You put products on sale in Shopify, but Google still shows the full price, or shows the sale price without the original price crossed out. A common cause is the issue "Mismatched strikethrough price (page crawl)" in Merchant Center. This guide covers how sale prices reach Google, the display rules and the fixes.
How a Shopify sale reaches Google
Google's help for Shopify users says to enter the original price in the Compare-at price field and the sale price in the Price field, and that Compare-at must be higher. With the Automatic Product Sync setting on in the Google & YouTube app, Google says prices update within 24 hours of saving.
- Compare-at price: The original price
- Price: The sale price
- Timing: Up to 24 hours to update on Google
What the strikethrough issue means
"Mismatched strikethrough price (page crawl)" means the prices on your page differ from the price and sale price you sent. Google's effect is specific: the original price is discarded and not shown as a strikethrough. Google lists these causes.
- Different numbers: The crossed-out price on the page does not match the price you sent
- No sale price sent: The page shows a strikethrough, but no sale price reached Google
- Added by script: The strikethrough is added with JavaScript after the page loads
- Data lag: Your product data trails behind website changes
Rules for the sale annotation
Even with correct data, Google only shows a sale annotation when the discount meets its rules, and it says annotations may not appear even then. For all the cases on its page, the discount must be more than 5% and less than 90%, and both prices should appear on the landing page.
| Where | Base price history needed |
|---|---|
| Free listings in the US, Canada, Australia, Japan | None listed |
| Shopping ads in the US | 5 of the past 30 days, or 15 of the past 200 days |
| Shopping ads in the other listed countries, and free listings in countries such as the UK, France and Germany | 30 of the past 200 days |
Find and fix affected products
In Merchant Center, open Products, go to the Needs attention tab and filter by the issue name.
- Numbers differ: Correct the Compare-at price or Price in Shopify so the page and data agree
- Strikethrough added by script: Have your theme show the compare-at price in the page itself
- Dates: If you send a sale price effective date, check the period and time zone are right
- Faster updates: Google suggests turning on automatic item updates for prices, unless pages show more than one strikethrough price
Prevent it
Keep one strikethrough price per page and discount from a price you have actually charged. For general price problems, see how to fix a price mismatch.
- ✅ A discount between 5% and 90%
- ✅ The same two prices on the page, in Shopify and in Merchant Center
- ❌ Inflating Compare-at to make a discount look bigger
- ❌ Discount codes in the sale price. Google says to manage promo codes through Shopify discounts instead
Doing this at scale
FeedFix checks every product against Google Merchant Center and Meta Catalog rules and scores each one from 0 to 100 per channel, so you can see which products have data problems. It drafts compliant title and description rewrites you review as before/after diffs, apply in bulk, and every change is audit-logged. See FeedFix.