Review Your Products and Adwords Data
In your ongoing effort to maximize Google Shopping performance, your first step should be to figure out why your ads aren’t appearing for a search that you think is relevant. Look at your AdWord’s reporting to see what products are getting the most impressions, clicks and especially conversions.
There are a number of reasons why your ad might not be appearing, including:
- Google doesn’t think your products match the search query (so the ads never enter the auction)
- The relevance or bid is too low (thus the ad enters the auction but gets few queries)
5 Key Attributes For Google Shopping Feed Optimization
If you do suffer from few or no impressions, it’s time to optimize your feed for five key attributes:
- Title
- Description
- Unique Product Identifiers
- Google Product Category
- Product Type
Both your titles and descriptions give you the opportunity to highlight relevant keywords. The product category and unique product identifiers let Google map their keyword lists to the products in your feed.
Titles should be keyword-rich, descriptive and, ideally, under 70 characters. If, for example, you sell apparel, a good title will include the brand, style, and gender of the product.
If you need a longer title, just be wary of truncation by front-loading your key terms.
Studies have shown that your ads will be more successful if they avoid the use of descriptive or editorial content (such as “high quality). Straight, focused, and to-the-point language is far more effective.
Your descriptions should be no more than 500 characters in length, which is actually far less than what is allowed.
Like your title, keep your description product-focused. If your product has variants (like colors) avoid listing the specifics of these variants. Simply state that the product comes in other colors, materials, etc. This will prevent the wrong product from showing.
Your Unique Product Identifiers are probably the most important attribute in your feed, and they come in three types:
- GTIN
- MPN
- Brand
More often than not, you’ll need to submit two of the three types of UPIs. You’ll want to make sure that you submit accurate values; the UPI that you submit for one of your products should be the same value that a competitor submits for that same product.
The Identifier Exists attribute should be used for custom-made goods only. If your goods aren’t custom made, you have to get the proper UPI from the product manufacturer.
As far as Google Product Category, you’ll want to download the Google Product Taxonomy and make sure that every product has been given the most specific product category available. This will allow Google to better group your product with similar products.
Product Type is best described as the category or category structure you have on your website. Having correct product type doesn’t necessarily increase your opportunity to get impressions, but are very helpful in structuring Google Shopping campaigns. In the Google feed specifications, they highly recommended the use of product_type for your items.
A Note About Quality Score and Your Product ID
Generally speaking, you should not change product IDs after you submitted them the first time. That’s because Google’s Quality Score uses your product ID to maintain performance history about ads from each product in your feed.
Changing the product ID will wipe out some of this history. But if your product had a poor CTR (and you go in and fix the description, title, and image) then it might be worth your while to change the product ID to, essentially, wipe the slate clean.
Navigating The Murky Waters of Google Shopping in AdWords
The tips above give you an introduction into best-practices to maximize ad exposure. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. AdWords optimization is a daily commitment that requires you to constantly monitor your own performance, as well as the market as a whole. Learn more about how OperationROI can help you make the most of your Shopping Ad performance in AdWords by calling our team at 1-888-277-5429 or by filling out our contact form.
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