Automatic shipping updates improve the accuracy of shipping information of your products. The feature can help your customers predict when they get their orders, and it can help improve your overall shipping performance. Currently, automatic shipping updates will only take effect in the United States. Merchants outside of the United States may opt-in automatic shipping updates.
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Benefits
Accurate shipping information allows you to:
- Ensure that your shipping data is up-to-date
- Help customers predict when they are likely to receive a product.
- Allow customers to compare delivery time better between products.
- Improve the chance of customers making a purchase based on shipping time.
How it works
Automatic shipping updates is a feature that uses historical tracking data to improve the accuracy of shipping information of your products. Historical tracking data is acquired from partner linking. It records and calculates all shipping information like crawled shipping speeds and performance shipping speeds.
- Crawled shipping speeds : Crawled shipping speeds are shipping speed information crawled from your websites. If available, automatic shipping updates will closely match from what is shown on your websites.
- Performance shipping speeds : Actual shipping speeds of each product based on time delivered for each location. If available, automatic shipping updates will show very accurate info.
Our systems can use crawled shipping speeds or performance shipping speed data when making updates. Shipping speed data is calculated based on order tracking history data from past transactions. Order tracking history data can be integrated to Merchant Center by linking a partner account and allowing data sharing on your third party provider. Note that you have to initiate the linking from the partner website. Once available, you can choose to enable automatic shipping updates to get more accurate shipping information.
Get started
Automatic shipping updates need historical tracking data or crawled data to make improvements to shipping information. Before you use automatic shipping updates, make sure to:
- Allow Google StoreBot crawler to crawl your website. The Google StoreBot crawler can update your shipping information based on crawled website data. Learn more About the Google StoreBot crawler.
- Use Order Tracking Signals via Content API to submit your historical tracking data.
- Link your Merchant center account to a partner account and share your tracking history with Merchant Center.
All merchant center accounts are opted out of automatic shipping updates by default. To opt-in, Check each option (prices, availability, condition, or shipping) that you would like to automatically update in the Automatic Improvements page. You may also link a partner account to opt-in automatic shipping updates. Merchant accounts with linked partner accounts will have automatic shipping updates already enabled.
Best practices
Here are some best practices to ensure that you get the best out of the automatic shipping updates feature:
- Make sure shipping data on your websites or partner accounts are up to date.
- Enable automatic shipping updates early.
- Update and improve your shipping policies based on automatic shipping updates.
Frequently asked questions
How can I provide my shipping performance data to Merchant Center?
You can provide performance data by linking your partner account to Merchant Center.