How to Connect PrestaShop to Google Shopping

Three ways to connect PrestaShop to Google Shopping

1. An official plugin or module

PrestaShop offers its own free Google module through PrestaShop Essentials, which syncs your products to Google Merchant Center and can set up campaigns. It covers Google only.

2. Export a file yourself

PrestaShop can export your product list to CSV from the back office, but the export uses PrestaShop's own columns and doesn't include everything Google Shopping needs - full product page URLs, image URLs, or availability in Google Shopping's words. Turning that into a working feed means reformatting it by hand, every time your Presta catalog 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 Presta catalog through PrestaShop's Webservice API - PrestaShop's built-in REST API - and builds the Google Shopping feed for you. PrestaShop doesn't send webhooks to outside apps without an extra module, so connectors either check your store on a schedule or refresh when you ask them to. 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 PrestaShop fields map to Google Shopping

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

• Product type: PrestaShop categories are usually broad shopping groups ("Home", "Sale", "Gifts"), not what the product actually is. A Feature such as Type ("Mug", "T-shirt") is a far better source for a category.
• Combinations: sizes and colors in PrestaShop are combinations. Listing each one separately means grouping them under one item_group_id - check whether your module or connector supports combinations, or whether it lists one item per product.
• GTIN and MPN: PrestaShop has EAN-13 and UPC fields for barcodes, and the Reference field works as an MPN.
• Language and tax: multilingual shops store a name and description per language, so use the language of the country you're selling to. Prices should include or exclude tax the way Google Shopping expects for that country.

Step by step

1. Get your Google Shopping account ready - see "What Google Shopping needs" above.
2. Create a read-only Webservice key. In your PrestaShop back office, go to Advanced Parameters > Webservice, make sure the webservice is enabled, and choose Add new webservice key. Generate the key and give it View (GET) permission only, on products and the resources your feed reads, such as categories and product features.
3. Map your product types to Google product categories. Google Shopping needs to know what each product is. Map each value of your Feature (like "Type") 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 PrestaShop, not in the feed - your store stays the single source of truth.

Common PrestaShop to Google Shopping problems

• Product links that don't open. If friendly URLs are off, or a product is disabled or not visible in the catalog, its page may not load for a shopper - and every product's link has to.
• Images Google Shopping can't download. Use a cover image on every product, and make sure your image URLs load in a logged-out browser.
• 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. Running a WooCommerce catalog instead of a Presta catalog? WooCommerce to Google Shopping covers the same setup for WooCommerce.