Google Automated Discounts for WooCommerce: The Definitive Setup Guide

Google Automated Discounts (GAD) let Google Merchant Center apply time-limited discounts to your products and show them inside Google Ads. The shopper sees the lower price in the ad. Your store applies the same price at checkout. Google decides how much to discount based on a floor you set.

To make it work, you need three things on your side: a conversion event with full cart data, a product feed with Cost of Goods and a minimum sellable price, and a storefront that displays Google’s discounted price. Four PixelYourSite plugins cover all three.

The four plugins

All four are bundled in All Access, or you can buy them individually.

Two coverage rules from Google

• At least 20% of impressions must come from products with a valid COGS value.
• At least 20% of impressions must come from products with a valid auto_pricing_min_price.

Under either threshold, Google won’t enable the program. Audit your catalog before you start.

Step 1 — Send Conversion with Cart Data

Plugin: PixelYourSite Pro (or Free).

PixelYourSite adds the Conversion with Cart Data (CwCD) parameters to the WooCommerce Purchase event. The Pro version sends them to Google Ads, GA4, and Google Tag Manager. The Free version sends them to GA4 and GTM.

Open PixelYourSite → WooCommerce → Track Purchases → Google Tags Conversion with Card Data (CwCD). Enable, fill in the fields, save.

The optional fields:

• aw_merchant_id — Your Google Merchant Center ID. Top-right of merchants.google.com. 10 digits.
• aw_feed_country — 2-letter ISO country code of your primary feed’s target country (US, GB, DE, RO…). In GMC: Settings → Data sources → your primary feed → Data source setup → Feed label.
• aw_feed_label — Optional. The feed label set in GMC, used in the GA4 / Measurement Protocol payload.
• aw_feed_language — 2-letter language code of the feed (en, fr, de…). Same GMC location as the country.

The optional fields matter when the same product is in several Merchant Center accounts and you want Google to read COGS from a specific one.

Sample gtag payload for a Google Ads / GA4 purchase event:

gtag('event', 'purchase', {
  send_to: 'AW-9999999999/abc123xyz',
  transaction_id: '1545c34e-691e-4726-aeda-b798df255e9c',
  value: 53.50,
  currency: 'USD',
  discount: 1.50,
  aw_merchant_id: 98765,
  aw_feed_country: 'US',
  aw_feed_language: 'EN',
  items: [
    { id: 'P12345', quantity: 2, price: 12.50 },
    { id: 'P67890', quantity: 1, price: 30.00 }
  ]
});

The GTM dataLayer push uses the same fields nested under ecommerce.

Step 2 — Add Cost of Goods

Plugin: WooCommerce Cost of Goods by PixelYourSite.

Open WooCommerce → Settings → Cost of Goods by PixelYourSite. Four ways to set COGS, applied in this priority: Variation → Product → Category → Global Rule.

Global Rule

Percent or fixed value across all products. Fastest start, fine when margins are uniform.

Category Rule

Percent or fixed value per category. For stores where margin varies by department.

Product or variation level

Exact values where margin really matters.

CSV export and import

Bulk-edit COGS in a spreadsheet, then re-import.

Send COGS to the Google Merchant feed

Plugin: Product Catalog Feed for WooCommerce.

Edit your Google Merchant feed, enable Cost of goods sold, save, and regenerate.

Step 3 — Set auto_pricing_min_price

Plugin: Product Catalog Feed for WooCommerce.

auto_pricing_min_price is the floor below which Google can’t discount a product. Four ways to set it, same priority order as COGS.

Global Rule

Product Catalog Feed for WooCommerce → Global Settings → Google Automated Discounts. Enter a percent.

Feed Rule

Edit a Google Merchant feed, make sure Cost of goods sold is on, enter a percent.

Category Rule

Edit a product category, set auto_pricing_min_price as a percent.

Product or variation Rule

Edit a product, open Product Catalog, set auto_pricing_min_price.

Regenerate and refresh

Regenerate the feed in Product Catalog Feed for WooCommerce. Then in Google Merchant Center → Settings & tools → Data sources, pick the feed and click the refresh icon so Google pulls the new data.

Step 4 — Apply Google’s discount on the storefront

Plugin: WooCommerce Smart Prices by PixelYourSite.

When a shopper clicks an ad with a discount, Google passes the discounted price in the URL. Smart Prices reads it and shows it as the sale price on the product page and cart.

Open WooCommerce → Smart Prices → Google Automated Discounts. Enter your Merchant ID, enable Google Automated Discounts, save.

Settings to know:

• Session Timeout (minutes) — how long the discount is remembered while the shopper browses. Google requires at least 30.
• Cart Timeout (hours) — how long the discount sticks to a product after it’s added to the cart. Google requires at least 48.
• Variation Discount Inheritance — applies the discount to all variations when they share the same base price.

Step 5 — Enable Automated Discounts in Google Merchant Center

In GMC: Settings → Add-ons → Automated Discounts → Set up, then follow the flow.

If GMC says “No impressions covered from inventory”, the steps above worked but Google hasn’t refreshed your product data yet. It can take a few days, longer if traffic is light.

Test the storefront using the test URLs Google provides. Each one mimics a discount click. Open it and check that the product page and cart show the discounted price. Smart Prices has to be configured for this to work.

When Google has enough data and the storefront passes the test, the Submit for review button activates. Review takes 2–3 business days.

What to watch out for

• Coverage thresholds. If most of your catalog is missing COGS or auto_pricing_min_price, Google won’t enable GAD. Fix the gaps before applying.
• Realistic COGS. Don’t set COGS lower than reality to widen the discount window. Google’s pricing logic will be off and the discounts can lose you money.
• Floor below cost. auto_pricing_min_price can be set below COGS. Don’t. Set the floor with your margin in mind.
• Merchant ID everywhere. The ID in PixelYourSite, the ID in Smart Prices, and the GMC account that owns the feed must match.
• Currency. Site, feed, and GMC account must agree on currency.
• Multiple feeds. If a product sits in more than one feed, use aw_feed_country and aw_feed_label to point Google at the feed whose COGS it should read.
• Page caching. A page cache that stores prices can show the wrong sale price after Google sends a discount. Exclude product pages and the cart from full HTML caching, or use rules that respect the Smart Prices cookie.
• Variable products. Variation Discount Inheritance only works when all variations share the same base price. Mixed-price variations need their own COGS and minimum price.
• Refunds. The Purchase event reflects the order as it was at purchase time. Google’s discount engine doesn’t roll back when you refund.