them under Your add-ons.
3. In the “Local inventory ads” or “Free local listings” card, select Go to Local inventory ads or Go to Free local listings.
4. Select Add country to get started with a new country where you want to show local inventory ads or free local listings. For an existing country listed, select Review setup status next to the country name.
5. Add your stores.
   • If you’ve already done this step in the past, it can be disregarded.
6. Select Pickup & product page experience.
7. To the question, “Can customers buy or reserve products online to pick up in stores?”, select Yes.
8. Add a URL that shows a product available for pickup.
9. To the question, “Can customers view in-store availability on your product pages?”:
   • Select Yes if your product pages show in-store availability.
   • Select No if your product pages don’t show in-store availability.
10. Select Save.

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Frequently asked questions

How does pickup work?

Since users are able to pick up products they ordered online in your stores, Google will allow you to advertise those products for each of the stores along with an SLA. For each product with a provided pickup SLA [pickup_sla], Google will generate inventory entries for every store within your Business Profile location group.

Can I advertise products that are marked as "out of stock" in my primary data source for pickup?

No. Products with the availability “out of stock” in your primary data source aren't eligible for pickup.

Pickup enables you to create ads, showing your local products for your online available items. Since your online available products can be picked up on the same day or at a later stage, you can advertise the products along with the SLA on how long it will take for these products to become available for pick up in your stores. For this feature to work, the product needs to be fulfillable online. This will allow Google to guarantee that the product can be transacted on.

By using pickup in my Merchant Center account, can I also advertise in-stock inventory?

Products enabled through pickup only allow you to showcase products that can be picked up at your stores regardless of whether the item is in the store when the order is placed. Pickup doesn't allow you to advertise actual inventory within your stores. To be able to advertise any in-stock items within your stores, you will need to set up your Merchant Center account with a product page experience allowing customers to discover the in-store availability on your product pages as indicated in our implementation guide.

What should I do if a few products can't be shipped to all of my stores?

Products that can't be picked up from all of the locations in your linked location group aren't eligible for pickup. Set the pickup method [pickup_method] to “not supported” for these products in your inventory data to include store-specific pickup SLAs for added flexibility.

Can I submit specific SLAs for different stores?

No. Pickup only allows you to set the maximum SLA for all of your stores. This means that if a product is not available for pickup within 3 days but for a few stores it can take up to 4 days, you need to submit the SLA for this product as “4-day”. To submit store specific attributes for pickup SLA [pickup_sla], you can include store-specific pickup SLAs in your inventory data for added flexibility.

How do I recognize my pickup offers?

Pickup will appear as segment click type “Shopping - Product - Local”. Ads enabled through pickup will be represented in Google Ads exactly the same way as local inventory ads. Learn more about how to enable local products in your campaigns.

Can I use pickup and provide pickup SLA [pickup_sla] information using inventory data source?

Yes.

Can I submit the necessary attributes for pickup using Google's Content API for Shopping?

Yes, you can submit product information for pickup. However, you will need to resubmit all of the required product information, including the ID [id], title [title], image link [image_link], and others, using the product insert method with the channel set to "local". You can also submit the pickup SLA [pickup_sla]. Note that the field “storeCode” is required. You can add the relevant store codes within your Business Profile account or add it directly from Google Search. Learn more on how to submit product information using Content API for Shopping.

Keep in mind that the attribute required for pickup is not supported with the channel set to "online".

The availability of offers must be set as “out of stock” to prompt pickup ads.

Is there a limit to the number of offers or stores I can submit for pickup with product data?

If the pickup inventory that’s automatically created from your product exceeds our quotas, our support team will contact you to discuss the next steps.

The quotas have been set to be sufficient for the majority of retailers and we expect the quota to be exceeded only in rare instances.

What happens if my quota is exceeded?

Even if the pickup attribute has been submitted, not all of your products will be able to create pickup inventory automatically when the quota limit has been exceeded.

These products will be identified through the missing inventory issue in the “Needs attention” page of the local inventory ads.

What should I do if I suspect that my quota has been exceeded?

If your account has exceeded the quota for the automatically generated pickup inventory, our support team will either contact you directly or your Google representative.

If your quota has been exceeded, our support team will guide you through the next steps. This may involve removing the pickup attribute from several products or limiting the number of stores for which inventory can be automatically generated. If the quota can’t be reduced through these methods, we may need to pause the automatic inventory generation for all the products, resulting in the removal of all automatically created inventory.

Can I use pickup in addition to regional availability and pricing?

Yes. You may be using regional availability and pricing to be able to specify the regions where your products are available and control pricing regionally.

Enable pickup

Activate the local add-on and the Advanced data source management add-on.

To enable pickup in your Merchant Center, you'll need to follow these steps:

1. Go to Data sources in Merchant Center.
2. Select the name of your primary data source, then select Data source setup.
3. Under "Marketing methods", unselect the following checkboxes:
   • All for physical stores
   • Free local listings
   • Local inventory ads
4. Make a copy of your existing primary product data by submitting the same data but with a different feed label.
5. In this copy, change the "Availability" attribute to be set to "in stock" for all of your products that you can ship to your stores. To change the availability values, learn how to Set up your attribute rules.
6. In your copy of your product data with the new feed label, ensure that only local inventory ads have been selected as "Marketing method" by clicking Data source setup. Deselecting "All for online store" will automatically disable the following programs:
   • Free listings
   • Shopping ads
   • Display ads

Note:

• Feed labels are available only during the creation of a new data source if you have "Advanced data source management" enabled under "Add-ons".
• When creating a new product data source, you can choose the country, language, marketing methods, and feed label. However, when a product data source is created, you can't modify the language or feed label.

This setup will allow you to complete your pickup onboarding. It may take on average between 24–48 hours before the offers you've selected for pickup will be able to appear as local inventory ads. Ensure that the new products from your product data copy are included in your campaigns in Google Ads.

Regional availability and pricing products

If you intend to target your regional availability and pricing products and local inventory ads using the same campaign, review the following steps:

1. Review your campaign settings for all your campaigns to ensure that you're not targeting a specific feed label.
2. If you're using regular Shopping campaigns, ensure that your campaigns are enabled for local. Performance Max campaigns automatically include local inventory products when all feed labels are used.

Separate campaign for local inventory ads

If you intend to use separate campaign for local inventory ads, use the following steps instead:

1. For your existing regional availability and pricing campaigns, ensure to only use the feed label of your original product data under campaign settings.
2. Create a new campaign for your local inventory ads products by selecting the feed label for the copy of your product data.

My Merchant Center account has multiple countries activated for pickup. How can I ensure the offers are only used in the intended countries?

Multiple countries enabled for pickup through one Merchant Center account may result in some redundant inventory being created if the Merchant Center account has different product data sources for different countries.

From a serving standpoint, local inventory ads will only surface when there is a local intent or if someone is located near a store to ensure shoppers only see the most relevant ads. For this reason, the offers resulting from redundant inventories are rarely exposed to shoppers.

To further ensure that these offers are never used, you can follow the next steps:

• Limit the campaign using feed label.
• Limit the campaign to a specific country.

Note: If you operate across multiple countries, we recommend to use an MCA setup and to have a sub-account for each country.