Google Merchant Center is currently experiencing a technical issue with configuring shipping destinations with overlapping UK postcode regions. Despite appearing as overlapping, in reality, they are not. The root cause can be traced back to Google’s initial failure to account for the unique structure of UK postal codes.
Consider this example: if you create a destination with the grouped postcodes TW9, TW10, and TW11 and subsequently create a second group comprising TW1, TW2, and TW3, Google Merchant Center will indicate overlapping between two regions. It’s important to clarify that this is not the case, highlighting the system’s misinterpretation.
To further illustrate this glitch, another instance would be when targeting M1 versus M11 or N1 versus N11. The system falsely detects these as overlapping regions when in reality, they are distinct.
The Solution From Google
Our Community Managers within the Google Ads community have explained that resolving this issue requires the creation of new shipping settings for the additional postal codes. Google acknowledges that this approach does increase labor and an extensive list of shipping options, yet it remains the sole solution to the issues. Rest assured. We have communicated our feedback to Google.
This still does not work, the regions save correctly but when trying to assign regions against shipping labels for shipping cost the two regions state they overlap and the shipping settings cannot be saved.
Which postcodes are overlapping? I will check on my end.
Hi Emmanuel, the reason this does not work is because although the regions create ok when you split the offending postcodes when you go to assign them to shipping methods the overlapping issue flags up.
Hello Luke, from tests I did, when adding the full post codes, I am able to set everything up. It does mean the broad targeting in the other shipping option needs to be removed. Meaning all post codes must be in the full format, not catch all.
As an example, I have 2 regions now X and Y, X contains N1 and Y contains N11. When I set up a shipping service I set an advanced pricing table to split by region and cost Region X costs 3.60 from £0 – £500 and region Y costs £5 from £0 – 500 this throws up an error that region Y contains overlapping postcodes to region X
Correct, this is the expected behavior. As explained you need to use the full postcode. So in your case (as an example), region X will be N1 0AB, and region Y will be N11 1AA. And you add all applicable postcodes. This is the only way forward.
Amazing!
This saved me so much time!!
Pleasure. And thanks for sharing your appreciation!