Google uses historical order tracking data from its shipping signals partners to calculate estimated delivery times, which is generally more accurate than entering a shipping range (for example, 3–5 days of handling time + 5–7 days of transit time). Learn more about letting Google calculate your shipping speeds and about shipping data verification.
When to use
If you don’t work with one of Google’s current shipping signals partners, you can create a historical order tracking feed and manually upload it.
Instructions
Create a historical order tracking feed
Order tracking feeds contain historical information about orders you've processed and shipped.
- Create your feed in a delimited format where the first row contains the attribute name of each column. Each row after must define that attribute for each product shipped. For orders containing multiple products, use the same order ID for each row.
- Accepted file formats are CSV and TSV
- Use English for the name of the attribute and supported attribute values. For example, the shipping status
[shipping _status]attribute can have the supported value “SHIPPED”[SHIPPED].
Attributes to include in a historical order tracking feed
While some of the attributes to include in a historical order tracking feed are required, others are optional. All the attributes are listed below.
Basic attributes
| Data attribute | Required/Optional | Description |
|---|---|---|
Order ID [order_id] |
Required |
Your external order ID. Example: order0001 |
Order created time [order_created_time] |
Required |
The date and time when the order was placed on your side. All dates must be provided in ISO 8601 format. Example: |
Tracking ID [tracking_id] |
Required |
The tracking ID of the shipment. Example: 123456789 |
Carrier name [carrier_name] |
Required |
The shipping carrier. Example: FedEx |
Product ID [product_id] |
Required |
Refer to the product identifier used in Merchant Center. Example: 2348v3 |
Product country [product_country] |
Required |
The country where the products included in the data feed are sold and will be shipped to. Example: |
Product language [product_language] |
Required |
The target language code of this product is in 2-letter ISO 639-1 format. Example: |
Shipment ID [shipment_id] |
Optional |
The ID of the shipment. Example: 100001 |
Line item id [line_item_id] |
Optional |
The ID for a line item in the shipment. If there's no line item ID, this can be the Google product ID or index of the item in the shipment. Example: 2348v3 |
Customer shipping fee [customer_shipping_fee] |
Optional |
The cost of shipping to be paid by the customer in the format: "$AMOUNT $CURRENCY_CODE" Example: |
Advanced attributes
| Data attribute | Required/Optional | Description |
|---|---|---|
Origin region code [origin_region_code] |
Optional |
CLDR region code (country code) for the origin postal code. Example: |
Delivery region code [delivery_region_code] |
Optional |
CLDR region code (country code) for the delivery postal code. Example: |
Delivery postal code [delivery_postal_code] |
Optional |
The 5-digit US zip code of the destination. Example: 94043 |
GTIN [gtin] |
Optional |
The Global Trade Item Number (GTIN) of the item. Example: 123400 |
MPN [mpn] |
Optional |
The Manufacturer Part Number (MPN) of the item. Example: 56789 |
Brand [brand] |
Optional |
Brand Example: Google |
Title [title] |
Optional |
A string that clearly and briefly describes the product. Example: Google Pixel 5a 5G |
Upload a historical order tracking feed
To manually upload your historical order tracking data while creating a shipping service and for shipping data verification, follow the steps below.
Steps to manually upload historical order tracking data while creating a shipping service
- Sign in to your Merchant Center account.
- Click the tools icon
, then select Shipping and returns. This will take you to the “Shipping services” tab.
- Click + New shipping service and follow the prompts.
- When setting your delivery times for a shipping service, select Show custom delivery times based on your carrier or partner under “How do you want to determine delivery times for this service”.
- Select Your shipping data from partners under “Show custom delivery times based on:”.
- Click Switch to manual upload.
- Download Google’s template and check for the instructions and common errors.
- Based on the template, drag and drop or upload a TSV or CSV file of your historical order tracking data into the tool.
- Set a backup delivery time in case there’s not enough shipping data to create an estimate. This is required.
- Click Next to configure the shipping rates you charge your customers.
Steps to manually upload historical order tracking data for shipping data verification
- Sign in to your Merchant Center account.
- Click the tools icon
- Click Data verification.
- Click + New verification.
- At the bottom of the list, click Switch to manual upload.
- Drag and drop or upload a TSV or CSV file of your historical order tracking data into the tool.
Note: It may take a few minutes to upload the data from the file. Make sure to reupload the file if you see any error message. If the data is successfully uploaded, the status of the file will read “Active”. To check the status of the uploaded files, refer to the “Your order history” section under the “Shipping and returns” tab.
How Google uses the data
When you manually provide historical order tracking data, you’ll be opted into automatic shipping improvements on all your offers across all ads, and free product listings. By opting into automatic shipping improvements, you’re allowing Google to improve the accuracy of your manually configured delivery time shown to customers. More accurate delivery times, especially when faster, typically lead to higher conversion rates.
Historical order tracking data will also be used to improve Google’s proprietary machine learning models for all merchants, including your business, but it will never be shared with any other merchant, outside of aggregated, anonymized competitive benchmarks like the ones in the Shopping experience scorecard. Learn more about Google’s privacy policy.
You can manually uncheck the “Automatic shipping improvements” checkbox on the Shipping overview page to opt out of automatic shipping improvements.