Shopping Actions has a new name! Shopping Actions is now Buy on Google. You’ll see the new name across the help center. Learn more
This article provides an overview of the Google Orders API and how it works.
With Buy on Google, you can showcase your products across different Google platforms. This will give customers an easy way to shop your products with a universal shopping cart, whether they’re on desktop, mobile, or a Google Home device.
Before you can use the Orders API, you need to implement OAuth login.
Note: If you don’t have the technical resources for API or feed integration, you can manually manage your orders using the orders page in Merchant Center, or you can use order feeds to more efficiently make bulk changes. You will need to be listed as an order manager in order to do so. Users with standard user-level permission will have a read-only access to the orders page in Merchant Center. Learn more about setting up user access
How it works
Google's Orders API helps you automatically ingest orders, mark orders as shipped, charge customers, and process returns and refunds.
Order ingestion
Order ingestion is the process of getting information about a customer’s order into your Orders API.
For about 30 minutes after an order is placed, the order is in the inProgress
state. In this state, the customer can cancel the entire order or individual line items from the Google order confirmation page.
You can reserve inventory for an inProgress
order, but do not ship any line items or mark items as shipped until the order status changes to pendingShipment
.
The steps for order ingestion are below:
- Retrieve order information to ingest into your Orders API via the
list
method.
Note:Orders may not populate the customer’s house number or street address for billing information to your Orders API and thepaymentMethod
,billingAddress
, andstreetAddress
fields may appear blank. You may need to modify your Orders API to handle this use case. - Once orders have been ingested into your Orders API, acknowledge them via the
acknowledge
method.
Shipping and billing
updatemerchantorderid
method to make it easier to distinguish those orders.To manage item shipment and customer charging information, use the methods below:
- Manage line item cancellation via the
cancellineitem
method - Manage order cancellation via the
cancel
method - Manage line item ship by and delivery dates via the
updatelineitemshippingdetails
method- Use
orders.get
to retrieve the order details, including the items and line item identifiers - Use
orders.updatelineitemshippingdetails
to update the shipment details for the affected item(s)- Note: Only one identifier (product ID or lineitem ID) should be used in the update call
- Use
- Mark line items as shipped via the
shiplineitems
method- You can assign a carrier tracking ID to a line item when the line item is shipped using
shiplineitems
or any time after shipment usingupdateshipment
Important: Customers are only charged after you’ve marked all items in an order as shipped or cancelled them.
- You can assign a carrier tracking ID to a line item when the line item is shipped using
- Mark shipments as delivered via the
updateshipment
method (optional)
Returns and refunds
Use the method below to perform returns and refunds through the Orders API:
- Declare items as returned, and refund customers via the
returnrefundlineitem
method. Courtesy refunds can be given using the “refund” method without returning any items. The value of all refunds can’t exceed the total order value.
Note: Make sure to process returns and refunds quickly and professionally. Returns and refunds are tracked as part of Google’s Trust Metric analysis. This analysis is designed to ensure retailers meet our quality standards in order to remain eligible to participation in Buy on Google.
Marketing opt-in information (optional)
If you use Google’s Content API to gather marketing opt-in information, use customer.marketingRightsInfo
. That will contain:
explicitMarketingPreference
-- If this is "granted", then retailers can subscribe the user to marketing emails (if not already done so). Otherwise, they should unsubscribe the user.marketingEmailAddress
-- When "granted", this is the customer email address that retailers should send marketing emails to.lastUpdatedTimestamp
-- The time at which the customer changed their marketing opt-in preference.
Need help? Click hereto contact Buy on Google support.