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Benefits
A marketplace is an online platform that provides a place for multiple individual merchants to sell their products. This article explains how to submit your data if you're a marketplace.
This article doesn't apply to you if:
- You manage your own website. If you manage your own website and store and it's not part of a marketplace.
- You're managing sellers as an agency. Agencies are third parties that submit items to Google on behalf of individual retailers. Each individual retailer is a separate entity and has a unique domain for its website such as example.com.
- You're an individual seller on a marketplace. Individual sellers should submit their product data directly to the marketplace and make sure all of their products comply with Shopping ads policies. If a marketplace doesn't submit feeds on behalf of sellers, sellers can refer to the marketplace in this article.
Note: If you plan to upload a large number of feeds or make frequent changes to your product data, it is strongly recommended that you upload this directly using the Content API.
Managing sellers on a marketplace
Manage your marketplace in Merchant Center by converting your account to a Marketplace Multi-Client account (MCA). This account structure allows you to create sub-accounts for each of your sellers, preventing a seller violating the Shopping ads policies from impacting other sellers. Creating sub-accounts for each of your sellers also helps you easily segment by seller on the campaign side.
A Marketplace MCA provides 3 different types of sub-accounts:
- Marketplace-owned seller: For the marketplace’s own products
- Single-seller: Each account contains 3P (third-party) products for a particular seller
- Multi-seller: Each account contains 3P (third-party) products for multiple sellers in the same sub-account
There are unique considerations for marketplaces in account structure, setup and ongoing maintenance. To find more guidance on how to choose the account structure that best suits your marketplaces, as well as best practices, learn more about Valid account structure for Marketplaces.
Setup
- Sign up with an email address you check regularly and adjust your preferences to ensure you receive the latest account updates and quality suggestions. Opt in to receive “opportunities” and “tips and best practices”. Learn how to Change your Merchant Center email preferences.
- Request a conversion of your account to an advanced account setup. Choose “Marketplaces” as the type of retail business.
- Separate products and sellers into sub-accounts based on the type of product and seller. Remember that sub-accounts created in Merchant Center should only hold offers for the same seller. Single seller sub-accounts default quota of 150,000 products.
- Submit product data on behalf of your sellers in their respective sub-accounts. Don't ask sellers to submit their own data, as such submissions won't be accepted. It is strongly recommended that you use the Content API to directly upload product data.
Note: If you have a multi-seller account, the external seller ID [external_seller_id] attribute is required and must meet validation criteria, otherwise your products will be disapproved. Learn more about External seller ID [external_seller_id].
To convert a single-seller account into a marketplace-owned seller, or if you need a multi-seller account, you can contact us with the Merchant Center ID to be converted.
Ongoing maintenance
Follow these guidelines for marketplaces.
- Help your sellers. Because you'll be using one Marketplace MCA to manage your seller sub-accounts, you'll need to handle any questions that your individual sellers have.
- Comply with Shopping ads policies. All products in each of your sub-accounts must comply with Shopping ads policies. Otherwise, sub-accounts or your entire Marketplace MCA could be suspended or deactivated.
- Avoid duplicate products. Make sure you don't submit multiple instances of the same products for the same seller. You're allowed to submit the same products only if those products are from different sellers. You can show your product across multiple countries and languages using your feed settings.