sale_price: Definition

 

Use the sale_price attribute to tell users how much you're charging for your product during a sale. During a sale, your sale price will be shown in ads as the current price. If your original price and sale price meet certain requirements, your original price may show along with the sale price, allowing people to see the difference between the two.

The image above may contain English or USD. When the sales price is applied to the ad unit for your product, it will display in the local currency and language.

 

When to use

Optional for each product

If your product is on sale, submit the new price using the sale_price attribute. To submit the dates of your sale, use the sale_price_effective_date attribute.

Format

Follow these formatting guidelines to make sure we understand the data you're submitting. 

Type Number plus currency (use ISO 4217)
Repeated field No
Schema.org property (What’s this?) Offer.priceSpecification, Type: Text
(for tax) valueAddedTaxIncluded, Type: Boolean
 
File format Example entry
Text feeds

15.00 USD
XML feeds <g:sale_price>15.00 USD</g:sale_price>
Content API v2 (JSON) "salePrice": {
  "value": "15.00",
  "currency": "USD"
}
Content API v2 (XML) <sale_price currency="USD">15.00</sale_price>

Guidelines

Follow these guidelines to make sure you submit high-quality data for your products and get the best performance from your ads.

Minimum requirements

These are the requirements you'll need to meet to show ads for your product. If you don't follow these requirements, we'll disapprove your product and let you know in the Diagnostics page of your Merchant Center account. 

  • Meet the requirements for the price attribute with some exceptions.

    • The sale price does not have to be the most prominent price on the landing page. For example, if you display price and sale price, the original price can still be in a larger font.
    • Clearly display both non-sale and sale prices on your landing pages. 
  • Use a value for sale_price that matches the sale price that you display on your landing page.
  • Submit the price attribute with the full price of your product (the cost when it’s not on sale), even when you submit sale_price. If your product is on sale and you don’t submit the sale_price attribute, submit the sale price as the value of the price attribute.
  • Use a value that’s less than the value you submit for price.
  • Don't provide more than 2 digits after a decimal. If you include more than 2 digits after the decimal, they'll automatically be rounded to the nearest acceptable value. For example, 1.0234 will be rounded to 1.02 and 29.8999 will be rounded to 29.90.

Best practices

These are best practices that can help you go beyond the basic requirements to optimize your product data for performance. 

  • Submit a price that can be represented in your target country’s currency (according to ISO 4217). For example, instead of 1.0012 USD, submit 1.01 USD. If your price can’t be represented in your target country’s currency, then we’ll round it to a value that can. 
  • Submit sale_price_effective_date with the date range that the sale price applies. If you're submitting the sale_price attribute and don't also submit the sale_price_effective_date attribute, the sale_price will be used for your item right away.
  • Submit correct base prices to enable sale price annotations. When you lower the price of an item for a sale, submit the sale price in the sale_price attribute. Keep submitting the original base price that you charged previously in the price attribute. Learn more about requirements to show sale price annotations for your offers.

Examples

Variants

If you sell a product that comes in multiple colors and sizes, you might choose to put some of the colors on sale.

An example of ads without placeholder images

Product Google T-shirt
title Google T-shirt - Green - Small
price 10.99 USD
sale price 9.99 USD
color green
size s
id 9876-S-GRN
item_group_id 9876
Product Google T-shirt
title Google T-shirt - Blue - Small
price 8.99 USD
sale price 5.99 USD
color blue
size s
id 9876-S-BLU
item_group_id 9876
Product Google T-shirt
title Google T-shirt - Yellow - Small
price 10.50 USD
sale price 8.99 USD
color yellow
size s
id 9876-S-YELLOW
item_group_id 9876
Phone or tablet with a contract

You can submit a price as low as 0 for mobile phones or tablets that come with a contract. Learn more about the requirements.

An illustration with 3 different colors of one mobile phone

Product Google Nexus 6
title Google Nexus 6 - 32 GB - Midnight Blue - With contract
price 299 USD
sale_price 0 USD
google_product_category Electronics > Communications > Telephony > Mobile Phones
Product Google Nexus 9
title Google Nexus 9 - 32 GB - Black - With contract
price 499 USD
sale_price 0 USD
google_product_category Electronics > Computers > Tablet Computers
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