As Things to do evolve overtime, we continuously make improvements to the developer documentation. See the following for the list of important recent changes to the documentation.
19 September 2024 - self-guided and guided-tour are no longer required
We no longer require self-guided and guided-tour product categories to be set for each product option. We are now utilizing product title and description to understand the product and assigning the category accordingly.
28 Jul 2024 - TTD Center migrated to Action Center
We have transitioned to a new partner portal - the Action Center. This brings the Things to do partner portal experience more inline with other verticals.
22 Jul 2024 - Updates to URL templates and deprecation of src template
We have added two new URL template parameters, funnel and surface to help partners better understand the origin of the referral. At the same time src parameter is now deprecated and support will be removed over time.
9 Feb 2024 - Deprecation of unstructured address field on 1st of May
From May 1, 2024, Google will no longer support the existing single-line
address field for locations. Update your feed to use Place Ids, the newly
introduced PlaceInfo or Business Profile ID formats.
See the migration guide for detailed instructions.:w
7 Feb 2024 - Improved support for structured and unstructured addresses
We have updated the feed specification, deprecating the existing address field
which is used for unstructured addresses and replacing it with a new
place_info field which supports both structured and unstructured addresses.
Using the new field will result in more accurate matching as other information
such as phone number and website are also taken into account.
In addition the feed spec now also support Google Business Profile ID as a location input to better help partners map supplier businesses to the correct Google business.
1 Feb 2024 - Added feed optimization guides and checklists
We have updated the devsite and added feed optimization guide which includes launch checklists to help you make the most of the feed integration.
24 May 2023 - Added support for a new error: Operator location can't be matched
We have added a new error "Operator location can not be matched". This error will allow partners to identify operator locations which Google was not able to resolve.
20 May 2023 - Updated documentation with error message in TTD Center
We have added a new devsite page which lists out all product issues reported in TTD Center and their detailed description.
15 February 2023 - "What needs attention" section
We have added the "What needs attention" section in the Things To Do Center to help you identify issues in the product inventory.
6 February 2023 - Added JSON schema to help with product validation
We have now made available the JSON schema of the feed spec for download. The schema can be used to validate your feed integration during development.
6 February 2023 - Added new product parameter for hinting image order
We have introduced a new boolean parameter products/use_media_order which when
set hints to Google that the related_media image order should be used to
determine which image is displayed to users.
17 January 2023 - Operator booking module launch and new src template
We have introduced operator/google_business_profile_name in to the feed in
support of the operator booking module. In combination with the new brand_name
parameter, the new parameter will allow partners to specify accurately the
Google business profile the new module points to as well as independently
configure the brand which is shown on Things to do.
The following documentation has been updated:
- Overview guide now contains additional information about various TTD surfaces.
- Required fields documentation has now been updated.
- In Product feed reference, the operator and inventory_types section now contains additional implementation notes and examples.
17 January 2023 - operator/name field replaced with brand_name
We have deprecated the operator/name field and have replaced it with a new
field under products named brand_name. The name field is mutually exclusive
with the new brand_name field.
3 November 2022 - New error when the product has no POI eligible
In order to have a product appearing on Google, it needs to be linked to an eligible POI. When none of the locations you provided are eligible, the product is not shown. To have better visibility of the products that have this issue, Google introduced a new error - "None of the related POIs is eligible for the program". You can fix this issue by adding a related POI that is eligible for this program. Use the Location Matches Tool to check the eligibility of the POI.
28 October 2022 - New article with product issues list
What are all the issues that your product can have? Now you can see product issues list for the complete list.
13 October 2022 - Product issues overview
We have updated the Product issues overview in TTD Center. Now products overview table has three new columns that show the issues per product.
13 September 2022 - Image guidelines updated
We have updated our Image guidelines with additional recommendations.
5 August 2022 - Feed specification now extended to support localized landing page urls
We have extended the feed spec and you can now use localized_url and
localized_mobile_url in addition to url and mobile_url to specify
different landing pages for different languages.
12 July 2022 - Added Find Location Matches tool documentation
We have added documentation around the newly launched Things to do Center feature - Find Location Matches tool.
1 July 2022 - Added implementation notes and additional samples to Product feed documentation
We have added implementation notes and additional sample jsons to the Product feed documentation.
13 May 2022 - Updates to landing page and title guidelines
We have added additional details to the Landing page guidelines describing in detail how list and product views should be used. The Title guidelines page has been renamed to Title and description guidelines and now includes explanations and examples of how titles and descriptions should be used.
15 Dec 2021 - Important product categories and POI address formatting
We have updated Product categories to include a list of categories which should be included when possible. We have also amended Location and point of interest guide with additional details on how string addresses should be provided.
12 Nov 2021 - Clarifications on how related location should be used
We have added additional details with examples in Location and point of interest to clarify how related location should be used.
19 Oct 2021 - Added v0 to v1 migration guide
We have recently added Things to do migration guide
for partners migrating from the legacy specification.