You may view various types of accounts within Comparison Shopping Service (CSS) Center, including CSS groups, CSS domains, and Merchant Center accounts. It is important to understand how each entity works in order to best use CSS Center.
CSS groups and CSS domains
The top level of CSS accounts is the CSS group. A single CSS group (for example, “SuperCSS”) may group together multiple affiliated CSS domains (for example, “SuperCSS.fr” and “SuperCSS.it”), or it may include only one. A CSS domain is an entity that corresponds to an individual domain (for example, “SuperCSS.fr”) and can place Shopping ads with Google in CSS program countries. Each CSS domain must belong to a single CSS group and can be associated with multiple Merchant Center accounts.
Merchant Center account types
Each CSS domain may have the following types of Merchant Center accounts associated with it:
- Primary CSS MCA (Mandatory for each CSS domain): This is the CSS’s main multi-client account (MCA). From this account a CSS can create sub-accounts for each of the merchants they represent and orders can then be uploaded to these accounts. This MCA is created upon successful sign-up as a CSS on Google.
- Marketplace MCA (Optional for each CSS domain): A CSS can work with marketplace MCAs and their sub-accounts.
- Other MCA (Optional for each CSS domain): A CSS can also work with merchant MCAs.
- Stand-alone accounts (Optional for each CSS domain): A CSS can also work with stand-alone merchant accounts that are not part of an MCA.