Magpie
Google Things to Do

Google Things to Do Setup Wizard

Overview

The Setup Wizard is the guided, one-step-at-a-time flow for getting a product onto Google Things to Do for the first time. New products land in the wizard automatically. Each step asks one question, validates the answer, and only unlocks Next when the required field is filled, so a finished wizard is a feed-ready product. Once you complete the wizard, the same product becomes editable field-by-field in the Sections view.

Before you start, confirm the product is bookable end-to-end: customers must be able to check out, pay, and receive an instant confirmation. Google rejects feeds with broken or pending bookings.

Where to Find the Wizard

Open a product, click the Google Things to Do tab, and the wizard appears automatically until you finish it for the first time. Inside the panel header you'll see a Sections / Wizard toggle once setup is complete; drafts always start in Wizard.

The progress bar at the top is clickable. You can jump back to any visited step without losing data; every change auto-saves as a draft within ~600 ms.

Step 1: Type

Pick the option that best matches the product. Google places each type into a different module on the search result, and the choice locks the categories you're allowed to use downstream.

  • Tour or activity — Guided or self-guided tour, walking tour, food tour, cooking class, workshop. Renders in the Experiences module.
  • Attraction ticket — Single-attraction admission, entry only, no guide. Renders in the Attractions Booking module.
  • Attraction pass — City pass, museum pass, or combo entry covering multiple attractions. Renders in the Attractions Booking module.

Best practice: if a product is a guided tour to an attraction, choose Tour or activity, not Attraction ticket. The module placement is more valuable for tours.

Step 2: Price

Enter the all-in price for one adult, taxes and fees included. Google does not allow line-item breakdowns and will reject feeds that try to itemise.

  • Use a single option whenever you can. Multiple options are supported but every option adds complexity to Google's review.
  • If a minimum group size applies (for example, a private tour priced for two), note it in the product title, "Sunset cruise (price for 2)", so the price doesn't look like a per-person rate.
  • Set a cancellation policy here too. The default is Standard / 24h, which Google publishes when nothing else is set.

Best practice: match the price on your landing page exactly. Mismatches between feed price and landing-page price are the #1 cause of Google disapproval.

Step 3: Categories

Pick the Google categories that best describe the experience. The list is filtered automatically by the Type chosen in Step 1, so only valid combinations appear.

  • Aim for 3 to 5 highly relevant categories. Six or more reads as keyword stuffing and can hurt ranking.
  • Some categories are mutually exclusive: picking one disables its partner (for example, Walking tour vs. Bus tour).

Best practice: prefer specific over generic. "Wine tasting tour" outperforms "Food and drink" even though both are valid.

Step 4: Locations

Three things happen on this step:

  1. Google Business Profile (GBP) — link the operator's GBP if you have one. Check the I am the owner box only if your company owns this profile; ticking it falsely triggers a Google review.
  2. Points of Interest — every POI the buyer will visit. For each, mark whether admission is Included / Free (Yes) or Not included (No). If you are the official operator of an attraction (you own and run it), check the box to claim the "Official site" tag on its Admission Ticket module.
  3. Where the experience starts — the meeting point. Use Google's official listing rather than typing a free-form address.

Best practice: add at least one POI even for short tours. Listings without a POI never enter the Attractions module and lose a huge surface area.

Step 5: Content

The wizard auto-generates a Google-optimised title and description from your primary product. Your edits always win; overrides are stored on the TTD version and never blown away by a re-sync.

Product title rules:

  • Max 150 characters. Aim for ≤ 50; short titles win on mobile cards.
  • Match the landing-page title exactly.
  • No emoji or symbols (Google strips them).
  • ✅ "Priority Access Entrance Ticket to the Louvre Museum"
  • ❌ "Adult Ticket" (too generic)
  • ❌ "Fifa ⚽ Museum 🎟️" (symbols)
  • ❌ "30% off Sunset Cruise" (no discounts/promotions allowed in titles)

Product description rules:

  • Up to 16,000 characters (≤ 10,000 recommended).
  • HTML supported. Allowed tags: <h1>–<h5>, <ul>, <ol>, <li>, <strong>, <em>, <p>, <br>.
  • Set the duration here too (the wizard reads the lower bound from the primary product; for flexible-length tours, that's the minimum length).

Step 6: Link

Provide the exact URL Google opens when a buyer taps your card. It must load the same product the listing describes, no homepage, no category page, no redirects through trackers that lose the product context.

If you run Google Travel Campaigns, you can supply a separate URL for ads placements. Most operators leave this blank and use the same landing URL for both organic and paid.

Best practice: test the URL on mobile. Google penalises listings whose landing pages take longer than ~3 seconds to render the booking widget.

Step 7: Images

Drag tiles into your preferred order. The first becomes the cover. Order is a hint to Google; it doesn't guarantee the first image is always selected, but it's the strongest signal you can give.

  • Minimum size: 300 × 300 px. Anything smaller is rejected as "Image too small". Uploads below the threshold are blocked at the picker.
  • Aim for at least 1024 px on the long edge for crisp cards.
  • JPG or PNG only. Non-animated, no GIFs.
  • Square aspect ratio renders best on Google's cards.

Best practice: lead with a wide shot that shows the experience in action (people, scale, atmosphere), not a logo or a sign.

Step 8: Reviews

If your landing page shows a visible review widget, tell Google the rating value and review count. This unlocks the star rating on the Google card.

Skip this step if there is no widget; Google verifies the data appears on the page, and a missing widget triggers an automated disapproval.

Step 9: Recap

The final step shows a complete preview of what will be submitted: title, price, categories, POIs, images, and the validated feed JSON. Any remaining issues are listed at the top in red.

Clicking Submit for Approval writes setup_status.complete = true and setup_status.active = true, which queues the product for the Magpie admin approval list. Approved products are pushed to Google in the next feed sync.

Approval timing: 1 to 2 business days for the Magpie review, then up to 48 hours for Google to ingest.

After You Finish

Once the wizard is complete, the Sections / Wizard toggle appears in the panel header. From here on, edits are easier in the Sections view because every field is visible at once. The Wizard remains available for any product if you want to walk through it again.

Best Practices Checklist

  • ✅ Bookable end-to-end with instant confirmation
  • ✅ All-in adult price matches landing page exactly
  • ✅ 3 to 5 highly relevant categories, no spam
  • ✅ At least one POI tagged with included/not-included admission
  • ✅ Title ≤ 50 characters, no symbols, no promotions
  • ✅ ≥ 5 square images, all ≥ 1024 px on the long edge
  • ✅ Landing URL loads the exact product the listing describes
  • ✅ Review widget visible on the landing page (if you submit review data)