Important changes to Google Contact Policy for Merchant Center

Following feedback from our merchants, we are relaxing our contact policy website requirements for merchants. Currently we require merchants to publicly display on their website at least two methods of contact information (such as an email, business address, or phone number).

To give merchants more flexibility in the information they share with customers, beginning August 2, 2021, we will require merchants to provide on their website a minimum of one form of customer-facing contact information, for example:

• A “contact us” form
• A link to a social media business profile
• An email address
• A phone number

In addition to this change, all new merchants will be required to provide their business address and phone number on creation of their Merchant Center account, as well as for any existing accounts that require a review. This private contact information can be entered manually in the Merchant Center user interface or via Content API for Shopping.

To update the private contact information using Content API for Shopping, provide both the address and phoneNumber fields via the AccountBusinessInformation object (nested under the Account object) using the following methods:

• Accounts.update (Existing Merchant Center accounts)
• Accounts.insert (New Merchant Center accounts)

Important: Take care when updating existing accounts. Any fields that are not provided to Accounts.update will be deleted from the resource.

Note: If you have made contact information changes to an existing Merchant Center account that has an account-level disapproval, you may need to request an account re-review. See the following article on Understanding account-level enforcement for product data quality violations to find the steps to make the request.
If you require further support implementing this change, please visit the Content API for Shopping forum.
Ian Ballantyne, Content API for Shopping Team