Limit which variants show on Google Shopping

Technical Q&A

Topic summary

A merchant has a product with 6 variants at significantly different price points. They only stock the third-most expensive variant (5 hooks) but want to advertise on Google Shopping.

The Problem:
When syncing via the standard Google & YouTube app, all variants appear in Google Shopping listings with the same product image (showing 5 hooks). This creates misleading ads where customers see lower-priced variants (e.g., 2 hooks) displayed with the 5-hook image, leading to false clicks.

Question:
Is there a way to limit which variants sync to Google Merchant Center without using third-party feed management tools? The merchant wants to show only the in-stock variant while preventing other variants from appearing in Shopping ads.

Status: The question remains unanswered with no solutions proposed yet.

Summarized with AI on October 29. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
1

I have a product with 6 variants. The price varies a lot.
I only have a product of the 3rd most expensive of the variants (with 5 hooks).

I want that product to show on Google Shopping. I am using the regular Google & YouTube app.

However, I don’t want the other variants to be synced to GMC, because they would all show up on Google Shopping with the 5 hooks, and I would get a lot false clicks, because people think they can get 5 hooks for the variant price of 2 hooks.

Is there anyway to stop those other variants besides using a third party data feed tool (which I don’t want)?

2

Hi @PureTime

Go to the product in Shopify Admin.

  1. Edit the variants you do not want on Google Shopping.
  2. Scroll to Sales channels and apps → uncheck Google (or “Google & YouTube”).
  3. Save.

Only the variant you left checked for Google will be synced. The others are excluded from GMC.

3

so you can control a product’s visibility in merchant center itself.

under products & store (in the new interface) click on products. then go to all products. you will see a list of all items. click on any item that you don’t want to show on google.

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on the right-hand side, you will see this visibility preference. just remove the check mark and as the option reads, it won’t appear on google then.

4

Nope, It will work for complete product not for the specific variation.

5

i tried it in my own GMC. there were 2 variants of a product. the 1 that i selected has been opted out. the other one can still appear across google, as my dashboard shows.

6

I am sorry but I don’t see this option on the product variant page. I can only turn Google & Youtube on/off on the product page itself for the entire product.

Selecting several variants on the product page also does not give me the opportunity to remove the selected variants from Google.

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