Google now tracks your prices and pulls your BFCM offers

Any shopper can now ask Google AI Mode to watch a product's price for them.

Google started rolling it out to everyone on September 28. Until then it was only for people paying for Google AI Pro and Ultra.

Google Ads has a change of its own coming too. From Monday, October 12, it starts pulling deals and coupons from your website into some campaigns.

Both land before BFCM. They work off the prices and offers you've already published.

What a shopper sees

I asked AI Mode to let me know when the Our Place Always Pan 2.0 drops in price. Our Place sells on Shopify.

It set up a task right away. It said it would watch for price drops and promotions on the official Our Place store, plus sales and markdowns on sites like Amazon. The alert goes out through the Google app and by email.

Google says these updates draw on the web and its Shopping Graph of 60 billion+ products.

For a Shopify store, the price Google shows usually comes from Merchant Center. The Google & YouTube app syncs it from your Shopify admin.

A sale price only shows on Google if the product has a compare-at price above its price. In the product's Price section, that field sits under Additional display prices.

With automatic sync on, Google picks up the change within 24 hours.

Google Ads will read the deals on your site

Google's email to advertisers says that from October 12 it will "automatically identify and extract high-quality promotions" from your website and apply them to your campaigns.

For now it covers Search and Performance Max campaigns that use location assets and don't already have a promotion attached.

It's on unless you turn it off. The switch is Automated promotions, in your account-level automated assets settings.

Google reads these offers from what's on your site. A banner or page description left over from an old sale can look like a live offer.

The AI Mode task above listed Our Place's deals page as a source. The text under it came from the page's search description, which still named a summer sale.

Merchant Center runs a version of this for free listings and Shopping ads. It pulls live promotions and coupon codes from your product pages. It's in closed beta. If your store is in it, you'll find it under Marketing > Promotions.

Member prices and one-time codes in AI Mode

Loyalty benefits from Merchant Center can now show in AI Mode and Gemini in the US. That covers member prices, points and member free shipping.

It's free to set up. You don't need to run Google ads to join.

Member prices go in a separate loyalty_program attribute in your feed.

Last month I listed Direct Offers among the AI Mode ad formats Google announced. Google Ads is testing a Direct Offer asset. In AI Mode, it adds a "Claim one-time code" option under a sponsored result.

Advertisers can upload single-use codes and cap how many get claimed each day. The test runs only on AI Max or text customization campaigns.

Four checks before Black Friday

1/ In the Google & YouTube app, make sure automatic product sync is on. Set sale prices with a compare-at price, so Google shows the sale and the original price.

2/ Add the Google & YouTube channel to the discounts you want on Google, in Discounts > your discount > Sales channels. They sync as promotions. Give each one an end date, since Google won't take a promotion without one.

3/ If your Search or Performance Max campaigns use location assets, decide on Automated promotions before October 12. If you leave it on, take ended offers off your banners and sale-page descriptions as soon as a sale ends.

4/ If you run a loyalty program and sell in the US, add it in Merchant Center under Add-ons > Loyalty programs. Then send member prices in the loyalty_program attribute.

Google is reading your prices and offers in more places - what reaches a shopper still comes from your site and your feed.

The Shopify Catalog audit shows what an AI agent reads from your catalog and how you compare with competitors for the same shopper queries. Audit now →

Atomz AI fills in category attributes across your catalog, so the feed Google reads carries the details shoppers ask about. Get in touch for a demo.

- Ankit