Quick answer
Search Engine Roundtable reported a new Deal Ends label on Shopping listings on September 11, 2026, and Google describes it as an experimental annotation with eligibility rules in Merchant Center Help. Eligibility does not guarantee display or performance. The work is feed QA: reconcile promotion dates against sale-price dates, confirm the time zone, check variants and landing pages, and verify expiry.
- Experimental annotation; eligibility is not a guarantee
- Promotion dates and sale-price dates are configured separately
- Time-zone settings decide when a Vancouver deal actually ends
Shopping annotations are one of the few places where a feed detail becomes visible to a shopper. A new one is worth preparing for, and worth being careful about, because the failure modes are all in the data rather than in the strategy.
What is confirmed
- Search Engine Roundtable reported the new label on September 11, 2026.
- Google describes the annotation as experimental.
- Eligibility requirements are published in Merchant Center Help.
What is not confirmed, and should not be assumed:
- That meeting eligibility causes the label to appear.
- That the label improves click-through rate or conversions.
- That the annotation can be isolated in reporting. No annotation-level metric exists.
Holiday and non-holiday eligibility
Merchant Center treats promotion windows differently depending on whether they fall in a recognised holiday period. Read the current Help documentation on the day you configure, because these rules are revised, but the practical planning consequences are stable:
| Context | Planning consequence |
|---|---|
| Holiday periods | Shorter windows and higher review volume. Submit earlier than you think you need to, and do not schedule a first-time promotion structure during peak week. |
| Non-holiday periods | More scheduling latitude, but the same date and price reconciliation rules apply. Use these periods to rehearse the process. |
Promotion dates versus sale-price dates
This single distinction causes most rejected deals. They are two separate systems:
| Control | Where it lives | What breaks |
|---|---|---|
| Sale price | Product attribute, with its own effective date range | Discount shown while the promotion object says the deal is over |
| Promotion | Separate Merchant Center object with start and end dates | Promotion live while the product still shows full price |
Either mismatch is a shopper-facing contradiction, and contradictions get promotions disapproved. Reconcile the two before submitting, not after a disapproval email.
The Vancouver time-zone risk
Promotion end times are interpreted against a configured time zone, not against wherever the person entering them happens to be. A Pacific-based retailer entering an end date without confirming that setting can lose several hours of a sale, or run one past its advertised end. On a one-day Boxing Day or long-weekend deal, that is the entire event.
Practical rule: write the intended local start and end times in plain words in your own brief first, then configure, then read the saved values back and confirm they match those words.
The seven-step QA process
- Confirm eligibility against current Help documentation for your country and promotion type, on the day you build it.
- Reconcile prices. Feed price, sale price, and the price on the landing page must agree, including tax and currency presentation.
- Reconcile dates. Promotion start and end against sale-price effective dates, with the time zone verified in writing.
- Check variants. Confirm applicability for each variant rather than assuming it inherits from the parent.
- Check landing pages. The discount must be visible and claimable without a hunt, on mobile as well as desktop.
- Submit early and monitor review status so a disapproval leaves time to fix rather than cancel.
- Verify expiry. After the end time, confirm the annotation, the promotion and the sale price have all stopped. Stale discounts outlive the sale more often than they should.
Reporting limits
There is no annotation-level metric, so an honest report says: this promotion ran on these dates, here is performance for that period against a comparable prior period, and the annotation may or may not have appeared. Do not label a period difference as annotation lift.
We have no fresh Search Console or campaign figures to publish with this and are not reusing older numbers as current. Search volume, CPC, traffic, ranking, campaign-result and annotation-lift data for this topic are unavailable, so none appear.
A holiday timeline that survives contact with reality
| When | Task |
|---|---|
| Six weeks out | Lock the offer calendar, confirm eligibility rules, fix the time-zone setting |
| Four weeks out | Build one rehearsal promotion on a low-stakes product and run all seven QA steps |
| Two weeks out | Submit the real promotions, reconcile prices and dates, monitor review status daily |
| Sale period | Daily spot-check of landing pages and variant pricing on mobile |
| Day after each end date | Verify expiry across promotion, sale price and landing page |
If you would rather this ran as a managed process, our PPC management team handles feed and promotion operations, our Vancouver PPC team works in your time zone, and our marketing reporting keeps promotion periods labelled honestly. If you are choosing a partner, our ecommerce PPC agency scorecard is a useful screen.
Want your holiday promotions QA'd before they go live?
Book a free 30-minute consultation. We will review your promotion setup, dates and landing pages before the sale, not after the disapproval.
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