BigCommerce + Google Ads: Feedonomics Surface feed and Script Manager tracking

What this integration unlocks

• A Google Merchant Center feed built from your BigCommerce catalog by Feedonomics Surface, refreshed every 4 hours once auto-sync is on
• Eligibility for free listings and Performance Max campaigns from the synced catalog
• View product, add to cart, start checkout and purchase events sent to Google Ads from Script Manager
• Order value, currency, line items and the order ID as transaction ID on every purchase
• Scripts categorised for the storefront cookie consent banner, so tracking respects shopper choices

Setup steps

1. 1

   Install Feedonomics Surface and connect Merchant Center

   BigCommerce needs an app to send products to Google. Its help center points to Feedonomics Surface: go to Channels > Feedonomics Surface, select Google as the channel, pick the storefront, and click Set up. Surface Basic is free, covers two channels and up to 100,000 SKUs. Surface Retail is a paid tier with a 15 day trial, and only the paid version lets you add custom rules.

   After the catalog exports, connect your Google Merchant Center account inside Feedonomics. Nothing is sent to Google until you turn on auto-sync or trigger a manual sync. With auto-sync on, the feed pushes immediately and refreshes every 4 hours.

2. 2

   Pause any other feed app first

   If another app already sends your catalog to Google, pause its feeds before setting up Surface. BigCommerce warns that two apps updating the same data keep overwriting each other, and that apps using different identifiers, such as SKU in one and product ID in another, create duplicate listings in Merchant Center.

   Surface uses the SKU as the Google offer ID, falling back to the product ID when the SKU is empty. Do not override SKUs inside Feedonomics. If an offer ID needs changing, change the SKU in BigCommerce.

3. 3

   Check the catalog data Surface cannot map

   A few BigCommerce features do not carry into the feed. Price lists and product modifiers are not supported, and option rules built in the older v2 product experience are ignored, so price or weight changes set that way never reach Google. Surface also lists only in the storefront's default currency.

   Apparel needs size, color, gender and age group. Size and color must be set up as variant options rather than modifiers, and gender and age group as custom fields. Products with no GTIN or MPN need a custom field called Identifier Exists set to False. And because Surface builds product type from the first category a product is assigned to, a category rename can change the values your campaigns are segmented on.

4. 4

   Add the Google tag and event scripts in Script Manager

   Conversion tracking on BigCommerce is manual. Confirm the checkout type first: BigCommerce requires Optimized One-Page Checkout or a Custom Checkout, and Script Manager is only available on Stencil themes (Catalyst storefronts load scripts through the same Scripts API).

   In Storefront > Script Manager, create the Google tag script with your AW- ID, placed in the header on Storefront pages, category Analytics. Then add BigCommerce's event scripts: view product and add to cart on Storefront pages, start checkout on the Checkout location, and purchase in the footer on Order confirmation. The purchase script reads the order through the Storefront API and sends value, currency, line items and the order ID as the transaction ID. On Multi-Storefront, repeat every script for each storefront.

5. 5

   Add enhanced conversions on top

   BigCommerce's own guide stops at the standard tag and does not cover enhanced conversions. Google offers several ways to supply the hashed customer data: automatic detection on the page, CSS selectors or JavaScript variables, or a code snippet, as well as Google Tag Manager. Turn on the feature under Goals > Settings in Google Ads, implement one method on the order confirmation page, and check the diagnostics report, which Google says is available about 72 hours after implementation.

Common issues

Common questions