Shopify Sending All Active Discount Codes to Google . .

Technical Q&A

Topic summary

Shopify began automatically syncing all active discount codes to Google Merchant Center around October 2021, causing private/internal codes (employee discounts, VIP customer codes, etc.) to become publicly visible in Google Shopping results. This change was reportedly buried in Google app Terms & Conditions updates without clear communication or changelog entries.

Key Issues:

  • Merchants discovered customers using private discount codes never intended for public use
  • Codes appeared in Google Shopping with promotional badges, accessible to anyone
  • No option exists in Shopify to designate codes as public vs. private
  • The feature applies to US merchants using Shopify’s Google channel app

Current Workarounds:

  • Manually disable individual promotions in Google Merchant Center (Marketing > Promotions)
  • Disable the entire Promotions program in Merchant Center (Growth > Manage Programs)
  • Disable “deals discovery” in Google Merchant Center integrations
  • Use third-party apps instead of Shopify’s free Google app for more control
  • Recent Shopify versions may include a checkbox on discount creation to control Google sharing

Merchant Requests:
Shoppers want Shopify to add native controls for:

  • Public/private designation when creating discounts
  • Sales channel selection for code visibility
  • Product/collection exclusions

Shopify Support acknowledged this as a “known issue” but no comprehensive fix has been implemented as of the discussion timeline.

Summarized with AI on October 29. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
27

@donnamac I found a way to just disable promotions in google feed altogether. I dont use it for that and dont plan on offering promotions on google so its easier than going in and deleting the promotions each time.

Go to Merchant Center

On the left is the menu
Click on GROWTH

then at the bottom of that submenu

Click on MANAGE PROGRAMS

and then find the box that says PROMOTIONS and click DISABLE.

I think this will make sure it wont allow any promotional codes to be populated by google or third party (shopify) any more until its set back to enabled.

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