As we approach Q4, retailers start to gear up for the busiest period and begin increasing their investment in Google Ads, and in particular Google Shopping Ads. In Q4 of 2022 Google Shopping Ads took the largest portion of spend and resulted in 65% of overall Google Ads Spend. (Data from Shoptimised)

Although Shopping Ads are growing every year and as they evolve from Standard Shopping to Smart Shopping and now Performance Max, retailers still have a lot of questions about how to get their Shopping Ads more visibility. This isn’t just a question clients put to their agencies, it's a question that is commonly asked when we have discussions with agencies that subscribe to Shoptimised.



The Google Academy gives insight into the Shopping Ads Algorithm and Auction Dynamics and what goes into serving an ad.



Data Quality - Takes into the key components of Shopping and looks at unique identifiers such as GTIN, Title, Brand, MPN, Description while also looking at the quality of images in the feed and also takes into account Price.

Product Relevance - Combined together with Data Quality as the quality of the data also needs to be relevant to the product being advertised. 

Predicted Click Through Rate - Expected Click Through Rate has been a factor in Quality Score on search for a long time, now we have confirmation that this is a factor in the Shopping Auction. Google looks at the historical data of your account, the product feed and predicts a click through rate. The more relevant your product, the better your predicted click through rate will be. More relevant data within your Product Feed will then increase your predicted click through rate over time. This leads to a better position in the shopping results, which inturn leads to a better click through rate and the cycle repeats itself.

Bid - The bid is often thought of as the key component of being shown in a shopping auction, but it is just one of four key parts. The better optimised your product feed is, the higher your Predicted Click Through Rate will become which results in you having to make a modest bid. However, if you find yourself having to increase your bid it could mean you have neglected the other key areas. When it comes to Performance Max, you’re not in control of the bid, but you can influence it via your campaigns settings with bidding strategies such as Target ROAS. However, the higher you set your Target ROAS, Google will restrict traffic and products if it doesn’t predict you will achieve your Target ROAS in each auction. This is why it is imperative to get your Data Quality and Product Relevance right as it has a direct impact on the Cost per Click you will potentially have. The lower your Cost per Click will result in more Google serving more products as your Target ROAS will become easier to achieve.



Titles - Google listing Title as the one of the key attributes with a high impact on the auction is no surprise as this along with the image and price is what is shown in the Shopping results. Google is looking for rich keywords that have high search volume, but adding the brand, gender, age group to the titles gives more long tail visibility, higher click through rates and conversion rates. 

GTIN - Google uses GTINs as a unique product identifier, products without a GTIN, in particular from well known brands can have a significant decrease in impressions or potentially disapproval. If the GTIN isn’t in the correct format, this will also lead to a disapproval.

Product Type - This has no impact on your website, this is how you categorise your products and displays as a breadcrumb trail in your Shopping feed. It has a high impact on the relevance of your product, and is often neglected in non optimised feeds. 

Descriptions - These have a strong impact on onsite performance and product relevance, descriptions should be unique and contain rich keywords in a structure that informs the user.

Google Product Category - These attributes have a strong impact on the relevance, selecting the wrong Google Product Category can lead to low visibility for products, or to show for the incorrect search terms, leading to a poor click through rate which goes on to impact both your Predicted Click through Rate and Historical Click through Rate.

Other Attributes - Size, colour, gender don’t have as much of an impact as the other attributes within Search Terms. However depending on the Google Product Category some attributes are key. For Clothing & Accessories, size, gender, age group and colour are required, and will give warnings in the merchant centre if they are not in the feed. Also, these attributes do factor a lot more into the filtering of the Google Shopping page and if a potential customer filters by a color that you’re not passing in the color attribute, you will vanish from the results.

To help improve the data quality and product relevance, these quick wins we commonly apply and can potentially benefit all retailers.

1 - Duplication of titles - The first check we complete in a feed is looking for duplicate titles, clients who sell variants commonly have duplicated titles that is generally the name of the parent product. Adding in sizes, quantity and colour where available removes title duplication from the product feed and gives focus on more long-tail size, color, material and/or pattern specific searches, which are more likely to convert and improves bounce rate.

2 - Building out Product Types - We often see just one product type added to a product, but expanding this to 4-5 levels of Product Type allows for better filtering of products within Google Shopping Ads campaigns and can double down on search terms. We can take a basic ‘Trainers’ product type and change that to ‘Mens > Trainers > Nike > Black > Size: 10’ using simple rules in the Shoptimised platform.

3 - Make sure your Google Product Categories are correct - Google are very good at predicting the correct Google Product Category when missing for common products like clothing, homeware and baby and toddler products, but for more niche products, or products with titles that contain a common term for another product Google can incorrectly categorise products.



Taking a look how this all comes together in an auction, with three products Product A, an optimised product with a below benchmark price. Product B which is well optimised with a benchmark price and Product C, poorly optimised but with below benchmark price.

We can see how this would be displayed in a Google search for the term ‘Mens size 9 blue nike running trainers’. This is a long tail term with a high chance of conversion if the auction is won, the customer knows exactly what they want, not the exact style but they are looking for a specific type and colour of trainer.

Product B is the winner in this auction, the titles are well optimised which is 80-85% responsible for the search results, the difference between option A and B is option B has colour in the title despite not being as well priced. This allowed it to be the most relevant product to the search and win the auction.

If we tweak the search term to ‘Mens Cheap size 9 blue Nike running trainers’ we get the following results.

Product A is the winner here, the product is still well optimised and has a pricing below the benchmark, just like option C, which is poorly optimised so does not win the auction.

Customers want the best product for their needs

Getting your Products to show in the right search results, at the right time for the right cost is just one part of the challenge. Being chosen once you’re there, is the next. Google recently shared data based on tests they carried out to find what influences customers when selecting a retailer from a Shopping Ad.

Price and Discount are the main drivers for shoppers and with the biggest discount and sales period just around the corner, getting your price and discount strategy right can be make or break.

Next, shoppers are focused on the brand of the product they want and are less likely to be concerned about which retailer they buy it from. Studies show that a shopper will choose a lesser known retailer for the same product if the price is right. Those decisions increased where another retailer offered both a better or same price but delivery was simpler and free.

Make sure you consider all of these points and where you as a retailer can improve and influence these factors. These genuinely fall outside the remit of your PPC Agency or in-house marketing department. They could be doing an amazing job in terms of Feed Optimisation and Campaign Management. But, if you’re competitive to lead in these factors, performance can still suffer.

Google Merchant Center - Warnings and Disapprovals

If you have created the perfect Product Feed, built the best campaign structure and created a pricing/discount model that makes you competitive, don’t fall over at the final hurdle!

After feed optimisations have been put into place, refresh your feed in the Merchant Centre and check for warnings or disapprovals that can hamper your performance. These warnings will limit your visibility, lower your Data Quality and in the worst case scenario have your account suspended.

Some of the most common issues and how to fix them.

1 - Inaccurate Price/Availability - The landing page does not match the price or availability in the shopping feed. This can lead to an email from Google with a 30 day warning to fix the issue before suspension. Common reasons for this are recent price drops, or the product going out of stock. If this is the case a review can be quick and turning on automatic updates for price and availability can prevent this matter occurring. 

Other reasons for this are having currency updates depending on IP address which can cause discrepancies in the feed and the landing page as Google will review a feed from their location. Using multi currency URLs can prevent this.

2 - Inaccurate Shipping Costs - If the shipping costs on your website change, make sure this is updated in the Shopping Feed or in Google Merchant Centre a preventable issue, but often forgotten.

3 - Invalid GTINs - These will result in a disapproval, GTINs are the barcode of the product and a unique identifier of the product. To solve this issue either remove the incorrect GTIN, or provide the correct one.

4 - Limited Performance due to missing GTINS - This just carries a warning, rather than a disapproval. This will only affect certain products, if other retailers have the GTIN for the product then its likely this warning will show if you do not have it.

5 - Unavailable Desktop/Mobile landing page - The product in the feed has a broken URL to the landing page. Remove all old products from the Shopping feed if they no longer exist and make sure to fetch your feed daily so the feed is up to date.

6- Incorrect Value Identifier Exists - Identifier exists has two options, yes or no. If you do not have 2 of the 3 identifiers, MPN, GTIN or Brand this must be set to no, if you have at least 3 of the 3 this should be set to yes.

7 - Missing Attribute (Gender, Age Group, Colour, Size) - If your product has the Google Product Category that begins with ‘Clothing & Accessories’ your products are recommended to have size, age group, gender and colour.

8 - Promotional Overlay On Image - The product image must only show the product on a plain background with no logos or text overlay. Automatic image improvements can fix this issue otherwise you will need to upload a new image.

9 - Sexual Interests In Personalised Advertising - Throughout October we have seen more and more products get flagged for this issue. Google looks to be increasingly sensitive on this with anything remotely sexual or that can be taken as sexual in the description or title can be flagged. Request a review if your products have been incorrectly flagged, or contact a Google rep if you have a lot of warnings.

Once you have cleared your warnings and disapprovals, your feed and Merchant Centre will be in the best possible shape for the busiest period of the year. The final step for success in this period is to be proactive with your promotions. Make sure all promotions are set up in advance and bear in mind that this is the busiest time of the year not just for sales but also retailers creating promotions, so the process to get promotions approved can take a little longer, especially for first time users of promotions.

If you are going to run a promotion, particularly over Black Friday, here are a few tips:

1 - The title of the promotion must be clear, customers may see the title in the search results so be clear ‘20% off Selected Brands’, ‘£20 off Armani Jeans’ rather than a vague ‘20% Off’.

2 - Make sure all of the products in the filter are applicable to the promotion, if you set the filter to Brand, and some products of that brand are not in the promotion and they are tested the promotion will be disapproved.

3 - If applying to products that have a promotion ID, the Promotion ID in the feed attribute and in Merchant Centre must match or the products will not be in the promotion. A common issue if you are recycling codes, the Promotion ID must not have been used before. The promo code and the promotion ID do not have to match.

4 - Set your promo code, there is a drop down box for this optional code that can be missed, if no promo code is stated and you need a promo code the promotion will be disapproved.

5 - During busy periods promotions may take a bit longer to be approved, once they go live promotions need to be checked by Google. If you are doing an hourly price drop or a sale over a short window of time, by the time the promotion is reviewed it may be over. It can take between 12 to 24 hours for promotions to be reviewed.



We have covered the key aspects of the Merchant Centre and Google Shopping as we go into Q4, however every retailer has their own objectives. If you want more information on how we can help you with product feed optimisation, CSS or incremental sales, book a demo with us today.