How to Connect BigCommerce to Google Shopping

Three ways to connect BigCommerce to Google Shopping

1. BigCommerce's own channels and apps

BigCommerce offers a free app, Ads and Listings on Google, that connects your store to Google Merchant Center and syncs your products for free listings and Shopping ads. It covers Google only.

2. Export a file yourself

BigCommerce can export your products to a CSV (Products > Export), but the file uses BigCommerce's own template and columns - not the field names and formats Google Shopping expects - and it's a snapshot, so it's out of date as soon as a price or stock level changes. If you go this way, start from our free Google Catalog TSV Template Generator so at least the columns are right.

3. A store catalog connector

A connector reads your BigCommerce catalog through BigCommerce's REST API, using a read-only API account you create in your control panel, and builds the Google Shopping feed for you. BigCommerce can notify a connector through webhooks when a product, price, or stock level changes, so updates arrive within moments - and only the products that changed need to be read again. The connector hosts the feed at a URL that Google Shopping reads on a schedule, and one connection can usually feed several platforms at once.

What Google Shopping needs

• A Google Merchant Center account with your website verified and claimed, plus shipping and return policies.
• Seven fields per product: id, title, description, link, image_link, availability (in_stock, out_of_stock, preorder, or backorder), and price.
• Product identifiers: brand for new products, and gtin where one exists - or identifier_exists set to no for handmade items.
• A product source - a file Google fetches daily, weekly, or monthly from a URL, among other options.

How your BigCommerce fields map to Google Shopping

The table above shows where each Google Shopping field comes from in your BigCommerce catalog. A few BigCommerce details need extra care:

• Variants: each combination of options (Navy / M, Navy / L...) should become its own listing with its own price, stock, SKU, and image, grouped under the product with a shared item_group_id. Name your options Color and Size so they're read as color and size, and leave out variants with purchasing disabled.
• Product type: BigCommerce categories are what you map to a Google product category. Stores often reuse a name under different parents (Men > Shirts, Women > Shirts), so map by the full path, and skip shopping groups like "Sale" or "New".
• Identifiers and condition: BigCommerce has Brand, GTIN, UPC, MPN, and Condition fields - fill them in and they come straight across. Products without a brand need a default, usually your store's name.
• Clothing details: BigCommerce has no gender or age group fields, and Google and Facebook require them - with a color and a size - on clothing and shoes. Add them as custom fields, or set them by product name if your tool supports it.
• Prices and tax: if your store enters prices with tax included, check what Google Shopping expects for each country - US listings, for example, are shown without tax.

Step by step

1. Get your Google Shopping account ready - see "What Google Shopping needs" above.
2. Create a read-only API account. In your BigCommerce control panel, go to Settings > Store-level API accounts and click Create API account. Set Products and Information & settings to Read-only, leave the rest at None, and save. Copy the API path, access token, and client secret - BigCommerce shows them only once.
3. Map your product types to Google product categories. Google Shopping needs to know what each product is. Map each of your BigCommerce categories (shown as full paths like "Men > Shirts") to one category from the Google product category list once, and every product with that value is categorized from then on.
4. Add the product source in Merchant Center. Go to Settings > Data sources, add a product source from a file, choose to fetch it from a URL, add the login under Add authentication information, and schedule a daily fetch.
5. Check the first import. Review the errors Google Shopping reports and fix them in BigCommerce, not in the feed - your store stays the single source of truth.

Common BigCommerce to Google Shopping problems

• Hidden, disabled, and price-hidden products. Only visible products a shopper can buy at a shown price belong in the feed - hide a product, turn off purchasing, or hide its price in BigCommerce and it should drop out.
• Digital products and headless storefronts. Digital products aren't sold through shopping catalogs. If shoppers buy on a separate headless storefront, product links must point there, not to your BigCommerce store address.
• Price or availability mismatch. Google compares your feed with your product page. A sale, a tax setting, or a cached page that shows a different price will get items disapproved.
• Missing identifiers. Products with barcodes need a gtin; handmade products should set identifier_exists to no. See How to Set Up a Google Merchant Center Feed for a Small Store.

Related guides

For more on Google Shopping itself, see Google Product Category: How to Pick the Right One. On a different store platform? WooCommerce to Google Shopping, PrestaShop to Google Shopping, Wix to Google Shopping, Square to Google Shopping, Squarespace to Google Shopping, and Webflow to Google Shopping cover the same setup for those stores.