Publish the static feed

To make your General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) feed available to Google, we recommend you publish it on the web. Google periodically fetches your transit data from this web location to ensure that Google Maps has your most up-to-date feed information. You can also upload the static feed manually.

Choose a publishing option

There are several locations where you can publish your feed on the web. You can choose from the following options: 

• Agency website (recommended): Publish your feed on your own website. To password protect the URL, use HTTP Basic and Digest authentication. NTLM, or IIS and Win32, authentication isn’t supported.
• Agency FTP server: Host your feed on your FTP server. You can password protect the URL with standard FTP authentication mechanisms.
• Rented host from an FTP provider: Host your feed through rented FTP space. To find a provider, do a Google search for "FTP hosting service."
• Google Drive: Publish your feed on Google Drive. Once you save the URL of your feed ZIP file to the Transit Partners Dashboard, we request access permission via email.
• Manual upload via Transit partner dashboard: As a last resort, use the manual upload option in the Transit partner dashboard. We don’t recommend this option, as it often leads to stale data for users.

Manual upload process

To manually upload your feed, follow these steps:

1. Open your Transit partner dashboard.
2. Next to your feed, click Static feed.
3. Under Status  Live & Update, click Upload files.
4. Choose the file you want to manually upload.
5. Click Process files.

How to edit feed options

In the Transit partner dashboard, you can specify how and when your feed is transferred. After you set these options, Google can fetch your data. To edit your feed options, follow these steps:

1. Access the Transit partner dashboard.
2. Click Static feed.
3. Click Feed configuration.
4. Complete the on-screen form.
5. Click Save.

Set up automatic feed retrieval

For best results, edit your settings so that Google automatically retrieves your feed whenever your data changes:

1. Access the Transit partner dashboard.
2. Click Static feed.
3. Click Feed configuration.
4. Select Download content from my server or website.
5. Under Where is your content?, enter the complete path to the server where you store your feed.
6. Select Single files.
7. Select Transfer only new or updated file(s).
8. Check Automatically retrieve data on a schedule.
9. In the new form that opens, specify a data retrieval schedule. We recommend retrieving the file weekly.
10. Enter your username and password (if necessary) to access your Google Transit file.
11. Click Save.

How to set up immediate data fetch

After you set up your fetch URL, you can start an immediate data fetch at any time. When you do this for the first time and receive confirmation that your feed was successfully processed, contact your Google team to let them know that you're ready for a private preview.

To begin a data fetch, follow these steps:

1. Open your Transit partner dashboard.
2. Next to your feed, click Static feed.
3. Under Status  Live & Update, click More.
4. Select Transfer this feed now.

Learn more about best practices for maintaining your data and feed.