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Google Merchant Center

Why is My Sale Price Wrong in Google Merchant Center?

Why is My Sale Price Wrong in Google Merchant Center?

10/25/19 UPDATE: Hello Facebook Agency Visitor Person!  We’re delighted to have you visit this awesome post. About a year ago, ZATO stopped offering Facebook Ads solutions so we could focus solely on what we do best: Google Ads. Because of this, we’re always interested in partnerships with great Social Advertising agencies (like yourself, wink wink!) and we offer referral fees for signed clients!  Anyway, back to it, and happy reading…

Post Summary

Google Merchant Center Pricing Mismatch Troubleshooting Tip:


Our team was just discussing this internally so I figured I would share it with you all as well.

When a client offers a sale price for a product, but Google still sees the old price (let's say, GMC either disapproves the product for pricing errors, OR the Automatic Item Updates updates the feed sale price to the old original price from the landing page rather than youd sale price in the feed), EVEN if the pricing looks correct on the PDP, the client likely has the structured markup on the page wrong.


Example:

Let's say a client is selling at a sale price of $249 but the feed keeps reverting to the original price of $349... even though $249 is the price on the PDP and the $349 is crossed out. What's happening??

It's likely because the actual client structured markup is still set to the old price.

How do you find if the structured markup is wrong?


Right Click in Chrome > View Page Source > Search for "price"


This is what the structured markup could look like if incorrect:

<meta itemProp="priceCurrency" content="USD"/>

<meta itemProp="price" content="349.00"/>


In this case, the price is still set to the old value, so Google's crawler is telling GMC it's actually the old (non-sale) price.


So when a client runs a sale, they also need to change the markup to the sale price every time (and then back again). Truthfully, this should be automated on their back end, but it's not always.


More details on the sale_price attribute within Google Merchant Center here: GMC Sale Price Attribute Policy Page

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Kirk Williams
@PPCKirk - Owner & Chief Pondering Officer

Kirk is the owner of ZATO, his Paid Search & Social PPC micro-agency of experts, and has been working in Digital Marketing since 2009. His personal motto (perhaps unhealthily so), is "let's overthink this some more."  He even wrote a book recently on philosophical PPC musings that you can check out here: Ponderings of a PPC Professional.

He has been named one of the Top 25 Most Influential PPCers in the world by PPC Hero 6 years in a row (2016-2021), has written articles for many industry publications (including Shopify, Moz, PPC Hero, Search Engine Land, and Microsoft), and is a frequent guest on digital marketing podcasts and webinars.

Kirk currently resides in Billings, MT with his wife, six children, books, Trek Bikes, Taylor guitar, and little sleep.

Kirk is an avid "discusser of marketing things" on Twitter, as well as an avid conference speaker, having traveled around the world to talk about Paid Search (especially Shopping Ads).  Kirk has booked speaking engagements in London, Dublin, Sydney, Milan, NYC, Dallas, OKC, Milwaukee, and more and has been recognized through reviews as one of the Top 10 conference presentations on more than one occasion.

You can connect with Kirk on Twitter or Linkedin.

In 2023, Kirk had the privilege of speaking at the TEDx Billings on one of his many passions, Stop the Scale: Redefining Business Success.

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