About inventory verification

Note: Inventory verification isn't required if you've been approved for merchant-hosted local shop front. Allow 72 hours for your feed to process, then select 'Request verification' and Google will send a notification to your Merchant Center account indicating that you're ready to begin serving local inventory ads and free local product listings.

Google's inventory verification programme checks product information in your local shops to ensure that it matches the information that you've provided in your data feeds. This programme also ensures the accuracy of information in local inventory ads and free product listings. Learn more about requesting inventory verification

Required inventory verifications per landing page experience

You can initiate inventory verification checks after submitting your product data and validating your inventory contact. Depending on your landing page experience, you need to complete a minimum number of inventory verifications.

Note: If any inventory verification is unsuccessful, the number of inventory verifications can exceed the minimum number of inventory verifications listed below.

	Number of inventory verifications per number of shops
Landing page experience	One to two shops	Three or more shops
Google-hosted local shop front	1	3
Merchant-hosted local shop front (basic)	0	0
Merchant-hosted local shop front (full)	0	0

Inventory verification process

After you have requested inventory verification, Google will email you to confirm that your account is ready for the inventory verification stage. Here's how the inventory verification process works:

• You submit your shop representative's contact information and their availability to conduct the review. This person can be someone who works in your shop, a marketing team member or an intern.
• On an agreed-upon date, Google will email your shop representative a survey form with a random selection of 100 products pulled from the shop's data feeds. Using the form, the shop representative will ensure that the product information matches what's actually in the shop. The form is compatible with all browsers.
• The shop representative also needs to photograph some products, clearly showing the product label and shelf price or price tag.

Once in your shop, the verification process takes approximately two hours per shop. The survey form must be completed within the same working day. Once you have completed the inventory verification, submit the survey to transfer the results.

Inventory re-verification

Once your local inventory ads or free local listings are live, Google may require additional inventory verifications to be conducted. These checks help to ensure that the product, price and availability information of your local products continues to be accurate. We recommend that you update any price and availability changes in your inventory data as frequently as possible and refresh your inventory data at least once per day.