How to Set Up Merchant Promotions: Unlock Discount Badges in Shopping

There are a few ways to show an offer in Google Merchant Center, and one of them is Merchant Center Promotions (German UI: Angebote, formerly Werbeaktionen). They unlock an extra “special offer” badge under your Shopping listing, plus a pop-out box with the discount amount, the promo code, and the validity window.

One distinction first, because it trips up most people: Merchant Center Promotions are not the plain strikethrough sale you signal with sale_price in your product feed. Those are two different mechanics. Promotions are offers that in most cases get redeemed with a promo code at checkout, or that need an extra note (free shipping above a threshold, a gift with purchase).

This post shows you how to create a promotion right in Merchant Center, which required fields you actually need to understand, and what to check first when one gets rejected.

What are Merchant Center Promotions?

Merchant Center Promotions are a free feature in Google Merchant Center that lets you report a running shop offer to Google. By default, Shopping listings only show the title, the image, and the price. An offer stays invisible in the listing if Google doesn’t know about it. The “special offer” badge is what gives the listing an extra signal in the search result, the kind that sets it apart from the competition.

The effect of the badges isn’t directly measurable. Google doesn’t hand you an isolated click-through comparison between listings with and without the badge. What you can see in Merchant Center: the click and impression numbers per promotion. What you can see in Google Ads: how the click-through rate of your Shopping campaign develops against the weeks before the offer.

Which discount types does Google support?

In the create form you pick the discount type from a list. The four most common options:

• Percentage off: for example “20% off all sneakers”
• Fixed amount off: for example “10 euros off orders over 50 euros”
• Free standard shipping: for example “free shipping over 75 euros”
• Free gift with purchase

Beyond those there are special types for quantity discounts (“buy 2, get 1 free”), for cash-back offers, and for shipping variants (overnight, two-day). The form asks for whichever fields are required per type.

How do you create a promotion in Merchant Center?

In Merchant Center you find the area under “Marketing > Promotions” (German UI: Marketing > Angebote). The precondition is that your target country is one of the 13 supported markets.

There you click “Add promotion”. You get walked through a form that asks for the required fields. The decisive part you see in the next section: which fields you actually need to understand.

After you save, the promotion lands on the status “Under review”. Google checks it against the program and content policies. The docs don’t name an official review duration. The badge goes live only after approval.

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Which required fields do you actually need to understand?

The create form has some fields you can just click through, and others where most promotions fall apart. Here are the ones that matter.

Promotion ID

An internal label that uniquely identifies the promotion. Important rules from the official spec: 60 characters max, case-sensitive, no spaces, no special characters like % or !. A safe bet is a purely alphanumeric label like summersale2026.

You need this ID in a second place too. When the promotion shouldn’t apply to everything but only to certain products, you put the same ID in the product feed in the promotion_id column on the affected SKUs. If the ID in Merchant Center and the ID in the feed don’t match exactly, no product matches at all and the badge stays off.

Promotion title

The text that appears in the pop-out box when the badge is clicked, 60 characters max. It should be short and clear, no marketing slogans. Google rejects titles like “best price ever”, all-caps spam, or multiple exclamation marks.

Applicable to

Here you set whether the promotion applies to all products in the feed or only to specific products. For specific products you have two paths:

• Narrow it down right in the form by brand, category, or product-ID list.
• Or in the product feed: enter the promotion ID in the promotion_id column on the affected SKUs. That’s the clean variant when you use a feed tool like Channable, because the selection logic is centrally controllable there.

Important: if the spelling between the promotion ID in Merchant Center and in the feed doesn’t match exactly, no product matches at all. The promotion does go to the status “Approved”, but the badge never appears. You see the match count in the detail view of the promotion under “Matched Products”.

Discount type and value

The discount type from the list above, plus the concrete value (e.g. 20% off). For cent amounts or percentage values below the minimum threshold, Google rejects.

Promo code

Three options: no code, a generic code (every shopper uses the same one), or unique codes per shopper (not relevant for manual setup, that only works through the promo feed with your own code pool). When you set a code, it has to work in the shop and deliver exactly the discount announced in the title, otherwise Google rejects the promotion at the code spot-check.

Minimum order value

Optional. Useful for free shipping or discounts that should only kick in above a threshold. Important: the threshold has to match the code logic in the shop. If Google gets told “free shipping over 75 euros” and the threshold in the shop only kicks in at 100 euros, that’s a rejection reason.

Start and end date

Required, with timezone. The maximum runtime per promotion is 183 days (about 6 months). For longer offers you need a follow-up promotion with a new ID. Very short offers (a few hours) also get rejected by Google.

Destination

Where should the badge appear? Shopping ads, free listings, both. The default is usually “both”, and for special setups (e.g. testing in free listings only) you can narrow it down.

How do you check status and approval?

Every promotion shows one of four statuses in the overview:

• Under review: Google is still checking
• Approved: running live
• Disapproved: violates one or more policies
• Expired: end date reached

In the detail view per promotion you find three important pieces of info: the number of products assigned to the promotion (“Matched Products”), the concrete rejection reasons if it was rejected, and the click and impression numbers on the badge over the offer period.

What the numbers show: The click column only counts clicks on the pop-out box, not clicks on the Shopping listing itself. So low pop-out clicks don’t mean the promotion does nothing. The badge often works as a visual cue that triggers the listing click, without the shopper ever opening the pop-out box.

How do you fix a rejection or a missing badge?

1. Read the rejection reasons

In the detail view Google names the concrete rejection reason with a reference to the relevant policy. The officially documented main reasons are in the Google docs on disapproved promotions. The common ones:

• Code delivers no discount or a lower one: Google tests the code at checkout. If it doesn’t apply, or gives less discount than announced, it gets rejected.
• Title without a minimum-discount figure: “Up to 50% off” gets rejected. Correct: “20 to 50% off”.
• Title doesn’t match the scope: if the title says “discount on everything” but the form only has specific products selected, that’s a conflict.
• Gift not specified: “gift with purchase” isn’t enough, the actual gift has to be in the title.
• Shipping promotion without a code: if the free shipping is also available in the shop without a code, Google rejects it.

2. Approved but no badge: check “Matched Products”

When the promotion is on the status “Approved” but no badge appears in the search result, usually not a single product is assigned to the promotion. The “Matched Products” number is in the detail view. At 0, check:

• Is the promotion ID actually in the product feed (column promotion_id) on the affected SKUs?
• Is the spelling exactly right (case-sensitive)?
• Are the affected SKUs themselves approved and active in the feed?

3. Landing page test

For many promotions Google calls up the landing page and checks whether the discount is actually available there. If the prices don’t match the promotion, it gets rejected after the fact.

4. Test order with the code

For code promotions, make a real test order. If the code doesn’t work at checkout, the promotion fails even when everything else in Merchant Center is set up correctly.

5. Check the region

Promotions are country-specific. A DE promotion doesn’t appear in other markets, even if the shop ships there. For multi-country setups you need a separate promotion per country.

Which hurdles show up most often in practice?

• Code logic in the shop: if the code works in the shop only once per customer but is declared as unlimited in Merchant Center, Google rejects it on spot-checks. The shop and the Merchant Center setting have to match.
• Tight lead time before the offer starts: approvals sometimes take longer than expected. Plan in lead time, especially for big offers like Black Friday.
• sale_price and a promotion in parallel: if you already have a reduced price in the product feed and add a percentage promotion on top, the displayed final price can look double-discounted. Keep it clean: either the price cut in the feed or the promotion badge, not both for the same item.

FAQ: common questions about Merchant Center Promotions

Conclusion

Merchant Center Promotions are the right tool when your offer needs a note that goes beyond the plain price cut. For the classic strikethrough sale, sale_price in the product feed stays the clean way.

What you need to get started: a clear offer plan (which products, which discount, which period, an optional code), the promotion ID in the product feed too if you want to narrow it to specific SKUs, and lead time for the approval.

Thanks for reading this far. Good luck putting it into practice!

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