Providing Action Links to Google Food Ordering using E2E data feeds

As communicated in the email, we will be transitioning our Ordering End-to-End experience to the Redirect product in 2024. On July 1, 2024, the End-to-End consumer experience will be shut down. Existing end-to-end feeds will be used to power the Redirect experience, provided that Action Links are added to the end-to-end feeds.. To facilitate a seamless shift to the Ordering Redirect experience, we kindly request that you submit the action links through your E2E feeds. It's important to note that this request won't impact your existing end-to-end experience in any manner.

An action link acts as a bridge between Google's platform and the partner's website, allowing users to navigate to a specific page on the partner's website and place an order. For a merchant action, the link should lead directly to the order page, enabling users to start building their cart right away. In the case of pickup and delivery, it is preferable to provide a deep link to preselected options for delivery or pickup.

The only change you need to make before July 1, 2024 is to add Action Links to your existing E2E feeds. You can start sending Action Links anytime, but they won't be active until the transition to the Redirect experience is finished. We are expecting to start migrating partners from the End-to-End consumer experience to the Redirect consumer experience starting Q2 2024 and you will be notified prior to this change. Note that we recommend uploading feeds and RTUs in the sandbox before adding Action Links to your production feeds. Partners who add action links must comply with the Place Actions policies.

Depending on whether you are using the v1 inventory schema or the v2 inventory schema, there are distinct methods for sending action links.

If you are using the v1 inventory schema

In your feed files, look for the DataFeed envelope, the top level structure for your feed.

For every Service entity in the DataFeed element, submit an action link with the potentialAction property as follows:

"potentialAction": { "url": "https://fopatestagent.com/ordering/restaurant-1/delivery" }

Example

{
  "@context": "http://schema.googleapis.com",
  "@type": "DataFeed",
  "dateModified": "2018-01-27T05:01:07-0800",
  "dataFeedElement": [
    {
      "@type": "Service",
      "@id": "https://fopatestagent.com/service/restaurant-1/delivery",
      "serviceType": "DELIVERY",
      "potentialAction": {
        "url": "https://fopatestagent.com/ordering/restaurant-1/delivery"
      },
      "provider": {
        "@type": "Restaurant",
        "@id": "https://fopatestagent.com/locations/restaurant-1"
      }
    }
  ]
}

If you are using the v2 inventory schema

In the Service entity, send the action link with the actionLinkUrl property as follows:

"actionLinkUrl":"https://www.rwgpartnerwebsite.com/foodorderpickup/merchant_foepa_3"

Example

{
  "@type": "Service",
  "@id": "10824/takeout",
  "serviceType": "TAKEOUT",
  "actionLinkUrl": "https://www.rwgpartnerwebsite.com/foodorderpickup/merchant_foepa_3",
  "menuId": "10824",
  "restaurantId": "10824"
}

Submit one action link for every supported service (i.e. if your restaurants support both takeout and delivery, submit one action link for delivery and one for takeout on all restaurants). You may use the same link for both delivery and takeout. You will continue to use batch ingestion to send us the action links in the Service feeds. These changes will be recognized and validated during feed ingestion. We check if the URLs are valid and report any issues such as missing URL in the ingestion history details.

Validation

If you don't include action links with the batch data feeds for a service entity, a warning indicating the absence of action links will be visible in the detailed view of the ingestion history.

Real-time updates

Real-time updates are still supported in the Redirect experience with no changes required to your existing E2E real-time update implementation. Real-time updates to metadata such as ETAs and Fees will be reflected in the Redirect consumer UI in <5 minutes. Action Links cannot be updated using real-time updates. If a real-time update includes an action link, the action link will be ignored and the link that serves in the consumer UI will be the most recent successfully ingested action link from batch feeds.