A customer spots a lower price beside your product on Google and asks when the sale started. You have changed the price, but you have not launched a promotion. Before changing your product feed, check what Google is actually showing: an automatic price-drop label and a sale-price label are different things.
A 5 October practitioner article in Search Engine Journal has brought product price history back into focus. For retailers in Bath and the South West, the useful response is to distinguish the labels and investigate a specific product. This is a look at Google’s existing documented features, rather than an announcement of a new rollout.
A price drop can appear without a sale
Google’s price-drop guidance explains that it can automatically add a badge when a product’s current price falls below the average price you listed over the previous 60 days. The drop must be significant against a price that was fairly stable.
The display can include the current price and an earlier reference price, introduced with “Was”. That comparison does not necessarily mean you submitted a sale price or scheduled a promotion. It can reflect Google’s historical comparison.
Google says it can show the badge; it does not promise one for every reduction. Its public explanation also does not give a universal percentage threshold for a significant price drop. Avoid treating a missing badge as evidence that your feed has failed.
A sale-price label has different requirements
For sale-price annotations, Google’s documented process uses an original price and a separate sale price submitted in your product data. Both should be clearly displayed on the product page, with the active sale price most prominent.
For UK Shopping ads and free listings, Google specifies a discount greater than 5% and less than 90%, with the base price valid for 30 days within the previous 200 days. Those days need not be consecutive. These are Google’s eligibility conditions, and meeting them still does not guarantee a sale annotation.
Local inventory ads have their own conditions, including a different price-history requirement for some store-specific product pages. Check the documentation for your setup rather than applying the online rule to every shop listing.
Start with the label the customer saw
Save a screenshot, the product link and the time you saw the result. Note whether it appeared in a Shopping ad or a free listing, and which size, colour or other variant was selected. A comparison is only useful if you are looking at the same product.
In Merchant Center’s All products view, Google provides separate filters for products with a price-drop badge and products with a sale badge. Use the filter that matches the customer’s example. A sale-badge check alone will not answer a question about automatic price drops.
These filters show eligibility. They are useful starting points, rather than a complete record of everything an individual shopper has seen. Google’s sale guidance also warns that its sale-badge filter does not accurately reflect annotations on local inventory ads using store-specific pages.
Compare today’s price with its history
If the current price is correct and the badge is a price drop, compare it with your dated price records. A permanent repricing can still look like a reduction against an earlier stable price. Do not invent a sale price simply to make your data resemble the label.
If the current price is wrong, investigate that mismatch separately. Google’s inaccurate-price guidance calls for agreement between the product data, landing page, structured data and checkout. Check the default variant too. For UK submissions, its price guidance requires any applicable VAT to be included, with the landing-page price matching the submitted figure.
Our earlier explanation of merchant listing structured data covers that wider consistency check. Here, the additional question is whether a correct current price is being compared with historical information.
Keep a record before changing anything
Retain dated product exports and a note of genuine price changes so the person managing your Google Ads can explain a comparison without guessing. If an unexpected label remains, pass the product identifier, screenshot and price records to whoever maintains the catalogue, or seek Merchant Center support.
For a local shop, the aim is straightforward: make sure customers see an accurate price and understand the offer. Identifying the badge first helps you decide whether there is a data error to fix or an automatic comparison to explain.