Step 2: Feeds

Key Terms: 'Merchant' refers to a venue or location for an event, and 'Service' refers to an event.

First you need to create your feeds, then Google evaluates them.

Create feeds

1. Generate your feed(s). You transmit most of your inventory data to Google by feeds. To get started, create your Merchant feed, Service feed and Availability feed

   • Merchant feed: Describes your merchants (venues).
   • Service feed: Describes your events and associated artists.
   • Availability feed: Describes your event's availability.

   Events Feeds - Required and Recommended fields

   Merchant feed

   Merchant fields	Description	Requirement
   merchant_id	Unique identifier for the merchant.	Required
   name	Name of the merchant (venue). Limited to 150 characters.	Required
   geo.address	Structured address coordinates of the merchant (venue) following this format. If you are unable to provide this format please provide geo.unstructured_address instead as a single string. Structured address is recommended over unstructured address.	Required
   geo.latitude	Geo coordinate (latitude) of the merchant (venue).	Optional
   geo.longitude	Geo coordinate (longitude) of the merchant (venue).	Optional
   telephone	Telephone of the merchant (venue).	Optional
   category	Place type of the merchant (venue). This should match the Google Business Profile category for the venue.	Optional
   url	URL of the merchant (venue).	Optional

   Service feed

   Service fields	Description	Requirement
   service_id	Unique identifier for the event.	Required
   merchant_id	Unique identifier for the venue.	Required
   localized_service_name	Name of event. Limited to 150 characters.	Required
   localized_description	Description of the event. Limited to 16,000 characters. May contain HTML, but only the following tags are supported: h1-h5, ul, ol, li, strong, italic, em, p, br.	Recommended
   action_link	Localized URL that references the partner's ticket page. May be the same as ticketing_vertical_specific_data.event_url.	Required
   related_media	Images of the event. Please adhere to these guidelines.	Strongly recommended
   type	Set to: SERVICE_TYPE_EVENT_TICKET.	Required
   ticket_type.ticket_type_id	Unique ID within a service that differentiates between different ticket types of the same service. Note: Currently, our system only supports displaying 1 ticket per service. If multiple ticket_type are provided, our system will display the cheapest. Only provide ticket types that are available to all users (general ticket for adult) and don't provide discount only limited to some users (like child discount).	Required
   ticket_type.inventory_type	Differentiates between different ticket types: INVENTORY_TYPE_PRIMARY, INVENTORY_TYPE_VERIFIED_RESALE, INVENTORY_TYPE_RESALE or INVENTORY_TYPE_AGGREGATOR.	Required
   ticket_type.price	The price of a single ticket of this type, exclusive of any taxes or fees (taxes/fees must be populated in per_ticket_fee, if price is provided). This should be the minimum general admission ticket for the service inventory type.	Conditionally required
   ticket_type.per_ticket_fee.service_charge	Service charge for purchasing this ticket. This field is required if the price field is set (even if value is 0).	Conditionally required
   ticket_type.per_ticket_fee.facility_fee	Additional fee for purchasing this ticket. This field is required if the price field is set (even if value is 0).	Conditionally required
   ticket_type.per_ticket_fee.taxes	Taxes for purchasing this ticket. This field is required if the price field is set (even if value is 0).	Conditionally required
   ticket_type.localized_short_description	Description of this ticket, if any. The field can be supplied in multiple locales. Limited to 16,000 characters.	Required
   ticketing_vertical_specific_data.entity.id	Unique identifier of the entity in the partner's database. If you don't store a unique ID, you can fill this with the musicbrainz ID (if relevant).	Required
   ticketing_vertical_specific_data.event_category	Category of event; for music events this should be EVENT_CATEGORY_CONCERT. If unsure, use EVENT_CATEGORY_UNSPECIFIED.	Required
   ticketing_vertical_specific_data.event_url	Canonical base URL linking to the page of the even—that is, no params attached—to send users to for purchasing tickets.This can be the same as the action_link.	Required
   ticketing_vertical_specific_data.brand_name	Localized brand name. By default, your brand name will be the same as the name of your partner portal account. If you want to change your name or have a different brand name for different events or have a different brand name per locale, use this field. You must also contact your Google POC to turn on this feature.	Optional
   ticketing_vertical_specific_data.entity.name	Name of the event performer or performing group. Limited to 150 characters.	Required
   ticketing_vertical_specific_data.entity.url	URL that references the partner's info page for the event performer, if available.	Recommended
   ticketing_vertical_specific_data.entity.entity_type	Type of entity. Possible values include ENTITY_TYPE_PERFORMER: when entity is music artist ENTITY_TYPE_CONCERT_TOUR: when entity is a tour.	Required
   ticketing_vertical_specific_data.entity.entity_role	Event participant's role for an event (e.g. headliner or opener for music events). Possible values for concerts: ENTITY_ROLE_HEADLINER.	Recommended
   ticketing_vertical_specific_data.entity.public_identification_data.musicbrainz_id	36-character public artist ID from "musicbrainz.org/doc/MusicBrainz_Identifier," this can be set only when entity.type is ENTITY_TYPE_PERFORMER.	Recommended
   ticketing_vertical_specific_data.entity.public_identification_data.relevant_url	Public URL dedicated to only the event participant (e.g. a website, Wikipedia, or IMDb page).	Recommended

   Availability feed

   Availability fields	Description	Requirement
   service_id	Unique identifier for the associated Service.	Required
   merchant_id	Unique identifier for the associated Merchant.	Required
   start_sec	Start time of the event.	Required
   duration_sec	Duration of the event. Used to calculate the datetime of the end of the event.	Required
   spots_open	Total number of tickets available for purchase for the event. When an event is sold out, keep the inventory in the feed until the off-sale date, but set spots_open to 0.	Required
   spots_total	Total number of tickets for the event. Must be >= spots_open.	Required
   scheduling_rule_overrides.last_bookable_sec	Last second tickets are available for purchase. NULL is allowed if tickets are available until the event start_sec.	Optional
   scheduling_rule_overrides.first_bookable_sec	The first second (epoch) from which the tickets are available for purchase.	Required

   Note: All additional fields outlined in the reference section should be ignored.

   Include feed metadata in each of your feeds that instructs Google on how to interpret the feed.

   The following is a feed metadata snippet:

   "metadata": {
    "generation_timestamp": "1467993600",
    "processing_instruction": "PROCESS_AS_COMPLETE",
    "total_shards": 1
   }

   Note: All feeds must be uploaded with processing_instruction PROCESS_AS_COMPLETE. PROCESS_AS_INCREMENTAL is deprecated and cannot be used.

2. Export your feeds. The feeds format is described with the protocol buffer 3 syntax, however you can reference the samples to see the JSON format. We recommend that you upload the feeds in JSON format.

3. Upload the feeds to your SFTP Dropbox. To upload your feeds, use the SFTP dropbox information that Google provided to you and the private key that you created in Setup. The Google SFTP server is available at sftp://partnerupload.google.com on port 19321.

   Upload your files with unique names, such as a name that includes a timestamp. Unique names help with troubleshooting and allow queries for the feed status.

   To determine the size of the feeds and frequency of delivery, use the following guidelines:

   • Size of feed files and shards:
     • Keep the feed file size less than 200MB (after compression). Compress them using gzip
     • If your file may reach more than 200MB (after compression), split them in multiple shards following the Sharding feed files tutorial. However, this integration alone is unlikely to reach the 200MB limit.
   • Frequency of complete updates:
     • A complete merchant feed is provided at least once a day.
     • A complete service feed is provided at least once a day.
     • A complete availability feed is provided once a day.
   Note: Google processes feed files as soon as they're uploaded to the SFTP dropbox. If the feed is sharded into multiple files, the process begins after you upload the last file. If your feed contains errors, you receive an email with the feed error codes.

Google evaluates feeds

Once you upload your feeds, Google processes and evaluates them for quality and completeness. We look at several factors:

• Feeds meet the specifications.
• Feeds include all required fields.
• Merchant data matches with Google Maps locations.

Note: To ensure a smooth integration, perform a pre-evaluation of these factors, except for the last one, before you submit your feeds.