About Pricing in Merchant Center Analytics

The “Pricing” tab shows you cards which deliver insights around your pricing relative to your competitors and yourself. For example, sale price suggestions recommend optimal sale prices for products that could benefit most from pricing adjustments, to significantly boost your clicks and conversions . This article explains which pricing information is available and how it can inform your pricing strategy to grow your business with Google.


The features covered in this article are accessible via the Merchant Center UI, as well as through the Content API and BigQuery integrations.

In this article


Benefits

If you know the average price on Google that consumers see when they click on products that you and other retailers sell, you can make better decisions on how to balance the price of your products with your performance. Follow-up actions include:

  • Compare the price on product and brand level: Learn if the products you’re selling are cheaper or more expensive than the price on Google.
  • Understand your performance: Price plays an important role in optimizing product performance. Learn which products could benefit from a price change and how the price gap of your products relates to their performance.

How it works

To get started, navigate to the “Performance” page in Merchant Center. The “Pricing” tab displays a selection of cards based on the prices of your products compared to the average price that customers see when they click on products from you and other retailers.

You can find answers to key questions such as “How do prices for my products compare to the price on Google?”, “How many of my products are cheaper, similar, or more expensive than the price on Google?”, “Which of my products has the biggest price gap compared to the price on Google?”, and “How should I price my products to improve performance?”.

To find out more information for a specific product or brand, click the View button on each card. This will open up a more advanced experience that provides in-depth information. By clicking on a product title, a side panel opens on the right side, allowing you to view more product and performance details.


What’s available?

Your prices compared to the price on Google

Get an overview on how many of your products have price comparison data available and how many of these products are cheaper or more expensive compared to the price on Google. You can click the View button to explore a detailed list of those products.

Price comparison across your brands

Learn how prices are distributed across all the product impressions of your most popular brands with a breakdown on the percentage of cheaper, similar, and more expensive prices. You can click on the View button to get a full list of your brands with price comparison data.

Your products with the highest price gap

Discover which of your products have the highest price gaps between your price and the prices consumers see on Google. You can click the View button to get a detailed list of all your products with higher prices compared to the price on Google.

Sale price suggestions with highest performance impact

Sale price suggestions are based on advanced simulations that analyze your product's ad performance and price sensitivity over the past seven days, along with data from similar businesses.

To receive sale price suggestions you must report purchase conversions (any channel works).

Sharing additional data related to conversions, such as the examples below, can enhance the quality of suggestions:

  • Conversions with Cart Data.
  • Cost of goods​ (cogs) in your feed to improve the effectiveness of your cart data.
  • Minimum price to specify a lower sale price limit for suggestions.

Note: Even if you comply with the requirements, you might not get sale price suggestions all the time.

For instance, if you have automated discounts set up, you will not receive sale price suggestions.
Note that Google's sale price suggestions are intended to enhance your overall performance, but they do not guarantee future results. These suggestions are only displayed if they are expected to benefit your performance optimization. Learn more about how to change the sale price of your products.

Explore insights beyond cards

Click the View button on each card to explore detailed information on each topic. Besides the filters like time period, brand, item ID, discount %, or title, you can filter or sort your results based on the following dimensions:

  • Your price is the current price of your product visible to customers on Google.
  • Price on Google is the effective click-weighted price for a given product across all retailers who list that same product on Shopping ads and free listings. Products are matched based on their GTIN. The price on Google is evaluated over a 7 day window.
  • Price gap shows the percentage difference between your current price and the price on Google for a specific product.
  • Price distribution shows how often prices of all products of a brand are cheaper, similar, or more expensive than the price on Google. For multiple products, the price distribution is weighted by impressions of each product over the last 14 days.
  • Suggested price is the most effective sale price predicted by Google. It’s based on advanced simulations at different price points over the past 7 days and factors in price elasticity, current performance, and the performance impact on price changes for businesses similar to you. Use suggested sale prices as valuable directional guidance to help shape your pricing strategy. Learn more about how to change the sale price of your products.
  • Click uplift shows the predicted percentage increase of clicks from your Shopping ads if the suggested price is applied. Predictions are generated by advanced pricing simulations based on performance data over the past 7 days.
  • Conversion uplift shows the predicted percentage increase in online conversions from Shopping ads for your product if the suggested sale price is applied. Predictions are generated by advanced pricing simulations based on performance data over the past 7 days.
  • Effectiveness indicates which products would benefit most from applying the suggested price. This is based on the performance boost predicted by adjusting the current price to the sale price. Price suggestions with “High” effectiveness are predicted to drive the largest increase in performance compared to “Medium” or “Low” effectiveness.

Compliance to Merchant Center terms and conditions

The Pricing reports are only available for the internal use of the retailer or those acting on the retailer's behalf. Pricing data can’t be resold, publicly displayed, advertised, or aggregated across businesses. For purposes of Pricing, “retailer” means the business entity owning the domain of the products being sold or selling products on a marketplace.

You must ensure that your use, or any third party's use, of Pricing data exported from your Merchant Center account complies with the Merchant Center terms and conditions.

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