This week, we’re talking about a sneaky little problem that’s been silently killing Google Shopping ads for ecommerce stores running in multiple countries. If you’ve ever seen those infuriating “price mismatch” errors inside Google Merchant Center (GMC), especially on your Canadian or Australian feeds — even though your USD one looks perfect — this one’s for you.
Let’s break down what’s really going on, and more importantly, how to fix it.
The Odd Behaviour: A Mismatch That Comes and Goes
This one came from a discussion on a forum, where someone was running a Shopify store with USD as the base currency. The US feed was all good. But the feeds for Australia and Canada? Full of errors.
But here’s the twist: the price mismatches were random. Some products would fail one day, pass the next, with zero changes on their end. The Merchant Center errors were also weird: they’d show the wrong price, in USD, and without GST included for Australia.
That’s when the lightbulb went off: it’s probably not a feed problem. It’s a site problem.
Why Google Merchant Center Thinks You’re Lying About Your Prices
Let’s talk about what I believe is happening behind the scenes.
It’s a race condition
Now I’ll admit — when I first saw the term “race condition” in the original post, I had to Google it again. But it makes perfect sense here.
Here’s the theory:
Your site loads in USD first by default.
Then Shopify geolocates the visitor (including Google’s crawler) and switches the currency to AUD or CAD.
That triggers a page refresh or dynamic update.
But the Google bot doesn’t hang around long enough. It sees the wrong price (USD), logs it, and then throws a mismatch error because it doesn’t match the price in your local currency feed.
So it’s not the feed that’s wrong. It’s Google misreading your site because it loads the wrong currency first.
The Fixes: What You Can Do About It
Right, so what can you do to stop Google from getting its wires crossed?
Step 1: Use Shopify Markets + Proper Feeds
If you’re selling in multiple countries and not using Shopify Markets yet, now’s the time.
Shopify Markets makes it much easier to manage multiple localised versions of your site and product feeds, including prices that factor in local tax (like GST for Australia). When set up properly, it should reduce or eliminate the chance of price mismatch entirely.
If you're already using Markets, double-check that your AU and CA feeds are pointing to pages that display the correct localised prices, including taxes.
Step 2: Turn Off Automatic Price Updates in GMC
This one catches people out.
If automatic price updates are switched on in your Merchant Center settings, Google will attempt to “correct” any mismatched prices it finds, even if its source of truth is wrong (which it often is, thanks to that currency flicker).
So do yourself a favour and turn this feature off.
You’ll avoid Google making unauthorised updates to your product prices and causing further inconsistency between your feed and your listings.
Step 3: Review Your Feed Rules
Feed rules in GMC can overwrite feed values based on certain conditions. If you’re seeing consistent price mismatches, give these a look and make sure you haven’t accidentally set up any rules that affect pricing.
In most cases, people don’t have pricing rules in place, but if you’ve done a bit of feed hacking in the past, it’s worth checking.
Step 4: Make Currency Labels Crystal Clear
This is a big one, and it’s more subtle than you might think.
Remember: USD, CAD and AUD all use the dollar sign ($).
If your website just displays prices as “$50”, then Google (and potentially customers) won’t know whether that’s $USD, $CAD or $AUD.
In fact, I remember running into this issue years ago with a client who was advertising in Canada, but their site just used the “$” symbol with no currency label. Google didn’t like that at all.
To be safe, update your site theme or currency switcher to display the full currency symbol. For example:
$USD
$CAD
$AUD
Step 5: Speed Up Geolocation and Remove the Page Flicker
This one’s a bit trickier, but important.
The root issue here is the flicker or delay when your site switches currencies based on geolocation. If that flicker shows Google the wrong price, even for a second, it can break your Merchant Center listings.
What you want is for the correct currency to load immediately on the first visit. No flicker, no refresh, no “load in USD then switch to AUD”.
Depending on how your currency switcher is set up, you may need a dev or app specialist to:
Detect geolocation on the server-side, so the correct price is loaded before the page hits the browser.
Cache prices based on geolocation to serve faster.
Or in some cases, serve separate URLs for different countries (e.g., /au/product-name vs /ca/product-name), each loading the correct currency by default.
It might sound like a faff, but this could be the thing that finally stops the mismatch errors.
Bonus Thought: Shopify Markets + Feed Setup = No More Headaches
I spoke to the founder of the data feed platform we use, and he told me their customers running Shopify Markets don’t have this issue, assuming their feed setup is correct.
So that’s your confirmation: it’s not that Google’s broken or that Shopify is bad. It’s just that your current setup isn’t giving Google what it wants, when it wants it.
Get your feeds aligned with Shopify Markets, turn off automatic updates, clearly label your currencies, and make your geolocation behave, and these errors should go away.
Summary
If your Google Shopping ads are getting disapproved in countries like Australia or Canada due to price mismatch errors — while your USD feed is working fine — you’re likely facing a race condition caused by Shopify’s geolocation behaviour. Google’s bot sees the price in the wrong currency before the site has finished loading the localised version.
Here’s how to fix it:
Use Shopify Markets and set up your feeds properly for each country.
Turn off automatic price updates in Google Merchant Center.
Review feed rules to make sure nothing is modifying your prices.
Use clear currency labels on your site (e.g., $CAD, $AUD).
Optimise geolocation behaviour to load the correct currency immediately without flickering or refreshing.
Tackle those, and you’ll stop getting price mismatch errors, keep your Shopping ads live, and reach customers globally with confidence.