Request an advanced account set up

As an admin user of a standalone Merchant Center account, you can request an advanced account setup. This is recommended for businesses that manage multiple sellers and domains at scale, such as marketplaces and multi-country retailers. Most customers don’t need an advanced account to get the most out of Merchant Center.

With this type of set-up, a single user or company can manage one or more Merchant Center accounts.

These sub-accounts will be nested under the advanced set-up structure, called multi-client account (MCA). The sub-accounts can for example have distinct names, unique website URLs and data sources.

Businesses eligible for advanced account setup

Store builders: These platforms allow merchants to set up an online store to list and sell products
Marketplaces: An online platform that provides a place for multiple individual merchants to sell their products.
Merchants that own multiple brands: These merchants own multiple brands and sell products in physical stores or online on multiple domains.
International retailers: These retailers sell products from one brand internationally, on multiple domains, online or in physical stores.
Advertising agencies: These agencies provide SEO consulting services to merchants and sometimes set up advertising campaigns on their behalf.
Channel partners: These partners allow merchants to list their product offers on different channels (like marketplaces and comparison shopping services), and typically also provide related services.

Note: If you want to connect your Google account to multiple Merchant Center accounts in order to manage their products, you don’t need an MCA. You can request to be added as a user by the respective account admin.

Convert to an advanced account setup

Requirements

You must be an account admin.
Your account cannot be a multi-client account (MCA), or a sub-account in an existing MCA.
You cannot have an existing account-level policy violation.

Recommendations

Avoid having multiple websites that contain similar content: this could lead to account disapproval. Learn more about duplicate content in the abuse of network policy
If you plan to upload a large number of products and feeds or make frequent changes to your product data, we recommend you upload this directly using the Content API.
If you’re working with a third party platform to show, promote or sell your products across Google, you can link your Merchant Center to a third party application.

Instructions

In your Merchant Center account, click the Settings & Tools menu .
Click General account options.
On the “Advanced account setup” section click Request Conversion.
Make sure to select the options that best describe your business.
Click Request.

What to expect after requesting the conversion

You can check the status of your request by visiting the “Account settings” page.
Requests may take a few days to process. You will receive an email once this process is complete.
If you successfully convert to an advanced account setup, you will receive a new MCA, and your current Merchant Center account will become a sub-account of this new MCA. You can verify and claim websites under your multi-client account by following the steps below.

Multi-client account online store(s) verification and claim

MCA owners can verify and claim an online store URL(s) with the parent account login email of the MCA. Typically, the parent MCA will need to verify and claim the top-level domain.

If the sub-account online store website URLs are sub-hosts or paths under the MCA claimed URL tree

After the parent MCA setup has verified and claimed a URL, each sub-account can automatically inherit the claim and can set its website URL to any sub-host or path under the claimed URL tree.

If the sub-accounts span multiple online stores

These are the ways that you can verify and claim online store URLs depending on how you’re managing your MCA and domains:

If the parent MCA user manages the online store URLs for each sub-account, the MCA user can verify and claim each URL in the sub-account settings (for example, multi-brand merchants).
If the parent MCA user doesn't manage the online store URLs for each sub-account, each sub-account can verify and claim their website within their respective Google Search Console accounts and share the verification status with the parent MCA user in Search Console (for example, agencies that aren't web developers for their customers' websites). Learn more about how to verify and claim your store's website.
If a sub-account doesn't wish to share verification status with the parent MCA, you can add an online store owner as a user of the sub-account. The online store owner will then be able to verify and claim the URL for that sub-account in the sub-account settings (for example, agencies that manage their customers’ feeds).

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