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Regional availability and pricing

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Regional availability and pricing lets you show product availability and variable pricing based on your business presence and the location of your customer base by providing regional overrides for the national availability and/or pricing.

Regional availability and pricing; an example of how it works

Example

Your business might only have a presence in certain parts of the country or particular cities within a region, or you might sell food products that vary in price depending on the region that they are purchased in. This feature allows you to specify the regions where your products are available and control pricing regionally.

Regional availability and pricing is available for offers with target countries:

  • Australia, Brazil, France, Russia, United States

Regional availability and pricing is in beta for these countries:

  • Argentina, Austria, Canada, Chile, Columbia, Czechia, Denmark, Germany, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Romania, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Thailand, the United Kingdom and Vietnam

To join the regional pricing and availability beta for one of these countries, get in touch with your Google sales representative.

Benefits

Regional availability and pricing helps you:

  • Promote inventory that's regionally priced, in stock and available for delivery
  • Ensure that your online products are shown to the correct audience and that you only pay for valid clicks from Shopping ads, as your products will only be shown to users in the custom regions that you define
  • Expand your reach to delivery areas outside the radius of your shops, if you use local inventory ads.
Note: If a LIA radius and RAAP region overlap, LIA will typically take precedence over RAAP for ads.

Requirements

To participate in regional availability and pricing, you'll need to complete the following onboarding steps:

Note: For privacy reasons, you may not use the region ID to re-identify any user. You're also responsible for complying with all applicable local laws and regulations related to regional pricing.

Compatibilities

Regional availability and pricing is compatible with Standard, Smart Shopping and PMax campaigns. You won't need to configure any special regional settings in your Shopping campaigns. These will all be configured from your Merchant Center account.

Compatible surfaces: Products advertised through Shopping ads on Google Search, free listings on Search and the Shopping tab, display ads (for allowlisted merchants), YouTube Shopping affiliates, product snippets and video action campaigns (for allowlisted merchants in US, reach out to your Google sales representative to enrol).

Regional availability and pricing only supports the values in_stock and out_of_stock for the availability [availability] attribute (the values pre-order and backorder aren't supported).

In addition, automatic item updates can't be turned on for regional or national availability. However, it can be turned on for automatic price updates at a national level.

Set up regions

What are regions?

If your target country is eligible for regional availability and pricing (or if your account is allowlisted for a beta country) you'll notice a new 'Regions' menu in your Merchant Center account that allows you to specify regions for both regional inventory and/or delivery zones. Learn more about delivery zones.

A region is used to define areas in which products share the same online availability or price, or both. Depending on your business model, you may only need one set of regions for both delivery and regional availability and pricing, or you can create multiple regions and use them for either service.

Note: Regional availability and pricing isn't the same as regional delivery and may not be available in the same set of countries. Learn more about delivery settings.

A region is defined by:

  • A geographic area defined by a set of postcodes or states/provinces.
  • A region ID uniquely identifying each region. It's used to indicate the region in the regional inventory feed.

Regions are configured at the account level, which can be done either through the 'Regions' page in Merchant Center or through the Content API.

Set up regions by defining either postcode or state/province-based areas on the 'Regions' page of your Merchant Center account.

Region granularity support: All RAAP-eligible countries support state/province-based regions, and some countries also support more granular postcode-based regions as well.

Postcode AU, BR, CA, DE, FR, GB, HU, IN, JP, NL, NZ, US
State/Province AR, AT, CL, CO, CZ, DK, ES, HU, ID, IT, MX, MY, NO, PE, PH, PK, RO, RU, SE, TH, VN, ZA
Note: For Brazil, India, Japan and the United Kingdom, while postcode region setup is allowed, when we are unable to determine the consumer's postcode, we fall back to the city level by selecting the most populous postcode in the city. Ensure that the region contains the most populous postcode in order to match with it.

Region requirements

  • The currency used for a region must be the same as the currency used for the initial product offer.
  • Regions need to meet minimum geographic size and population requirements. They must cover an area of 3 square kilometres, and be expanded until the area represents the locations of at least 1,000 people.
Note: Your region eligibility may change over time as it's subject to population changes. You can monitor your eligibility in the 'Regions' menu.
  • Regions ideally should be geographically contiguous. Avoid adding unattached small area codes to a region. A small area code can be extended by clustering it with other area codes that surround it to make it larger. If the region doesn't meet these size requirements, an error message will be shown in the 'Issue' column on the 'Regions' page.
  • Region ID requirements:
    • Can be postcode
    • Can be alphanumeric
    • Can't have symbols
    • Length limit: Between 5 and 100 characters

Best practices

  • Avoid including an area (such as a postcode, state or oblast) in more than one region. If two regions overlap and they have conflicting regional price/availability, we will pick one region and its corresponding price/availability at serving time.
  • You don't need to set up regions for the entire country; you only need to cover the areas which require a regional override for an offer.
  • If you have a physical warehouse or hub of delivery, we recommend basing your regions around these locations.
  • If you set your region ID to be a postcode that exists within the region or a shop ID already used internally by your site, it may make the landing page integration easier.

Creating a new region

Create a new region [regional availability and pricing]

  1. Click the tools and settings icon Tools and settings menu icon [Gear].
  2. Select Regions under 'Tools'.
  3. Click the plus button to create a new region.
  4. Enter values for 'Region ID', 'Region name' and 'Country'.
    • This region ID needs to be unique for each region and can be alphanumeric (minimum of five characters).
    • The region name helps you identify the geographical area that you want to include in your region.
    • Use the drop-down menu beside 'Country' to select which country this region will apply to.
  5. Create your region using postcodes or states/provinces.
    1. To use postcodes, enter one entry per line in any of the following styles:
      1. A postcode (for example, 75008)
      2. A range of postcodes (for example, 2000–2500)
      3. A range of postcodes using a prefix with a wildcard ( * ) (for example, 94*)
      4. A range of postcodes using two prefixes with wildcards ( * ), using the same number of digits for both prefixes (for example, 94*–95*)

      Note: There is a limit of 25,000 postcode entries per account (a range of postcodes is considered one entry).

    2. To use states/provinces, select the correct ones.
  6. Click Add and click Save to finish creating the region.

Editing a region

Edit a region [regional availability and pricing]

  1. Click the tools and settings icon Tools and settings menu icon [Gear] .
  2. Select Regions under 'Tools'.
  3. To edit the region name or region ID, edit the text in the relevant field.

Note: You will need to separately update the region ID in your regional inventory feed.

  1. To edit the geographic area:
    1. Postcodes:
      1. Add new codes just like you did when you created the region, with one range per line. Click Add postcodes.
      2. To remove a postcode, click the X next to it or click Clear all to remove all postcodes.
    2. States/Provinces
      1. Select or deselect the tick boxes.
  2. Click Save to finish editing the region.

Removing a region

Remove a region [regional availability and pricing] Before you can remove a region, make sure that it's no longer in use.

  1. Click the tools and settings icon Tools and settings menu icon [Gear].
  2. Select Regions under 'Tools'.
  3. Click the bin icon next to the name of the region in the 'Region name' column, then click Confirm.

Set up regional price and/or availability

The next step is to set up regional price and/or availability. To do this, you need to provide a set of data with offer ID, region ID, and price and/or availability for each combination of offer and region which has a price/availability that differs from the offer's national price/availability.

Note: This means that you don't need to set up regional data for all of your offers. Regional data is only required for offers which have regional price or availability.

Regional overrides are configured via a supplemental inventory feed in Merchant Center or via the Content API.

Attributes

This is an overview of regional inventory feed attributes. If using the Content API, view the API reference for attributes and methods.

ID [id]

Your product's unique identifier

Required Required

Example
A2B4

Syntax

  • Max 50 characters
Schema.org property: Yes (learn more)

Use a unique value for each product.

Use the product's SKU where possible.

Keep the ID the same when updating your data.

Use only valid unicode characters.

Use the same ID for the same product across countries or languages.

regionId

Your product's regional overrides

Required Required

The ID uniquely identifying each region

Can be postcode

Can be alphanumeric

Cannot contain symbols

Length limit: Between 5 and 100 characters.

Availability [availability]

Your product's regional availability

Optional Optional

Example
in_stock

Supported values

  • In stock [in_stock]
  • Out of stock [out_of_stock]
Schema.org property: Yes (learn more)

At least one of availability and/or price are required


Accurately submit the product's regional availability and match the regional availability from your landing page and checkout pages.

Price [price]

Your products's regional price

Optional Optional

Example
GBP 15.00

Syntax

  • Numeric
  • ISO 4217
Schema.org property: Yes (learn more)

At least one of availability and/or price are required fields.


Accurately submit the product's regional price and currency, and match with the regional price from your landing page and at checkout.

Make sure that your landing page and the checkout pages include the regional price in the currency of the target country in a place that's straightforward to find.

Ensure that the product can be purchased online for the submitted regional price.

Make sure that any customer in the target region can buy the product for the submitted regional price and without paying for a membership.

Don't submit a price of 0 (a price of 0 is allowed for mobile devices sold with a contract).

For products sold in bulk quantities, bundles or multipacks.

Submit the total price of the minimum purchasable quantity, bundle or multipack.

For the US and Canada: Don't include tax in the price.

For all other countries: Include Value Added Tax (VAT) or goods and services tax (GST) in the price.

Sale price [sale_price]

Your product's sale price

Optional Optional

Example
GBP 15.00

Syntax

  • Numeric
  • ISO 4217

Schema.org property: No

Meet the requirements for the price [price] attribute.

Submit this attribute (sale price) in addition to the price [price] attribute set to the non-sale price.

Accurately submit the product's sale price and match the sale price with your landing page and the checkout pages.

Sale price effective date
[sale_price_effective_date]

The date range during which the sale price applies

Optional Optional

Example
(For UTC+1)
2016-02-24T11:07+0100/
2016-02-29T23:07+0100

Syntax

  • Max 51 alphanumeric characters
  • ISO 8601
  • YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm [+hhmm]
  • YYYY-MM-DDThh:mmZ
  • Separate the start date and end date with '/'

Schema.org property: No

Use together with the sale price [sale_price] attribute.

If you don't submit this attribute (sale price effective date), the sale price always applies.

Use a start date before the end date.

Note:

  • While the standard limit for regional configurations per offer is 150, this can be increased upon request and approval by your Google sales representative.
  • The existing primary feed must also be kept up to date.
  • Regional inventory is valid for 14 days. The regional data must be updated at least every 14 days, or the data will expire and Merchant Center will revert to the primary feed settings.

Best practices

  • In order to simplify the regional data, we recommend setting that primary feed (national) offer data to reflect the most common status for offers and providing regional data to cover the less common status.
  • Reminder that regional overrides are only needed for offers that have regional variance. There is no need to provide both price and availability values in the regional inventory feed when only one is regional. For example, if your prices are consistent across the country and only availability changes, you can leave the price [price] field blank in your regional data.

Example configurations

For offers that don't have regional overrides, continue to manage national price and availability (in_stock/out_of_stock) in the primary feed as you normally would. National URLs and regional URLs will still be crawled for price and availability data quality validation.

Offers are available nationally with the exception of a handful of states or areas.

Define region(s) only for those states or areas and use the regional inventory feed to set the availability of those offers as out_of_stock for those regions.

National product feed Regional inventory feed
Availability Price Availability Price

in_stock

National price

out_of_stock

Blank

Offers are only available in a handful of states or areas, not nationally.

Define region(s) only for those states or areas and use the regional inventory feed to set the availability of those offers as in_stock for those regions.

National product feed Regional inventory feed
Availability Price Availability Price

out_of_stock

National price

in_stock

Blank

Offers have regional pricing for some or all states or areas.

Define region(s) only for those states or areas with regional price differences, and then use the regional inventory feed to set the regional price for those regions.

National product feed Regional inventory feed
Availability Price Availability Price

in_stock

National price*

Blank

Regional price

*Use realistic pricing. Don't use values of GBP 0 or GBP 1.

Offers are only available in a handful of states or areas, not nationally, and have regional pricing.

Define region(s) only for those states or areas, and then use the regional inventory feed to mark those offers as in_stock for those regions and provide regional prices.

National product feed Regional inventory feed
Availability Price Availability Price

out_of_stock

National pricing*

in_stock

Regional price

*Use realistic pricing, e.g. the pricing most common across states or areas.

There are two ways that you can provide your regional inventory data:

  • Merchant Center feed
  • Content API

Using your Merchant Center feed

  1. In your Merchant Center account, click Products.
  2. Then, click Feeds.
  3. Under 'Supplemental feeds', click Add product inventory feed.
  4. Select Regional inventory as the feed type.
Note: For some accounts, this may show as 'inventory feed' rather than 'regional inventory'.
  1. Set fetch cadence for the feed.

Using the Content API

Review the Content API user guide for details.

If you plan to upload a large number of offers or make frequent changes to your product data, it's recommended that you use the Content API to directly upload your product data.

Display ads

If you run display ads and have a regional inventory feed, reach out to your Google sales representative to be allowlisted. If you aren't allowlisted, display ads won't serve for offers with regional overrides.

In the US, when allowlisted, display ads will support regional price and/or availability.

For display ads outside the US, when allowlisted, display ads will support the national price/availability (regional offer details won't be shown outside the US). When allowlisted, follow these steps to update your feed:

  1. Update primary feed.
    • For all products, set the availability [availability] attribute to in_stock and set national pricing (the price shown on the landing page for customers coming from display ads).
  2. Update regional feed.
    • For regionally available products, set the availability [availability] attribute to out_of_stock for regions where your product isn't offered online.
  3. For regionally priced products, set price.
  4. If your display ads are targeted to the US, follow the standard RAAP feed setup.

Set up landing page

The price and availability on your landing page must match the regional price/availability shown on Google surfaces from your regional feed. To ensure an accurate landing page experience, Google appends the region ID corresponding to the location of the shopper as a parameter to the click-through URL. You must adjust your landing pages so that they can accept this parameter and render a product landing page that shows the corresponding price and availability. The landing page must be static for each region ID, even if the URL is accessed from a different geographic location.

Example

Value provided in the link attribute: https://mystorewebsite.com/p/myproductlandingpage

Final URL: https://mystorewebsite.com/p/myproductlandingpage?region_id=123456

Value provided in the link attribute: https://mystorewebsite.com/p?offer=myproduct

Final URL: https://mystorewebsite.com/p?offer=myproduct&region_id=123456

Note: Offers' national price and availability are still going to be crawled and verified using the product page URL without a region ID. The values shown on your landing page for those national URLs must match the national price and availability of the offer. If your prices are purely regional, please set a realistic national offer price which reflects what your landing page shows when using the national URL.

Best practices

If your region IDs are postcodes or existing internal shop IDs and your landing page already has a location/shop picker, you may be able to simplify your landing page integration by passing the region ID directly into the existing picker logic to update the price and availability.

Troubleshooting

Review regions and fix issues

In order to use the regions feature, each of your regions must meet the minimum requirements. If you don't meet these requirements, you'll notice an error message, with details in the 'Issue' column on the 'Regions' page. You can filter your regions by issue or manually address them one by one. Once you've satisfied the necessary requirements, the error messages will disappear.

Price and availability mismatch

To avoid regional price and availability mismatch warnings and disapprovals, update the feed and site data as simultaneously as possible.

Unsupported destination based on regional settings

This is an item-level warning that indicates that you are targeting some serving destinations that aren't supported for regional offers. Your offers will still continue to serve everywhere that regional offers are supported.

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