## Summary

Only one Merchant Center account can claim a specific URL. You must
verify the URL through your Merchant Center account to show that
you have administrative access to the website, and then claim that URL to link
its product data to your merchant account.

Consider the following guidelines when choosing a URL:

- Only approved developers can use the Merchant API to overwrite a website claim.
- You need to have the existing claimant change the URL on
  their account. If you need help, contact your Technical Account Manager.

- You should only claim the highest domain level you need. Claims at higher
  levels affect lower level URLs. For example, a merchant claiming
  `example.com` means that another merchant can't claim
  `merchant.example.com` or `example.com/merchant`.

## Manual steps

### Verify a URL

1. [Sign in](https://merchants.google.com/mc/) to your Merchant Center account.
2. From the navigation menu, click the tools icon.
3. Under **Tools** , select **Business information**.
4. Click the **Website** tab.
5. Enter the URL, starting with `http://` or `https://`. Use a domain that you own and maintain.
6. Click **Continue**.
7. Choose one of the available options to verify the website.

### Claim a URL

Claiming a website gives you the exclusive right to use that website for product
data on your Merchant Center account. You must verify a website before you can
claim it.

After verifying the website, click **Claim website**.

If you've already created a feed, you'll need to refetch it after you've claimed
a website. If you use the Merchant API, you'll need to re-upload your feed so it
can be recrawled.

See [Verify and claim your website URL](https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/176793) for more detail.

## Automatic steps

There are two steps to claim a website with Google APIs. These are verifying the
website with the [Site Verification API](https://developers.google.com/site-verification/v1/getting_started) and then claiming the website with the
[Merchant API](https://developers.google.com/merchant/api/reference/rest/accounts_v1/accounts.homepage/claim).

1. Use the [Site Verification API](https://developers.google.com/site-verification/v1/getting_started) to verify that you have access to the
   website. Multiple Google Accounts can verify access to the same website, but
   only one account can claim the website. You can only claim a website after
   you have verified your access to it.

   If the account you authenticate with for the Site Verification API
   doesn't have access to the merchant account you're claiming a website for,
   you should add the email of an account that does to the
   [`owners`](https://developers.google.com/site-verification/v1/webResource#owners) field before calling
   [`insert`](https://developers.google.com/site-verification/v1/invoking#exampleInsert) or
   [`update`](https://developers.google.com/site-verification/v1/invoking#exampleUpdate).
2. Once verified, approved developers can use the [`accounts.claimwebsite`](https://developers.google.com/merchant/api/reference/rest/accounts_v1/accounts.homepage/claim)
   method in the Merchant API to claim the website to their Merchant Center
   account. Contact your Technical Account Manager for details.