Shopping Feed Optimization

Your product feed is the foundation of every Shopping and Performance Max campaign. It's the data file that tells Google everything about your products — titles, descriptions, prices, images, and availability. The quality of this feed directly determines how often and where your products appear.

What Is a Product Feed?

A product feed is a structured data file (usually XML or CSV) that contains all product information Google needs to display your Shopping ads. It's uploaded to Google Merchant Center, which validates and processes the data before making it available for advertising.

Most e-commerce platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce, and Magento can generate feeds automatically. However, the default output is rarely optimized. What your CMS generates and what performs well in Google Ads are often two very different things.

Why Feed Quality Matters

Google uses your feed data to match your products with search queries. If your product title says "Blue T-Shirt" but a potential customer searches for "men's cotton crew neck t-shirt navy blue size L," your product might not show up — even though it's exactly what they want.

Feed optimization means structuring your data so that Google can match your products to the right searches. It's not about stuffing keywords. It's about providing complete, accurate, and search-relevant information.

Key Attributes to Optimize

While feeds contain dozens of attributes, these have the biggest impact on performance:

• Product title: The most important attribute. Include brand, product type, key features (color, size, material) in a natural order. Front-load the most important terms.
• Product description: Supports title matching. Use natural language that includes relevant search terms without stuffing.
• Product type & Google category: Helps Google understand your product taxonomy. Be as specific as possible.
• Images: High-quality product images on a white background for Shopping. Lifestyle images can be added as additional images for Performance Max.
• Price & availability: Must be accurate and match your landing page. Discrepancies lead to disapprovals.
• GTIN/EAN: Product identifiers help Google match your products to its product database. Always include them when available.

Common Feed Mistakes

The issues we encounter most often when auditing e-commerce Google Ads accounts:

• Using manufacturer titles verbatim instead of search-optimized titles
• Missing or generic product types
• Low-resolution or lifestyle-only images (no product-on-white)
• Not using supplemental feeds for additional data enrichment
• Ignoring feed-level custom labels for campaign segmentation

Feed Tools and Supplemental Feeds

Feed management tools like Producthero, DataFeedWatch, or Channable allow you to transform and enrich your base feed without changing your webshop data. Supplemental feeds in Merchant Center let you add or override specific attributes — useful for custom labels, promotional prices, or correcting product categories at scale.

A well-optimized feed combined with proper campaign structure is what separates average accounts from high-performing ones. The feed isn't glamorous, but it's where the real leverage sits.

Keeping Your Merchant Center Healthy

Google Merchant Center is the foundation of every Shopping campaign. A healthy account prevents disapprovals and suspensions. These are the best practices we monitor daily:

• Show you're a real business: Visible about page, clear contact details, and a professional appearance. Google verifies this.
• Keep prices and stock accurate: Discrepancies between your feed and website are the most common reason for product disapprovals.
• Clear shipping and return policies: Google requires transparent policies. Missing or unclear information leads to warnings or suspensions.
• Working checkout: Regularly test that your entire ordering process works flawlessly, including all payment methods.
• Clean product photos: Use product photos on a white background for Shopping. Avoid watermarks, text overlays, or collages.
• Working cookie banner: A broken cookie banner is a surprisingly common reason for suspensions. Ensure it's correctly implemented and test it after every plugin update.
• Avoid copied content: Unique product descriptions perform better and prevent policy violations. Generic manufacturer text can trigger flags.