How to Connect WooCommerce to Google Shopping

Three ways to connect WooCommerce to Google Shopping

1. An official plugin or module

The free, official Google for WooCommerce extension (formerly Google Listings & Ads) syncs products to Google Merchant Center through Google's API and can set up Shopping campaigns. It covers Google only.

2. Export a file yourself

WooCommerce's built-in product export (Products > Export) gives you a CSV of your WooCommerce catalog, but its columns are WooCommerce's own - "Regular price", "In stock?", "Images" - not the field names and formats Google Shopping expects. You'd have to rename and reformat it, and redo that every time something 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 WooCommerce catalog through WooCommerce's REST API and builds the Google Shopping feed for you. Because WooCommerce can send webhooks, a good connector updates in real time - a price change or a sold-out item reaches your feed within moments, not at the next export. 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 WooCommerce fields map to Google Shopping

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

• Variable products: each variation (Navy / M, Navy / L...) should become its own listing with its own price, stock, and image, all sharing the parent product as their item_group_id. Put sizes and colors in attributes named Size and Color so they can be read reliably.
• Brand: WooCommerce has a built-in Brands feature in recent versions. If you don't use it, your feed needs a default brand - usually your own store's name if you make the products.
• GTIN: recent WooCommerce versions include a "GTIN, UPC, EAN, or ISBN" field on the Inventory tab. Fill it in for products that have barcodes.
• Descriptions are stored as HTML in WooCommerce, so they have to be converted to plain text for the feed.

Step by step

1. Get your Google Shopping account ready - see "What Google Shopping needs" above.
2. Give read access to your store. WooCommerce has a built-in approval screen for apps, or you can create a key yourself under WooCommerce > Settings > Advanced > REST API with Read permission. Read-only is all a catalog feed needs.
3. Map your product types to Google product categories. Google Shopping needs to know what each product is. Map each value of your product attribute (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 WooCommerce, not in the feed - your store stays the single source of truth.

Common WooCommerce to Google Shopping problems

• Grouped and external/affiliate products. A grouped product has no single price, and an external product links to someone else's site, so neither belongs in your WooCommerce catalog feed. Simple and variable products are the ones to sync.
• Draft, private, or hidden products. Only published products with a public product page can be listed - the link has to open for a shopper.
• 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 Presta catalog instead of a WooCommerce catalog? PrestaShop to Google Shopping covers the same setup for PrestaShop.