Shopify Sending All Active Discount Codes to Google . .

Technical Q&A
1

Yesterday, we received a handful of orders online that used Shopify Discount Codes that were NEVER intended for the general public. Such as…our internal discount code we have for our employees.

We immediately cancelled the orders….actually ticked off a few customers…but explained that somehow some internal codes were made public and never should have. Lost a few customers…may get some bad reviews….but most people understood.

I contacted Shopify and they referred it on to the technical team.

I searched the Shopify Change Log and found 0 entries in the log under the Discounts section.

How was this update communicated and what other items were implemented with this?

We immediately had to ‘end’ almost all our active codes except for a few that are associated with a local magazine…but if Google has it…they will promote it and there won’t be anything we can do to stop it, I guess.

I contacted Google (Merchant Center) and they explained to me that Shopify started sending over all ‘active’ codes to Google about a month ago. That if we accepted the recent Terms & Conditions - the change was part of that!

I also noticed that 4 of those old codes were actually stored on Merchant Center, under the Marketing/Promotions menu. I immediately ended them.

It seems this change did not analyze how shop owners utilize the Discounts.
Many of us have codes for our family, employees, VIP customers, etc. That are only communicated via our emails or by word of mouth.

The overall concept is not bad…because it’s great for Google to promote our codes…but it should be codes that we WANT shared.

A few ideas would be to add options when creating a discount for:

  • do we want it publicly available? Or kept private

  • on what sales channels do we want it shared

those are only 2 things I can think of right now…but I’m sure others may have many more.

It was a horrible realization when we found it…and on one of the busiest days for our online and brick & mortar store.

2

We had the same problem with the same unhappy customers using a steep discount intended for F&F only.

What we need to know is: if I assign a discount code to a single Shopify user account, is this visible to Google and everyone? There are numerous customer codes intended for private/individual usage which Google should not see or share.

We don’t sell products directly on Google, customer-specific Shopify discount codes should remain within Shopify unless explicitly shared. The current options don’t seem to allow any control over this.

3

We are also having this issue all of the sudden! Definitely need a fix. Attaching specific customers to every promo code we have is not a realistic solution.

4

Holy cow wtf at that tErMs & cOndItiOns response.

That’s not data sharing that’s an internal data leak trying to hide behind being buried in a policy.

Do they also get to publish your cost of goods too, draft products, installed apps, or theme code, super weird take to disempower merchants like that.

5

I don’t remember a changelog for this either, shopify Docs fwiw -

If you want to remove synced discounts from Google, then you can end a promotion in your Google Merchant Center. Learn how to Edit a promotion or change promotion status on Google Merchant Center Help.> > https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/promoting-marketing/create-marketing/google/syncing-products#discounts

Does seem like sometime around October

Oct 23 Archive https://web.archive.org/web/20211023062919/https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/promoting-marketing/create-marketing/google/syncing-products

Along with relevant google feature? https://searchengineland.com/google-introduces-new-deals-features-for-the-shopping-tab-and-merchant-center-375632

For a merchant perspective this reeks of being honey in another form at a massive scale; no consent of access to special pricing as long as you gave consent even without realizing it.

6

@EmmanuelFlossie is the third party specialist on google shopping matters here on the forums.

Have insight or references to this change?

7

Addendum 12/14/21

Still not sure how and when these codes are being shown.

Here is an example of what we found when we were trying to figure out what was going on:

  1. Did a Google search on a product that really never goes on sale because it sells so well.

  2. Went to the ‘Shopping’ tab after search was done

  3. As we scrolled down the page, saw the product with a ‘sticker’ on it saying “30% off”

we knew this was odd because this product wouldn’t usually be on sale

  1. Clicked on the picture and this is what was displayed (store name has been blurred. )

  2. If you hovered over the discount code…it would display the entire code. The customer would
    then copy it and use it when checking out. This is how customers used these codes on
    a handful of order before we noticed it.

So… somehow, someway these got included in googles search results??? This is really weird

The attached pic is a screenshot from the Shopping search result page

8

I contacted Shopify Support directly, as perhaps others have as well. There wasn’t any “known issue” status, but she did escalate while we chatted and it is being reviewed by next tier staff.

9

@Techlysmic Thanks!
How exactly do you contact technical support directly?
I would love to know because most of the time ‘support’ tells me they are sending it to tech,
the response is not from tech support. It is a generic answer that does not give any help
on the problem at hand.

Shopify support used to be fabulous. If you needed a techie..you got to one and actually spoke
with them over the phone.

10

Thank you @PaulNewton

The Google article at least explains that discounts from Shopify And WooCommerce will be shown starting in Nov. Here is an excerpt from the article below. Others may want to read it using the link they posted .

So, i wonder if Google has access to our codes and pulls them or Shopify supplies them?
Regardless…we need ability to designate ones we want public or not.
There is not enough criteria when we create a discount code to limit what is available to the world and what is not.

_________article from 10/29/21 ____ excerpt follows ________ _____________

Deeper integration with Shopify and WooCommerce. Building on Shopify and WooCommerce integrations announced earlier this year, retailers on these platforms are now able to show their existing deals across Google surfaces (Search, the Shopping tab, Images and Lens).

And, starting next month, retailers that use Shopify’s Google channel app or WooCommerce’s Google Listings and Ads extension will be able to show their promotions in Search and the Shopping tab. Retailers can sync both existing and new promotions to their products listed on Google directly from their store dashboard.

__________ end of excerpt ______________

11

From Shopify Support. They mentioned they may post something here also, but having not seen that yet, here it is:

I have confirmed that this is a very recent change to how Google handles promotions.

“Discount codes are now syncing due to the changes for Buy on Google Only US merchants should see this happening. Merchant Promotions is a free feature that allows merchants to distribute online promotions (i.e. discounts) with Shopping ads on Google.com. it is found in the Merchant Center account under Growth > Manage programs and merchants in eligible countries can activate it at any time. When promotions are added to products that are advertised on Google, shoppers see a “special offer” link (e.g. 15% off, free shipping, etc.)”

The fact that private discounts are shared on Google is a known issue. As you know, in Shopify, merchants can create discount codes that are available for specific customers only. When this information syncs to Google, Google provides the discount code to all customers.

The workaround that has been provided is this:

Merchants can disable specific discount codes in the Promotions section of the Merchant Center account. If your merchant is seeing a discount code for a specific customer syncing with Google, please ask them to deactivate it by following the steps outlined below:

  1. Go to the Promotions tab within the Merchant Center account and click the title of the discount to be removed:
![Techlysmic_0-1639523963564.png|651x274](upload://xkub0zorgEtDTWIJp4WLucHcaTK.png)
  1. Click End promotion at the bottom of the page
  2. Merchants can also remove promotions in bulk:
![Techlysmic_1-1639523963590.png|706x295](upload://aEhoqMegO7FlD6bBeZm8cc1JK7P.png)

I have asked for this information to be posted on that forum to help other merchants out as well. I will also provide feedback to our developers to see if there is something that we can do on our end.

I hope this provides you with the information that you need to remove the discount codes. Until something is modified either at our end or on Google’s side, you will need to remove any private discount codes that you add. I will provide feedback to perhaps add a flag on the discount creation as to whether this is private or public discount. It may be worth reaching out to Google to see if you can set the discount promotions as off when they are synced across with the option to activate it.

12

@Techlysmic

Thank you for this insight!!

Your work around works fine. We have received no more orders using private codes since we stopped all in
Merchant Center on Saturday.

Some things are still very unclear… a customer used a discount code on Saturday that is a private one…but it was NOT stored in the Merchant Center Promotions area. How the heck did they get their hands on that?

Still many unanswered questions, but we have not had any issues since Sat.

I thought only our PRODUCTS were part of the Google App sync process to build a catalog. That is the only thing that concerns me…what other information is fed to the Google universe? It’s a bit of smoke & mirrors where both sides first tier support cannot explain. The Merchant Ctr support told me that Shopify made the change.

Yes…We need the ability to better qualify our discount codes than what is available now.

  • possible indicators for code to be public vs. private

  • possible indicator for what sales channel a code is good on

  • exclude certain products/collections (instead of

…I’m sure others will have much better ones than I.

Thanks again @Techlysmic

13

Hello @donnamac and thanks @PaulNewton for pinging me.

Donnamac, you seem to have already done all your research and what I am going to say is simply a confirmation of what is happening.

The issue you experience is a new feature from the free shopping app you are using. It automatically submits promotions when you create them in Shopify. Currently, I do not know how you can stop the free app from doing this. But you can delete the promotions in Google Merchant Center > Marketing > Promotions

I recommend you contact Shopify to tell them to stop automatically submitting promotions, and have the option to only choose what you want to submit. Alternatively use an app where you have more control. I don’t use the free app at all, because its fully automated, with not control. Which leaves room for big mistakes, as what you experience.

In my opinion, the free app has always created problems, and I never advise anyone to use it who are serious about advertising. The app is great, if you have a handful of basic products.

Aside, Shopify is the official app developer for the free app. So any issues with the app, needs to be taken to Shopify, not Google.

14

@Techlysmic

I replied to the email I received from ‘support’ on Monday. I have heard nothing.
Do you have a way to follow up on this with a techie?

There is really a simple change that Shopify can implement that will be immediate help:

  • add a checkbox to the discount code admin screen to indicate public/private

  • adjust the script to send only ‘public’ codes to Google

or they could just stop sending the codes to google temporarily until they can change things.

Regardless…we would like to re-activate some of our codes as we are into the final stages of this busy season.

You mentioned another forum this is on. Could you tell me which one? I would like to read
what is being said/done about it.

Thanks in advance.

15

@EmmanuelFlossie

Thanks for your clarification

16

It wasn’t stored in MCP at the time it was used, or it was never in MC at all? In which case an unrelated fluke that’s just coincidental.

Just trying to establish if cache/lag/memory can be expected with this type of process.

Which would imply all or nothing in that any leaked code has to get nuked and replaced even if it was for a few moments before caught.

17

@PaulNewton

Not in Merch Ctr at all.
There were only 4 codes in Merch Ctr that I stopped.
We have more than 4 active codes on Shopify…one of them which was used by a customer that was NOT in MCP.

I don’t understand how cache could be involved here. It is background processing on the platforms, not our browser cache, correct?

18

You should report it to Shopify. They are the ones that enabled this new feature. The more people that complain, hopefully, the faster they do something about it.

19

@EmmanuelFlossie This was done a week ago. Of course, I can only get to a chat board…which is far from
technical support. I requested it be elevated to tech, but have not heard a peep. This is the new normal.
So…now we need to use the discount codes in a new way. There are much fewer ones…and only those

that are meant for the public.

This really puts the kabash on dealing with our existing customers and promos for them.

20

@donnamac

I don’t understand how cache could be involved here. It is background processing on the platforms, not our browser cache, correct?

I meant that in the context that timeline around if a discount code was sent to the MCP and was public > and then you found and removed it from MCP.

During that period people saw the code; OR even after you removed a code from MCP it was still showing on shopping pages for a little bit after just for things like server or CDN caches; no browser cache needed but those could retain it too depending on how the whole thing works /shrug.

Platforms like shopify and google regardless of background process optimize for cache when they can so not all updates or setting changes are live everywhere for everyone even if it seems so for your location.