Google

Google Services for Websites

Integrating with Google services

After you open a Google Apps account and receive approval as a Google Services for Website access provider, we will configure your Google Apps account for the program. You can then start integrating with our APIs, which use standard HTTP requests.

The APIs

Integrate with the following required services:

Choose to integrate with any of the following optional services:

For specific questions about these APIs, refer to their respective documentation, FAQs, and discussion groups.

The steps

Integrating Google services into your service involves the following steps:

  1. Create user accounts. 
  2. Authenticate requests for your customer accounts.
  3. Set up accounts with Google services.
  4. Implement single sign-on (SSO).
  5. Test your integration.

Create user accounts

Create and manage your customers' Google service accounts using the Google Apps Provisioning API. The API lets you programmatically create and manage Google Apps user accounts, nicknames, and groups. It also lets you synchronize user data between Google Apps and your existing user management system. 

When your customers activate their Google service accounts, generate the usernames and passwords for their Google accounts. Their accounts will be created under the domain you specified in Google Apps. Because your users are accessing Google services directly from your service through single sign-on, they will not be able to change their username or password through Google (such as the Webmaster Tools site).

Technical requirements

Policy requirements

  • Create user accounts only for customers who want to activate their Google service accounts.
  • Give customers who want to delete or deactivate their Google service accounts and customers who want to stop using your service the opportunity to save the configuration information of their service accounts.

Authenticate requests for your customer accounts

Authenticate requests for the accounts using the Authentication API. The API lets your application act on behalf of a user of a Google service. When you provide the username and password for an account, the service returns an authentication token for accessing the Google services.

Technical requirements:

  • Have access to the username and password associated with each user account
  • Generate authentication tokens with Authentication API

Set up accounts with Google services

You can integrate with the following services:

If you participate in the program, you must provide the following to your customers:

  • An accessible webpage, blog, or notice that informs your customers about the program.
  • Answers to questions regarding the relevant Google services. You may refer your customers to the respective help centers of each Google service. Do not redirect their questions to Google.

Google Webmaster Tools

Google Webmaster Tools helps your customers improve their websites' performance in Google's organic search results by providing insights into how Google crawls and indexes their websites. Your customers can view diagnostic data that helps them identify patterns and potential problems, and they can give Google important information that can help improve their websites' visibility in search results.

When you integrate with Google Webmaster Tools API, you can verify ownership of sites and submit Sitemaps on behalf of your customers. You can verify ownership of a site either by adding a meta tag or by uploading an HTML file to a specific web server directory.

Technical requirements

Policy requirements

  • Send a verification request to Webmaster Tools for each customer site as soon as you create the customer account. Your customers can then access their Webmaster Tools data right away.
  • If you want to automatically submit Sitemaps whenever your customers change their websites, give them the option to decline from having their Sitemaps submitted for them.

Google Custom Search

Google Custom Search lets your customers create search engines for their websites or collections of websites. They can fine-tune the results and customize the look and feel of the search results. They could even make money from their search engines if their accounts are integrated with Google AdSense. If they do not want to display ads, they have to upgrade to Google Site Search.

When you integrate with Google Custom Search API, you can either automatically create custom search engines for your customers' websites or provide controls that let your customers customize their search engine definitions. After your customers define their search engines, you can insert JavaScript code for search boxes and search results into their websites. Alternatively, you can simply provide the code snippets for your customers to insert into their webpages on their own.

If you have also integrated with Webmaster Tools, the Sitemaps you submit to Webmaster Tools on behalf of your customers are automatically associated with the search engines you provision for them. Submitting Sitemaps improve the coverage and freshness of the index for their search engines. They can have Custom Search crawl the most important webpages at a push of a button.

Technical requirements

Policy requirements

  • Provide a link or button for upgrading Custom Search accounts to Google Site Search accounts. Site Search is the licensed version of Custom Search. Site Search lets your customers create search engines that do not include ads and provides them with greater control over branding and presentation.
  • The upgrade button should take your customers to the Convert to Google Site Search page that can be accessed from Business account page of the Custom Search control panel.
  • Provide a link to information about the additional features provided by Site Search.

Google AdSense

Google AdSense lets your customers make money from displaying relevant ads in their webpages and alongside their search results.

When you integrate with Google AdSense API, your customers can sign up with AdSense from your control panel. Once they have created their new AdSense accounts or associated their existing AdSense accounts with the Google Services for Websites access provider accounts you created for them, they can earn revenues from ads that are displayed in their websites.

Obtain the AdSense publisher ID (pub ID) from the AdSense service. For customers who are signing up for new AdSense accounts, use the API to generate a new publisher IDs. For customers with existing accounts, use the API to get their existing publisher IDs. Do not create new AdSense accounts for customers with existing accounts.

If your customers want AdSense for search, you must associate their AdSense account information with their custom search engines.

After you have implemented the AdSense piece of your service, you must request an implementation review. Your implementation must be fully functional, thoroughly tested, and ready to launch.

Technical Requirements

Policy requirements

  • You may not create accounts automatically. An AdSense account has associated payment information, thus it must be associated with a real person.
  • You may not use the credentials (username or email address) for the Google Services for Websites access provider accounts that you created. You must ask your customers to provide their alternative email addresses.

Implement single sign-on (SSO)

Enable your customers to access Google services without going through another login by using the SAML Single Sign On API.

Technical Requirements

Test your integration

Before you launch your program, you must test your integration and verify the following:

  • Users can discover that you are a Google Services for Websites access provider.
  • Your customers can activate their Google service through your service.
  • Your customers must first accept the terms of service for each Google service that they want to activate before they can use it. Each Google service has its own terms of service.
  • Once your customers activate their accounts, they can access their Google services. For example, users of Google Webmaster Tools should be able to see all of their sites listed and verified.
  • Accounts can be deleted automatically when customers stop using your service or disable their Google service. 
  • Customers who stop using your service or want to disable their Google services have the means to save their configuration information.

Google might require you to set up test sites and accounts that enables both you and Google to debug and test your integration.

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